Friday, May 18, 2018

Nun in the News: A Treatise on the Human Condition

(Hello from my sabbatical.)


On his May 8th show, Jimmy Kimmel poked fun at the Met Gala’s theme of  “Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”. Please watch the clip.  He joked about the celebrities’ interpretations of the theme, and compared their outlandish outfits to his understanding of Catholic fashion as demonstrated by a photo of “Sister Mary Frances O’Brien”.  The nun in the photo, however, is actually Sr. Patricia Pompa, the real-life principal at my alma mater, Villa Walsh Academy. The Jimmy Kimmel clip went viral amongst my former classmates and fellow alumnae.  Sr. Pat was on Jimmy Kimmel!  Nothing had spread that fast since the time Sr. Mary DeAngelis got a photo with Bruce Springsteen (“Big Brucey” as she called him).  The Villa girls I know either found the whole thing hilarious or suffered from brief bouts of nun-induced post-traumatic stress.

But other people (only men, that I noticed) lamented the injustice done to Sr. Pat and sought to defend her sacred honor.  In the Wall Street Journal on Monday, Bill McGurn, father of three Villa girls and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, wrote a column introducing “Jimmy Kimmel’s nun” as a loving woman whose “entire life has been about self-sacrifice.”  In describing her service to the school, he paints her with a halo.

Mr. McGurn implies that Jimmy Kimmel only saw the habit when he held up Sr. Pat’s photo, but I wonder if he himself has fallen into the same trap. When we synonymize one’s clothing with one’s level of virtue, we run into a risk the Catholic Church should well know—the risk of assuming complete goodness and overlooking true failings. Behind the habit is a human, not a saint.  She has not “sacrificed” her life, but rather chose this life for herself.  A subtle distinction, but an important one.  She is not a victim.  She is not a damsel in distress.

But Sr. Pat’s fifteen minutes of fame were not yet up.  Later in the week, Mr. McGurn appeared on Fox & Friends to be interviewed by Brian Kilmeade.  I believe Mr. McGurn when he says he does not mean to demonize Jimmy Kimmel, but I think it’s a shame he didn’t foresee Fox News taking such an angle with  “JIMMY KIMMEL USES NUN TO JOKE ABOUT MET GALA” emblazoned at the bottom of the screen.  While the segment mostly was spent reiterating the sentiments in the article, one moment struck me as exceedingly disingenuous.  Shaking his head in disgust, Mr. Kilmeade asks, “in the #MeToo movement, should we really be ridiculing somebody about how they look?”  While not only betraying a complete misunderstanding of #MeToo, Mr. Kilmeade asserts a distaste that reeks of hypocrisy.  We can argue whether Jimmy Kimmel was ridiculing Sr. Pat’s looks or if he was drawing a humorous comparison between the Met Gala and what most people recognize as Catholic fashion (in other words, making a joke, or rather, doing a thing that comedians do).  But if we are going to exhibit disgust at the superficial treatment of women, let’s hold that up as a standard across the board.  Somehow I doubt Mr. Kilmeade has expressed a fraction of that outrage in reaction to egregious behavior toward women by President Trump or by men at his own network.  But then I guess those women weren’t wearing habits.  Maybe they deserved it.


I know and admire Mr. McGurn and his family, and I have no doubt he had good intentions in writing this piece.  But as one of those capable and confident women churned out by Villa Walsh, I feel compelled to point out why I find this treatment problematic.  Was Sr. Pat consulted before she was used as an example of Christian virtue and as a weapon of Fox News?  It seems not.  If I had to guess, I’d imagine the nuns of Villa Walsh got a kick out of the Jimmy Kimmel bit.  After all, they too are human beings with senses of humor.  They even poke fun at themselves sometimes.  All I ask is that we recognize the human nature in all people—no matter their station, no matter their clothing—and hold them to the same standards of decency.



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