Harrisburg: the Politics of Salvation Francine Du
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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 ;„ 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 opening many distinguished schools ducts in Washington, D. C. "Over, and colleges throughout America, one over," the agents radioed when she had of the most noted of which is Mary- entered the car, "we've got the pack- mount College in Tarrytown, New age, over." York. It is at Marymount that Sister That same evening a posse of FBI Elizabeth McAlister, recently convicted men came to arrest Eqbal Ahmad, a in the Harrisburg Seven conspiracy trial Pakistani scholar living in Chicago. In for smuggling letters into a prison, Baltimore, the FBI went to the apart- attended college and later taught. ment of Anthony and Mary Scoblick, and to the apartment shared by lizabeth McAlister is one of seven E Fathers Joseph Wenderoth and Neil children of Irish immigrants who had McLaughlin. The best known of the come to the United States in the Harrisburg Seven, Father Philip Berri- 1920s, and had set up a successful on a Tuesday of Holy Week as a Joan Miro, Barnett Newman, David gan, was told of his indictment at the construction business in Montclair, special dispensation for the com- Smith. Federal Penitentiary at Danbury, Con- New Jersey. Her childhood was peace- munity. In those early years Elizabeth was necticut, where he is serving a six-year ful, uneventful, and fairly prosperous. still dressed in the vestments that had sentence for the destruction of draft She had always loved to draw, and Elizabeth McAlister, a tall, long- been traditional to her order since the files in 1967 and 1968. early in her college life she designed limbed girl with blue eyes and thick nineteenth century: a floor-length hab- holy name day cards and place cards dark brown hair, was an intense, it of blue serge, over which hung a for the nuns' religious holidays—the compulsively disciplinary, exemplary highly starched white linen pelerine II feast of Saint Joseph, the feast of the nun who spent her early twenties which reached halfway down to her The indictment brought against these Immaculate Conception. The only seed perfecting herself in her vocation. She waist. On her head she wore a serre- seven persons in January, 1970, relied of :ionconformism to be found in her did not even chafe against such rigid tete, or cap, of white muslin to which solely on conversations reported by an clay life is that she loved contem- convent customs as the "amende hon- she pinned the enormous coif of FBI informer, Boyd Douglas, a convict po.ary art and made abstract designs orable," a penance which she had to starched white linen that framed her with a long record of lying and of on these greetings which her order recite publicly, kneeling on the floor face. Over the ..oif she wore a third violence, and on letters exchanged at found "highly unacceptable" because of the refectory at breakfast time to layer of white veiling reaching to the Lewisburg Prison between Elizabeth f.f their avant-garde tenor. confess any small instance of mis- waist, and a fourth layer of black McAlister and Philip Berrigan. The The call for a religious vocation had demeanor: turning a light out too late, veiling would be added when she charges against this predominantly come to Elizabeth in the most tradi- breaking a tea cup. It went this way: attended chapel. She rose at 5:30, and Catholic group—whose vast indiscre- tional way. Sometime in her freshman "Reverend Mother, I most humbly ask until 1968 her daily schedule would tions were caused in good part by their year, while in prayer, she received your pardon for all the pain I have remain the following: a period of political innocence and previous isola- what she believed to be a call from caused you since I came to this house, meditation at 6 A.M., mass at 6:45, and tion—were ironically Catholic in na- God. It had come as a surprise to her by my disrespect and disobedience. I three more hours of meditation and ture. The charges implied, as does the nd as a discomfiture to her parents, also ask pardon of the community for prayers • interspersed throughout the old Church teaching, that one can be who looked upon the rules of the the bad example I have given them by day.