Divided We Fall

I last visited the Dominican Sisters of the Perpetual Rosary five years ago to find out how a handful of nuns viewed the world from inside a cloistered monastery.

Mother Miriam Leonard, the leader of this West Side monastery, was patient as I posed my skeptical reporter’s questions about her life of solitude and prayer. And as our conversation drifted from religion to politics to the woes of society, I was struck by her insightfulness. For a woman cloistered inside the same building since 1950, with furloughs only for doctor visits, she had a far-reaching sensibility about the world outside, a  “cosmic consciousness,” she called it.

“We’re not isolationists,” said Mother Miriam, a former psychiatric nurse whose immediate community now consists of 11 nuns. “We’re not running from the world. We all come from the world, from productive lives.” Their exposure to the world now, though, is limited to conversations with visiting neighbors, letters, e-mail, the Internet and the media.

A few weeks ago, I went back to the cloister for a pre-election chat with the Mother Superior to get her thoughts from the inside about life on the outside.

The world has changed dramatically since my first -visit. September 11th. War in Afghanistan. War in Iraq. War on terrorism. Economic hardships. Sex scandals within the Catholic Church. Political scandals from Milwaukee to Madison and beyond. The convulsions of modern life have been frequent and furious.

Again, Mother Miriam was introspective. But as our talk turned to the election, she hedged. Her Catholicism shapes her stance against abortion, stem cell research and what she calls “the moral decay” of our culture – all core positions of the Republican Party. But her opinion against capital punishment and the war in Iraq mirrors the Vatican’s – and many Democrats’. “I do not support our having gone into Iraq in the first place,” she says, “let alone what has transpired since we’ve been there.”

As for political party, she leans Democratic. She remembers her parents were FDR backers and “Kennedy-philes,” and she wishes Ralph Nader would drop out of the presidential race, fearing he will hamper Kerry’s chances.

She’s disappointed in the tone of the campaign and laments the “caterwauling back and forth” between Bush and Kerry.

“If they would just address a few more issues, like healthcare and people without insurance,” she says. “If we just had a man of moral courage who could stand up and speak and be heard, but we never rise to that level. Everything is down here in this murky area – the name-calling and castigating. It’s pathetic.”

I know the negativism she feels even in her seclusion. It’s not just the candidates. A lack of civility has infected the democratic process, fueled by party hacks, special interests, talk show hosts, Internet bloggers – whoever has a forum and an ax to grind.

We’re a divided nation, and not just Democrat vs. Republican, Left vs. Right or Blue vs. Red states. We’re split along lines of color, class, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, even geography. The divide is Retro vs. Metro, with Retro America consisting of the South, the Midwest and the Rocky Mountain states and Metro America the two coasts and Great Lakes states such as ours.

The division cuts close to home, splitting states, communities, even neighborhoods.

A friend from Elm Grove told me that he was standing in the check-out line in a store one day, eyeing the magazines, when a stranger turned to him and fumed: “John Kerry is such an asshole.” Evidently, the stranger assumed my friend was a Bush backer because the two of them happened to be in the same store in Republican-dominated Waukesha -County.

We are quick to make presumptions, says Mother -Miriam. But within the cloistered community of 11, debates on culture, politics and world events are spirited – and civil. “We have a group of very opinionated, wonderful women here who are knowledgeable and articulate,” says Mother Miriam.

From behind the walls of the 68th Street monastery, their activism is basic. “Everybody here votes by absentee ballot. That’s our civic duty. That’s part of the virtue of religion.Ó”

The Mother Superior wouldn’t name her preferred candidates, but I know her vote won’t be cast with resentment or hate. She can be a pro-life Democrat or a Republican against the war without alienating herself within her own community.

“My prayer is that eventually we will get leaders in this country who look upon the common good rather than their personal advancement,” she says. “And right now, the outlook is pretty grim. But we have to be a people of hope.”

I’m skeptical, still – of her prayers, her hopefulness. I await the election with a sinking feeling that little will change no matter who wins, that the division will only deepen.

Rich vs. poor. Urban vs. cowboy. American vs. European. Hummer vs. Hyundai. Limbaugh vs. Franken. Fox News vs. CNN. Pro-life vs. pro-choice. Black vs. white.

Anger has supplanted reason in the national debate. Our melting pot differences, once our strength, are now used as wedges. And polarization has become status quo, the new definition of who we are.

Take me to the monastery.