1/28/2010
Outgoing superior general keen on Sisters’ prophetic call
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| Outgoing superior general keen on Sisters’ prophetic call |
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Ed Langlois
BEAVERTON — Sister Barbara Jean Laughlin’s father, a former boxer, kept a speed bag in the basement. As a girl, the future nun showed agility with her fists.
“He didn’t worry about me when I started to date,” she says. “He told me, ‘You can just give him a quick right if he gets too fresh.’”
Sister Barbara Jean, 74, is finishing her second term as superior general of the 68-member Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon. Sister Charlene Herinckx was elected last week to take the post.
In 10 years, Sister Barbara Jean has never thrown a punch, but in her leadership and personal life, she’s shown a fighter’s spirit. She has sometimes defied popular opinion, often kept a resolute eye on the future and always embraced what she discerns is God’s will.
Born in Pueblo, Colo., she’s the eldest of five. Her father, now 97 and living at Maryville Nursing Home near the convent, worked for a Colorado gas company and then built ships in San Francisco during World War II. He eventually came to Oregon and worked for Portland General Electric.
Even before she was 2, spunky little Barbara Jean loved Mass. It was that rare moment when she would be quiet. By age 6, she received a doll dressed as a nun. When she had to attend public school for a time in San Francisco, she stood at the start of her first day and crossed herself to pray before realizing it was only time for the Pledge of Allegiance.
In Portland, the family lived briefly near St. Patrick Church and then moved closer to St. Andrew’s. She recalls those pre-civil rights days, seeing black bus riders go to the back and reading signs on restaurants barring “negroes.” She paid little heed to what anyone thought and had an African American girl as a friend.
The resolve came in part from her mother, who was an early women’s rights believer and one of the earlier females in Portland who regularly wore trousers.
At St. Andrew School, young Barbara Jean met Sister Theresa of the Child Jesus Ruettgers. Sister Theresa, of the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon, saw promise and began a recruiting effort. When Barbara Jean explained that she would like to be a missionary overseas, Sister Theresa raised her eyebrows and informed the girl that there were plenty of people in Oregon who needed help.
Barbara Jean got an invitation to the impressive motherhouse in Beaverton to see a profession of young Sisters. She was hooked.
In the mean time, largely at her mother’s urging, she continued to live a standard teenage life, dating, playing sports, acting, tap-dancing, serving on the student council. She was asked to play in a women’s softball league because of her skills as a catcher. But she opted to join another team.
After graduation from Immaculata Academy in 1953 (she resisted recruitment from the Domincans there, saying she would not look good in white), Barbara Jean entered the Sisters of St. Mary of Oregon convent.
An exciting period of prayer and formation followed, and she went to work teaching in Stayton, North Portland and Tillamook. She started Christ the King School in Milwaukie in the late 1960s and served as principal of St. Agatha School in Portland. At one school in Spokane, she was principal, secretary, teacher and coach.
Children energize her.
She loved the habit, but was lousy at sewing, so often looked a bit shabby. She was one of the first in her order to shed the veil completely after the Second Vatican Council.
In the mid-1980s, she went to the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. It was a time when she questioned who she was and what she was doing. As it turned out, she felt affirmed and stayed in the community that many of her friends had left.
Sister Barbara Jean thought she would go teach again, but was elected to the Sisters’ leadership council. Energetic as ever, she founded and directed the sisters’ associates program for lay men and women who want to live out the Sisters’ way of life and ministries.
She also helped establish Bethany Center, a spirituality and retreat ministry at the motherhouse. She served on the Valley Catholic school boards and was a pastoral associate at St. Francis Parish in Sherwood.
In 2000, the Sisters elected her superior general, impressed by her amiable disposition and indefatigability.
The role is not as daunting as it once was. A team of leaders has guided the sisters for decades, and individual sisters get to weigh in on where and how they minister.
“It used to be that on August 15, you got your papers that said: ‘We need someone in Grand Ronde. Pack up your trunk,’” Sister Barbara Jean says. “No more.”
But she has exercised authority.
In her first term, she oversaw a controversial land deal, selling a 463-acre farm near Hillsboro that had been donated to the sisters. She withstood criticism from those who oppose the development of farm land, including several church groups. But Sister Barbara Jean knew the religious community’s schools and retirement facilities needed the $11 million to “further the mission of proclaiming the good news of God’s love.”
Along with a foundation created 12 years ago to sustain the Sisters’ work, she has helped oversee a consolidation of the unique Valley Catholic campus, which serves people from preschool years through old age. A new corporate structure was born.
As part of a master plan, a new school athletic facility is in place and a $20 million elementary school building is on the drawing board.
She updated opportunities for Sisters’ ongoing education and refined the leadership team.
All of this was carried out by a woman who was simultaneously fighting death.
Not long after her election in 2000, Sister Barbara Jean had developed a persistent cough. Puzzled physicians finally found she had leukemia.
“I said, ‘Lord, why did you have me elected and then put me in the infirmary?’” she recalls. “It turned out the answer was, ‘You have never suffered.’”
The fatigue and pain of the disease and its treatments at times led her to pray for death. She had never really been sick before. She immediately became more empathetic toward people who are suffering. She also felt deep gratitude for her life, from happy childhood through years of teaching to her strange call to be a leader and patient.
From September 2000 to March 2001, she was seriously ill, moving mostly by wheelchair. Her council held meetings in the convent’s medical ward.
This was tough for someone who once was able to “burn the candle at both ends and the center.”
A new drug developed at Oregon Health and Science University and blood donations from friends helped much of her strength return. But she knows her health could fail at any time. That keeps her humble.
Her superior general’s office is modest. An electric typewriter sits on one desk not far from a computer. On the wall is a photo collage of roses. White statues of the Holy Family and the Sacred Heart stand on a table and filing cabinet.
Sister Barbara Jean is the kind of person who often expresses gratitude for people who helped her and the Sisters over the years. “You need to know when you don’t know,” she says.
When she turns over the reins to Sister Charlene in the summer, Sister Barbara Jean intends to make a 30-day retreat, probably focusing on women’s issues and the environment, matters close to her heart.
She’ll visit family in the Northwest and stay active in the associates program. She’ll remain involved in a group that makes sure the Sisters are carrying out their mission effectively.
One thing she won’t be worrying about is what some people see as the demise of Catholic religious life.
“People are always talking about Sisters’ communities dying, but to me they are more vital now than in the transition [after Vatican II],” Sister Barbara Jean says, explaining that today’s Sisters get more by way of deep spirituality, human formation, education and healthy relationships. “There is more substance to our life now, more harmony, more quiet.”
She has high hopes for the future, in which Sisters can no longer be seen simply as the work force of the church.
“Now I am fascinated by the prophetic aspect of religious life,” Sister Barbara Jean says, pointing into the convent hallway with a strong hand. “You don’t have to have huge numbers to have a nucleus. You just need a cell that vibrates with life.”
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