Harrisburg: The Politics of Salvation Francine du. Plessix Gray
order forbade the nuns from ever become a good and fervent religious." underwent transformations that were I entering their parents' house again The order having shrewdly perceived unnatural in their intensity. The revo- In 1849 a maverick priest in the town after they had taken their vows, short Elizabeth's talent, she was sent to lution in the Church, the boiling pot of Beziers, France, founded an order of a death in the family. They were Hunter College in 1962 to acquire a of the Sixties' dissent induced in her a of nuns which he called "Les Reli- also prohibited from seeing any films, master's degree in art history. The mysterious personal growth of terrify- gieuses du Sacre Coeur de Marie," or reading any newspapers or any head of the department, Eugene Goos- ing rapidity. Elizabeth had been against whose aim would be to educate young books beyond the slim collection of sen, remembers her as "a person with the Vietnam war since 1965, and in girls to work among the poor. Father Saints' Lives on the convent's shelves. fringes of great firmness and stubborn- May of 1968 she was on the verge of Jean Pierre Gailhac was an eccentric There was a single radio set in the ness, full of idies fixes, but with very joining Philip Berrigan and the Catons- and a social activist. He had chosen to convent on which the sisters were radical tastes in art for a nun." ville Nine in their foray on draft board be chaplain at the local hOtel-Dieu allowed to listen to only one program: Religious orders are noted for over- files in Maryland. She desisted from so rather than preach or teach, and had Fulton Sheen's. Older members of the working the few specialists they have. acting only the night before, with also set up a rehabilitation center for RSHM vividly recall the great excite- Returning to Marymount in 1963, characteristic dutifulness toward her prostitutes. Like the order he founded, ment with which they greeted a show- Elizabeth taught Medieval, Renaissance, order. Her desire to join her friends in Gailhac seemed destined for occasional ing of Snow White and the Seven Oriental, and American art within the civil• disobedience was "an instinctive trouble, and was even accused, midway Dwarfs, which Joseph Kennedy, whose same semester. Her greatest pleasure yes-saying trust" which she could not in his career, of poisoning some nuns. ailing daughter Rosemary was at the was to lecture on her favorite twen- have explained to her community, at Notwithstanding his personal tribula- college, once brought to Marymount tieth-century masters—Jackson Pollock, that time, in rational terms. But the tions, his order flourished, and a small compulsive rigor and dedication that mission was sent to the United States she had brought to her nun's vocation in the 1880s to establish a convent on were now put to the uses of the these shores. Movement. Its arrival was forlorn. The American A characteristic image of the 1970 sponsor of the mission, a rich Cincin- Elizabeth McAlister: She drives with a nati widow, had died while the nuns friend down the highway toward a were en route from France, and they Movement meeting, high beyond the were left stranded at the docks. A speed limit, the window open. She is priest took pity on the sisters and now clothed in a brief-skirted sport offered them his house in Sag Harbor, dress; on her lap is an open copy of Long Island. But their troubles were the New Testament which she looks at not over. The priest fell in love with frequently during her voyage. It was the youngest of the nuns, who had not during such a trip, on January 12, yet taken her vows, and the group's 1971, as she was getting into a car in a mother superior had to return to parking lot in Newark, New Jersey, France for further counsel. This epi- that seven FBI men walked up to her sode is documented in the archives of and said: "You're under arrest, Sister the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Liz." "Please," she replied, her Irish Mary (RSHM) under the title "Les temper rising, "my name is Elizabeth Tristes et Douloureuses Epreuves de la —my friends call me Liz." They read Maison de Sag Harbor." Such afflic- her the charges: conspiring to kidnap tions did not prevent the order from Henry Kissinger and blow up heating
rItIPTlill .n.111/ Aictinm,ichPA crhnnlc ;„ the Religious of the Sacred Heart of sode is documented in the archives of
France for further counsel. This epi- Maison de Sag Harbor." Mary (RSHM) under the title mother superior had to return to yet taken her vows, and the group's opening many distinguished schools tions did not prevent the order from and colleges throughout America, one of the most noted of which is Mary- Tristes et Douloureuses Epreuves de la
mount College in Tarrytown, New York. It is at Marymount that Sister
attended college and later taught. in the Harrisburg Seven conspiracy trial Elizabeth McAlister, recently convicted for smuggling letters into a prison,
children of Irish immigrants who had come to the United States in the E
construction business in Montclair, 1920s, and had set up a successful New Jersey. Her childhood was peace- ful, uneventful, and fairly prosperous. She had always loved to draw, and
holy name day cards and place cards early in her college life she designed
for the nuns' religious holidays—the feast of Saint Joseph, the feast of the
of :ionconformism to be found in her Immaculate Conception. The only seed on these greetings which her order clay life is that she loved contem- po.ary art and made abstract designs found "highly unacceptable" because
f.f their avant-garde tenor.
come to Elizabeth in the most tradi-
tional way. Sometime in her freshman year, while in prayer, she received God. It had come as a surprise to her
what she believed to be a call from
who looked upon the rules of the
Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary
as harshly restrictive. Until 1962 or so
the regulations of this semi-cloistered
34
nd as a discomfiture to her parents,
lizabeth McAlister is one of seven
The call for a religious vocation had