Welcome off the page. It's great to be with you. I wanted to begin this episode by sharing
something we're really excited about here at Franciscan Media. So starting with this
episode, we're going to begin implementing segments throughout the podcast that invite
you to pause and consider what a guest has said. So probably won't do this every episode,
but many will include these segments beginning with this one. So our friends at the Center
for Action and Contemplation, they call these Contemplative Sits. I really like that as
an invitation. My dear friend and mentor, the late Father Dan Riley up at Mount Irenaeus,
he called opportunities like this Franciscan Lectio, and he based that on the quadratic
structure for prayer attributed to St. Clair of Assisi. That structure is simply this,
gaze, consider, contemplate, and imitate. So in these times of pausing throughout the
conversation, we're invited to take the words spoken by a guest, hold them in our hearts,
gaze upon them, consider them, contemplate them, which is to say, we simply let them
sink deeper and deeper into our hearts, into our very being, and then ultimately imitate
the truth that is being revealed to us. So why exactly implement a segment like this?
It's really part of an overall movement at Franciscan Media called Rebuild God's Church,
where we hope that our resources can better accompany you on your spiritual journey as
we seek to hopefully meet you digitally, multimedia-wise, right where you are. And so maybe you do just
want to listen to the interview without these Franciscan Lectio moments. That's perfectly
fine. You can fast forward through these segments. But we do invite you into St. Clair of Assisi's
movement of prayer as you listen, to not just consume information with the mind, as to be
honest, I so often do that when I listen to podcasts. It's all up here. It's all cerebral.
But to truly listen with the ear of the heart, gaze, consider, contemplate, imitate. I feel
like this movement is so important in my own life because we're all really being invited
into this rebuilding process, right? Into what it means to bring healing into our own
lives, our own households, our own communities, and ultimately our world. So speaking of St.
Clair, it's a joy to introduce to you our next guest, a world-renowned scholar on St.
Clair of Assisi, Sister Margaret Carney. Sister Margaret is a member of the Sisters of St.
Francis of Newman communities. Her education in theology and Franciscan studies took place
at Duquesne University, the Franciscan Institute of St. Bonaventure University. And she was
the first woman to graduate from the Franciscan University of Rome at the doctoral level.
Sister Margaret is a rock star. She provides tours for Franciscan pilgrimage programs.
That's where she and I met actually. And she is a board member at Franciscan Media. She
was the president at St. Bonaventure University from 2004 to 2016. And her beautiful book,
her biography on St. Clair, Light of Assisi, is available in the Franciscan Media Store,
Amazon, or wherever books are sold. The focus of today's conversation is about St. Clair's
legacy and leadership being their own light to us as we navigate this fraught political
moment and polarized age that has really been upon us for the last several years. I should
say that this conversation was recorded one month after the 2024 election and a little
over a month before the inauguration. So I found this to be such an important conversation.
And I really hope you learn as much from Sister Margaret as I did. As you'll hear though,
Sister Margaret and I really dive right into Clair's life and impact. If you don't know
much about St. Clair, that's okay. But if you do want to learn more, I cannot recommend
Sister Margaret's book enough. And we also have numerous videos on St. Clair on our YouTube
channel, many recorded by Sister Margaret herself. Or you can visit our website, franciscanmedia.org.
And a little hint, click on the search finder in the top right corner and you can simply
type in, you can search anything you want, type in Clair and you'll see close to 100
pages of content, stories, all revolving around St. Clair of Assisi. So without further ado,
our interview.
Sister Margaret Carney, thank you for joining off the page.
Good morning, Stephen, glad to be here. The kind of impetus for this podcast, for this
episode was a metaphor that St. Clair returns to quite often in her writings, this notion
of a mirror, for example, this mirror of eternity that we're invited to gaze upon. And really
the idea for this episode came from a conversation we had about turning this mirror on the life
and legacy of St. Clair and seeing how it might help us to find our way amid the difficulties
in our society, just some of the cultural challenges that we're all navigating right
now. Did I summarize our idea for this episode okay? Or do you have anything to add?
Yes, you do. The only thing I would like to add, Stephen, is that since our earliest planning
and to today, we've had very dramatic national experience with our most recent election.
And so in talking about Clair as a mirror for facing the difficulties of your time,
I don't want any of my remarks to be taken as a false equivalency. Our times are profoundly
different in regards to culture, society, Christianity as a framework. However, the
beauty of human history is that we learn in every generation that there are things that
propel the human person to good or to evil or to the in-between, and that we can learn
from those who went before us. And Clair has often not been seen as a person with a lot
to tell us in contrast to her friend and mentor, St. Francis, but we're uncovering year by
year more of her as a model and a leader for us. So let's let her try to help us out in
this interesting time we're living through.
Yeah, yeah. And thanks to people like you, you know, you're one of the few on the front
lines that are helping to uncover that as a Clair scholar. So we're all very grateful
for your work and your beautiful book. Got it right here. Yeah. Give you a quick little
plug. How about that?
Thank you. Very good. Very good. Sister Nancy Selaski and I, who was my next door neighbor
while I studied in Rome, we went off and did preliminary work on quite a few of the early
Franciscan women, Margaret of Cortona, Angela, the two Angelas, etc. And our mantra was the
women want their story told. So we're happy to be doing that.
Awesome. Well, let's dive right in. Like you said, we'll be kind of crossing that interpretive
bridge today, trying to put Clair's life and legacy in its own historical context, which
was 800 some years ago, but then also trying to apply what we may learn from her today
as we navigate some of these things in our society. So to begin, what were some pillars
from her life that could perhaps be helpful to us amid the challenges we're facing?
I think obviously the first came from how she learned from Francis to focus on Jesus
as the poor, humble victim, the one who came to redeem us in his body, in his blood. And
so she is in a state, religiously speaking, of constantly trying to find in the Gospels
the stories, the instances where Jesus manifests mercy, compassion, understanding, non-judgment.
But she sees that Jesus is a man of a certain time and place, but he is open to the Pharisee.
He's open to the centurion. He's open to this woman who literally is almost a pagan.
And I think that that becomes a way for both of them to take a place in a society where
certain social changes are happening and none too comfortably.
Can you go a little bit deeper into some of those social changes?
Yes. Clair lives at a moment that is really quite fascinating when you try to think about
how the lot of women is changing in various cultures and times. So we tend to think, rightly
so, of women in, for example, the ancient Rome, and that would be then the Italian peninsula
as Roman influence takes over the whole land, Rome right up through about the 11th century.
It's a very patriarchal society and the woman is an assent. She's a daughter to be married
off for a man with military power or land or political prestige. And that doesn't mean
that fathers don't love their daughters. It just means that if you have daughters, they're
a burden unless you can make those arrangements for them.
What is changing that in a very interesting way is the fact that right in the time of
Clair and Francis' 13th century, there is what is known as a surplus of marriageable
women. Demographically, there are more women who are of marriageable age than there are
men due to crusades, famine, what have you. So women are, in a sense, together and alone,
looking for different ways to deal with their status that keeps them in dignity and even
just keeps them economically. So you have a rise, not only of women going into monasteries,
but women creating little communities that don't have a big monastic footprint, but they
come together, they pool their resources, they lead a Christian life, they serve the
poor. It's a whole new thing. You also have the fact that women are now
in the communes, in the cities, where trade is becoming as important as land ownership.
Women whose families, whose husbands are involved in a trade are either part of that family
business, sometimes they run it because the husband is off on crusade or trading or dies
early. So you have women who are entrepreneurs and have a great deal of freedom. They travel,
they have money, they can pay people and hire people. That's a pretty new reality. And in
the nobility of which Clair is a part, the lower levels of nobility, and that would be
where she is in the Ophrodite clan. She's not a princess, she's not a duchess. These
women are living on the margin of the women who come from the old Roman system. Father
knows best, you will only do what father allows. Two, look at this. There are women finding
new ways that, you know, it's not that the church doesn't like it, that church just didn't
think of it and now tries to figure out how to regulate it. Economic success for women,
but still in those instances, women have no political voice. Their only voice is through
the family, through the husband, through the son. So the successful partnerships in marriage
will include the woman's voice, but it will always be hidden.
Yeah, it was amazing for me to be graced with opportunity to go on a Franciscan pilgrimage
with you last year and you're one of our leaders. And I'll always remember the night we did
that Clair walk, the spiritual imagination of thinking of her leaving this place of nobility
in the upper levels of Assisi and then running straight downward. And then eventually, I
think the next day, or maybe it was that very day that we visited San Damiano in the community
that she led. I'm always struck by that image of this leader, so bold, so radical. And then
her leadership came out in the community that she helped lead as well.
That's right. Downward mobility is a big deal for Franciscans.
Can you go a little bit deeper into downward mobility and what that means?
Well, it's just what you described. We usually speak of upward mobility as people socially
being able to improve their lives, get a better job, marry into the right level of society,
find respect through work that you do, develop a reputation so that you're always seen as
moving higher, whether it's in your place of work, your family, your town, et cetera.
But for the Franciscans, the idea was don't aspire to those higher types of awards for
your achievement. Aspire to keep going down to where the poor are, where the neglected
are and learn from them where Jesus is present in the world. Not an easy lesson ever.
So I wanted to pause here early in this conversation to consider this notion that Sister Margaret
brought up, something that I believe is uniquely Franciscan, and this idea of downward mobility.
In Sister Margaret's book, Light of Assisi, she writes about this moment in Claire's life
where she sneaks out of her house. It's almost straight out of a movie. And she, middle of
the night, sneaks out of her house and she leaves this comfortable place of nobility
and essentially runs straight downward, beyond the city walls, toward the lower levels of
Assisi where the poor resided. And it's there that she meets up with Francis and his brothers
and officially begins her new life. So Sister Margaret writes on page 27 in her chapter,
Midnight Exodus.
Finally, Claire arrived at the tiny church of Santa Maria de Llanjoli. Once there, she
was formally received by Francis in a carefully orchestrated ritual. Her beautiful clothing
was exchanged for a penitence, wrote. Francis himself cut her hair. The time honored tradition
for women seeking to leave the world to live by religious vows. A simple veil marked her
as given to Christ in a life of virginity. In the presence of the brothers, Claire professed
her dedication to Jesus and like them, to poverty and their simple rule. All that she
once claimed as a member of a noble family was put aside and all that she would become
as a woman fixed on God would be accomplished in partnership with them.
So this scene, one, it's beautiful. Do we know exactly what happened? No, but it's a
beautiful scene to contemplate. This Midnight Exodus of Claire and this running straight
down almost becomes its own model for the spiritual trajectory of anyone, in my opinion,
who's claiming to follow Christ. And this downward mobility, it really models and mirrors,
it really mirrors the incarnation where God comes down and takes on the humble form of
this human baby born into an oppressed people group, really the radical self-giving kenosis
of the Trinity pouring into creation and taking on a body, humbly taking on a body. And I
find this idea of downward mobility really challenging and inspiring. I mean, there's
such pressure and emphasis in our society to move upward. And not all of that is bad.
I really don't think it is. But when, in my experience, when that upward climb becomes
all consuming, I think we not only lose perspective, but we also become disconnected from our hearts
and the true self. Why is that? I think it's because the soul is inherently spiritually
connected to God and others and creation around us. We're not meant to be isolated, self-absorbed.
And communally, we're really kind of witnessing this right now. When everything becomes all
about climbing or profit or the bottom line or some kind of self-focused isolationism,
there can be a disconnect from the common good and our own responsibility to be a force
of good in this world. So what does downward mobility look like in one's own life? For
me, time and again, it has looked like running downward toward what might be risky or uncomfortable.
Putting the heart on the line, confronting the ego, bringing insecurities to the surface,
coming from the other, allowing the margins to be a pathway to my own continued conversion.
And I love that for Claire, as she goes downward, ultimately the gospel expands for her. And
I think that can be true for each of us. So I'll conclude this Franciscan Lexio section
with this line from Sister Margaret's book. This is on page 26, the page before what I
read earlier. And Sister Margaret writes, once on the other side of this gate in Assisi's
protective walls, Claire would become a citizen of another commune of gospel striving.
Yeah. And that's what I was wondering. Do you see this as a potential void or pitfall
in our society where this obsession with upward mobility and what does that mean for our own
spiritual trajectories today?
Well, Stephen, from my associations with colleges and their responsibility for the education,
but also the human formation of young people, I am deeply, deeply concerned about the immediate
future of younger generations because let me say, and I'm no expert on the use of the
social media, but I know enough and I've read enough to know, for example, you gain your
reputation as a 13 year old by how many likes you get. You may never leave your bedroom,
but you create this artificial community. It's not artificial, it's real around yourself.
And you look at the bright side and the dark side of those kinds of influences on young
people and think, you're never going to preach a word of humility and not caring about your
image. It is going to take a real miracle of grace to bring the gospel to young people
who've had no other coaching about a religious framework.
Now, I'm not saying this is going to be true of all young people, but we know of the young
people coming into Catholic colleges today, and this number may be lower now, 10% will
have had an active practice of their faith, 10%. So young people come to a Catholic college
because it's good, their parents are pleased with it, it has their major. They're not coming
dying to learn their faith. And so we have to be crafty about bringing them along intellectually,
spiritually, humanly, how we do that. But I do think trying to speak to this notion
of stepping aside and taking a servant position, but I will say this, it is better caught than
taught. So for example, when we will take students to a place where a disaster has happened
and they're helping flood victims or they're post pandemic or so often that is the transformative
experience because they see other poverty, deprivation, things that could lead to hopelessness
and despair, they arrive and simply by helping somebody clean mud out of their basement,
they're suddenly seen as like this messianic person. And as long as we conduct those experiences
and provide reflection, an opportunity for students to dig deep into the emotions of
that, what were you feeling? What are you thinking? Does it remind you of anything,
maybe something you've read in the gospel? That's what can light a fire. And so we need
also to be very attentive to that type of experience.
Well, those experiences are teaching through the praxis of lived experience, like downward
mobility, right? And you used the word humility earlier, which is so big in the Franciscan
tradition, but downward mobility in our culture, that's always the pressure that young people
feel to climb, to achieve, to accomplish, to make something of your... And not that
all that stuff is bad.
No, it isn't. No.
However, if it's done without humility or it's done without these experiences of downward
mobility, I think we lose a big part, myself included, I think. I think I miss out on a
huge aspect of myself when I'm so focused on the next thing and not allowing the humble
God to animate my day-to-day life.
That is true, Stephen, but you made a really important point, which is we don't want to
snuff out good ambition. In other words, I think of the young person who wants to study
law in order to be an advocate for the homeless or single parents. Well, here's the news.
You don't do really well academically. You're never going to get that law degree. So you
have to have an ambition about doing well, passing the LSATs, passing your boards. So
we don't want to make people feel guilty because they got a good grade or they were recognized
by an organization or the dean or something like that. But it's keeping that balance is
the thing. And that's where community helps. If somebody reminds you.
Yeah. And Claire was very ambitious in her own way, correct?
Exactly. Oh, yes, she was.
That kind of brings us back to Claire and her own spiritual journey.
That's right.
Can you go deeper into her own ambition and where it took her?
Yes, I would say first, her principal ambition is not Francis, it's Jesus. And she wants
a life of following right behind Jesus so she can feel him, smell him, you know, his
cloak looks back into her face in the wind because she learned that from Francis. And
she watches how Francis year by year grows in that and becomes courageous enough even
to pray to share his suffering. So he's the mentor all the time, but it's always the two
of them helping each other unravel this mystery of Christ. So I think that in that way, she
is positioning herself with Francis as a guide. She also has other guides, though we know,
for example, that as they become more organized and the church takes more of an interest in,
OK, are we going to approve these women or not? Are they just sort of out there? Part
renegade, part holy women. They assign Cistercian, we would say today, Trappist monks to come
and preach to them because they are educated preachers, the friars, by and large, especially
in the earliest years, did not have a university or, you know, scriptural education. And we
know that Claire distinguished between the really good speakers and the ones that aren't
so up to par. And so while she had no comparable education, she clearly had that kind of intuitive
intelligence that can learn in amazing ways, even given a little bit of resource. So these
Trappists, and you will remember Brother Consulio from California, the Trappist monk who joined
us for a while in Rome. He's a great example of a Trappist who's been able to bring his
musical talent out to the service of our community of Mount Irenaeus. But that was a big thing
for her. And I also certainly among the friars, there were friars with different talents,
wisdom insight after the death of Francis, that were very close to her and remain close
with her right through to her death. And I think she learned, I don't think I know, she
learned from church leaders like Cardinal Hugolino, and who then becomes Pope Gregory
the Ninth. She doesn't just, you know, sort of allow them to come in and speak and then
say, oh, well, you know, they'll do their thing, we'll do ours. She hears, she listens,
she knows what the concerns are. So she allows herself, I think, and the bishops of Assisi,
it's a little confusing because for the whole time of life of Francis and Claire, the bishop
was called Guido. So sometimes we're talking Guido one, Guido two, but she allowed herself
to be schooled.
How did Claire in her time, where like you said, a very patriarchal society, how did
she manage relationships with diverse officials among the friars and then within the church
as well, as you've been mentioning?
Well, I think this is just a bit of a postscript to that last response, Stephen. And I think
part of the way she was able to do that is she is one of those people who has a very
particular talent for adjusting to the person, the culture, the frameworks for discussion
of the person she is with. That is not a talent that is equally distributed in the human race.
There's some people who it's like, you know, it's their way or the highway or they only
have one way of looking at an issue. Claire, and this is something here again, I don't,
you can learn it, but I think it's also innate in certain people. So she understood the patterns
and the protocols and the courtesies of the nobility. So if a cardinal comes calling at
San Damiano, he will be received as a noble guest. She also understood the plight and
the worries of the servants in the house. You know, she clearly knew them. She was attentive
to what was going among the poor in Assisi. We have the stories of her sending food to
the poor through her servants. So she clearly had that ability. And the person in our world
that also manifests that today is Pope Francis. I heard a wonderful statement yesterday by
Gerardo Cano, a Vatican journalist, who said, Pope Francis is not saying anything different
in principle about the economy, the greed of the ultra-rich, the danger to the environment.
He said Benedict said it. John Paul II said it. But Francis uses language ordinary people
relate to. And now people are like, did you hear what the Pope said? Well, guess what?
It's been said for 25 years. But that's how he disrupts things, because he will use a
turn of phrase that you're like, Pope Francis said that, you know. He doesn't speak Vaticanese.
He speaks the language of people. And so I think he's a good example in our time of someone
with his vast Jesuit education, who can relate to the highest levels of authority, but sit
with a farmer or a sick child, you know, or a struggling parent and get right in there
with them.
Nat. Yeah. Yeah. That notion of authority is very interesting because Claire herself
seemed like she was certainly radical in her own way, in her own spiritual journey, and
a bit of a disruptor as well. And yet she had a respect for authority as well. She had
a respect for institutions, which not to project too much on our own culture today, but we're
navigating a time where people have an intense distrust, and sometimes for good reason. But
there's this really intense and growing distrust of our institutions to the point that to be
radical or a disruptor, it becomes less humble, less compassionate, more certain. Do you know
where I'm going with that kind of?
Claire. Yes. I think you hit on a really important cultural dilemma for us, Stephen, that mistrust
of institutions, I think, may be one of the most insidious problems that is going to either,
if we don't find a way to bring in a corrective, is going to really cripple us as a democracy.
As a younger person working in diocesan administration, I was blessed to work with a couple of really
superb new... This was a new thing in the church to have people pay attention to organizational
design, organizational planning, how to evaluate and assess whether the organization was a
parish council, which was a new thing post-Vanikin, or a diocese, or a hospital or college. And
so in those years, I learned to think about the power of institutions, but also to think
about what does it take to maintain an institution that is worthy of trust? And if you're doing
that job, you never sleep. So the more complex the institution, the more you've got to have
eyes on a lot of different things. And I don't think we talk about them. We say, oh yeah,
the institutions, impoverished and oppressed. Tell me about this. Tell me about the Catholic
hospitals that literally give millions in unrefunded care every year in their emergency
room because the sister sponsors or the Catholic sponsors have made that a condition of budgeting
in that hospital. That is not an institution that's doing harm. Now there may be parts
of the institution, maybe there are certain workers not getting compensated as they should,
or maybe over here there's a department where there's a lot of toxic stuff going on. But
the point is, if you give up all institutional power, you reduce your work to one by one
by one by one. I'm not saying that's bad. I'm just saying in a culture as complex as
that of the United States of America, you need both. And sadly, I think in the excitement
of the late 60s and 70s when we were being liberated from oppressive institutions, a
lot of this coming from liberation theology in Latin America, which got transposed sometimes
uncritically to the United States, we pulled back from dedicating ourselves to the good
of institutions and the church is paying a price for that now.
Yeah. And I'd be curious too to learn from you about perhaps some instances where Claire
rejects or resists accepting directions from authorities. And then also times when she
accepts policies, practices that are requested or acquired by church officials because she
had a very brilliant dance with all of these authorities, correct?
Exactly. That's a...dance is a good word to describe it. The first authority she went
mano a mano with was Frances. Remember, she was undertaking a really vigorous fast and
it was clearly endangering her health. And Frances must have come to ask her to give
this up. I'm sure the sisters were frantic and probably asked him to intervene. She did
not listen and he went and brought the bishop. I mean, you don't bring the bishop into a
monastery for that conversation lightly. And it says to me that to that point, she had
refused the advice. And he was saying, what am I going to do? You know? And it's even
one of the mysteries of who she was that she could be so here with herself that even Frances
couldn't reach her at times. So that's the first. Second, and there was another instance
where he brought five young women to the monastery after he'd come back from preaching in certain
towns. And there was one young lady, she said to him right from the get-go, this is not
going to work. He said, oh, lovely family. The pastor thinks she's great, you know, whatever.
So she agrees to give it a try, but she was right. He was wrong. This young woman didn't
last very long. So she maintained her own judgment. The really big and lengthy contest
she had was with Cardinal Hugolino, who was appointed to serve as a kind of ombudsa or
liaison between the Coria and Rome and all these new communities of women. Let it be
said first, Hugolino admired her, had enormous affection, was so impressed. But his job was
get them all into shape. Here's the rule you give them. Here are the directions they have
to follow. They want our approval. This is what you do. You don't do this. You don't
get our approval. And in fact, we can close that monastery. We can tell a bishop, you
go in there, tell those ladies to go home, take the keys, lock the door. And it was done
in certain places. So with Hugolino, she had someone who wanted her to succeed, but was
convinced she could only succeed if she accepted this is what Rome is asking you to do. So
what we see in her interactions with him during the lifetime of Francis and after the lifetime
of Francis is a protracted debate about can they truly live without any property? Because
he, as any church official, any male of the time, if a woman did not have the title in
marriage or the title through being a daughter or sister to a powerful brother, she had to
have property of some sort not to starve. And if women went into monasteries, they took
their endowments with them. And then these rich families kept giving to monasteries so
the women were kept up. Clara's like, none of that. And they're saying, this will not
work. And she's saying, watch me. And so poor Hugolino, I mean, I do feel sorry for him.
You know, it's like, yes, to keep going back and saying to the pope, mission not accomplished.
He's holding out. And then finally, it's when Agnes in Prague, the very wealthy woman comes
and has all of these, oh my God, really property rights titles. And she wants to follow this
way. Oh, poor, now he's the pope. And he's insisting that Agnes follow and Claire writes
that famous line, what you hold may you always hold, no matter what anyone tells you do not
abandon and of course, it took us years to figure out the anyone was the pope.
Yes, that's correct.
Oh, you know who I'm talking about? Well, Agnes of course had the great advantage that
her brother was a king. And her brother appealed on her behalf to the pope. So there's a political
triangle there that worked on their behalf. Had that not been the case, I don't think
Agnes could have held out.
That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. You just brought up several situations there where Claire's
engaged in this dance. You know, she has resolve, but also respect. She has ambition, but also
humility. She like you said, watch me like she knows what she wants. And yet she does
it in such a she does it in such a humble way.
And I get an answer the second part, are there times when she accepts a regulation that would
not be to her liking? So I'll give you an actual example. Claire did not write out her
rule of life until she was close to death. So five years before her death, she begins
that work. In the meantime, from the year 1217, Frances is still alive. She's being
given rules first by Hugolino and other directors from the papacy. And that a rule from Pope
Innocent the fourth, which is the last to come from Rome to her. And they have very,
very strict instructions for the women on everything. When they fast, what they wear,
but the big one is the enclosure, how they are in these enclosed monasteries, locks and
keys for the main door. Always, you know, two sisters at the entrance, no men entering
unless they have a companion with them like workmen or friars. And you're like, Oh my
God. Now I would have to say that's the kind of bad law that arises from crises. Yes, something,
there's something being corrected here, but it's over correcting. So I'll give you this
example when in one of the final rules, the rule of Innocent the fourth, they talk about,
when you leave the monastery, okay, this is the way that is described. And it's described
as, as soon as a woman enters and becomes a novice. Once they have observed this rule,
they may never be granted any permission to leave this enclosure unless perhaps they are
transferred to another place. So you only leave here if you go to another monastery
or to reform a monastery. And they can at times be transferred for pot is reasons, but
as a general rule, only with permission of the general that means of the friars. However,
it is fitting that when they die, both the enclosed as well as the serving sisters are
buried there. So you never leave now, when you get to that statement for clear, she says,
I love this cause it starts with how your hair is to be cut. After her hair has been
cut all round and her secular clothes set aside, she is allowed to have three tunics
and a mantle. And thereafter, she may not go outside the monastery, except listen to
this for a useful, reasonable, evident and justifiable purpose. That's a very different
way to look at what allows me to leave this enclosure. Now today you will find many Clarion
monasteries. There's a spectrum. Those who stay with that older, you don't go, it's super
sacred. It's mysterious. You have grills and locks and the nuns never see you face to face.
There's some time a black curtain at the entrance. And you have other monasteries that are saying
this is useful. This is evident. It is useful for us to go to a workshop on the teachings
of St. Bonaventure. So, but we will get permission from the bishop and we will go to the workshop.
So they don't just fly around. First of all, they can't afford to, but players today in
certain monasteries will exercise a kind of prudent judgment of things that they can do
to keep their lives healthy and on track. So Claire gave a lot more leeway and credit
to the judgment of her successors.
What do you think we can learn today about her own approach, critique, respect, the whole,
you know, everything that Claire embodied with authority. What can we learn from Clarion
leadership today? What could that look like? How could it help bring healing today?
For me, the biggest lesson in her lifetime of interactions with authorities, whether
it was priors or church leaders, is that she valued the primacy of being in relationship
as a Christian sister to these brothers. So it begins with the earliest brothers. She's
the first woman. But the rapport, and of course, you can tell from the legislation of the times,
and it's not something we should sniff at. It was probably pretty prudent that there's
a lot of effort to make sure that if you've got a group of women attached to an order
or a movement led by men, you've got to have some boundary lines clearly marked out. And
so she begins in this awkward position of there aren't other women, they don't have
a monastery and a convent waiting. So she is immediately taken to live with Benedictines.
She doesn't stay there very long. She then goes on to stay with a group of penitent women
living up on a hillside outside of Assisi. There again, they're not being led by the
friars or tutored by the friars. But she's learning what are the structures. She takes
from the Benedictines a lot of wisdom. You know, the chapter where every sister, whether
she's just come in a day ago or she's been there for 80 years, speaks. Where work is
assigned, you know, so everybody knows, oh, you've got the kitchen, I get the latrines,
you know, but we'll switch next week, you know, that sort of thing. So I think that
she learned from these different experiences, how to negotiate what to accept and what not
to accept. And I think that she also, because of that primacy of relationship, she tries
to conduct her disagreements in a way that they don't end in bitterness. It's not win-lose.
It's can we keep finding a way? I think that's an underlying theme because we don't see the
church authorities invoking negative sanctions against her, as you would against someone
who is simply being, you know, resistant and disobedient and disruptive. No, she's valued.
So they want her to do well. And I think the fact that she always manages to get that eye
of the needle threaded is a sign that they do respect and have a certain affection, even
if at times it's grudging.
So I wanted to take some time with something Sister Margaret just said about this animating
force really to St. Clair's approach to leadership. And the phrase Sister Margaret used was primacy
of relationship. It made me think back to my first full-time job, one of my first full-time
jobs. And this was in sports information at Grace College in Winona Lake, Indiana, my
alma mater. And I had a wonderful boss and athletic director named Chad Briscoe. And
he would emphasize something similar, that everything we did as an athletic department
had to be about serving others and building relationships. So whether that was writing
a game story or improving the website or doing radio for a game, it was never about what
we were doing. And we were doing some innovative things in sports information at that time.
But it was about the service that we could provide. It was about the parents on the other
side of the country now being able to tune into the radio stream to hear the game their
child was playing in. Or the student athlete who had worked hard in their sport and had
to earn an accolade or an award. And now we were able to celebrate them via storytelling
and media to help that person to feel special and seen. And I have come back to this relational
approach to work and to the world again and again throughout my life. And my work as a
storyteller and editor and as a high school golf coach as well, I know that there will
be hard decisions, tough conversations, conflict, challenges. And I found that it's easy when
that pressure is kind of turned up to internalize or get tunnel vision or become self-focused
or even I admit self-absorb. But I've learned that there's something really isolating and
anxiety inducing about this, about going into a silo. Yes, of course I want this podcast
or the books I've written to be successful, whatever successful means, right? And yes,
of course I want the teams that I coach to experience the thrill of victory. But I have
to remember that in this pursuit of Christ-like excellence, that was another phrase that Coach
Briscoe used, that it is about service and helping others along the way. Or in the case
of coaching, helping my players to learn about life's important values through the game of
golf, just as Coach Briscoe helped us learn in sports information. So I'm reminded of
the passage in Matthew 20 where we're told that Jesus came not to be served, but to serve.
And I'm just curious, you know, what does primacy of relationship look like to you in
your day-to-day life? And how might this kind of leadership take form in situations where
there may be conflict or tension? And lastly, what do you find challenging or inspiring
about primacy of relationship as an approach to life and leadership?
So I invite you to reflect upon those questions. Maybe hit pause on whatever service you're
listening to this on. And then we can go back to the interview.
Yeah, I like what you said there, the primacy of relationship, almost as her, would you
say that that was her almost mode of being as a leader?
Yeah. And I think as a leader, it's not always easy. I mean, in your life as a leader, you're
going to make many, many hard calls. One of the things that I think a good leader, and
especially a good Franciscan leader does is think as deeply as possible about how do I
make that call and still have a relationship. And let's say the call is I'm telling the
person your job is over. Thank you for your service, but this is not working out. Can
I do that in such a way that I can bump into that person in the grocery store a month from
now and we say, hello, glad to see you. How are you doing? Doesn't always work out because
the other person has to have some of that reciprocity.
I also think sometimes you have to be willing to switch channels as a leader of when am
I sitting in my leader chair with this person and when am I entering into the community?
So example would be college president, the faculty senate has just voted down something
I think is really important. I'm mad as hops. Senate president comes in, I say, come on,
you know that, well, yes, sister, but we couldn't get the most, you know, on and on. So we argue
and I say, I'm not done, I'm bringing it back. 30 minutes later, where am I? The reception
for retiring faculty. So now I walk in and I'm, hey, congratulations, this is a lovely
party, congratulations to the retirees. So you learn, you know, I could stay away and
show how mad I am. But if I show up and this is not about our work on the legislation I
proposed, this is about honoring our colleagues. What a great thing to be doing today. But
that's not easy and you don't always have the spiritual or psychic energy to do it.
Yeah, it takes a lot of humility, right? To be able to like some would describe it as
compartmentalization, but I think it's way spiritually deeper than that in the sense
that like you're, you're letting go, you have the humility to let go of your own agenda.
This thing that didn't go the way you wanted it to go. Absolutely. And you dare to give,
to give of yourself to this primacy of relationship. That's right. You know, like let's lift others
up. That's what today is about, is about lifting others up. And Steven, it's in a time of people
who are very cynical about this sort of thing. Somebody said, what a phony, my God, she was
just in the early in basing. But you know, it's like, that's a, that's the risk you run.
And I think if you are consistently trying to manage the leadership functions, which
differ every hour, one moment you're called upon to be a decision maker, the next year
standing in a funeral home, the next year at a meeting with, you know, all the presidents
of your County, you have to keep moving with different speeds and with different sets of
rules. So having some of that inner flexibility is a big gift and you can learn it from others
as well. And it's sadly the thing that is lacking in American politics today.
Absolutely. And that, that brings me to my next question is, you know, sticking with
Clarion leadership and the culture that she helped to facilitate at the San Damiano, the
monastery there. I mean, it was very democratic in a lot of ways, correct? Where every voice
is heard, no matter your social status in this, you know, we keep coming back to it,
this primacy of relationship. That's what was most important. Like status, status goes
out, like, let me hear your voice. Talk about the culture she helped create there and what
makes it unique because would you say democratic is the right word?
I think we could say proto democratic and we need to be careful because of course, right
now we live a very fraught version of that, but I would say she and Francis are part of
a shift in consciousness in Europe, in Western Europe about the difference between a hierarchical
society where only the wealthy, the landed, the royal have prerogatives. And if you're
at the bottom of that pyramid, you just hope to die in your bed and maybe get to purgatory.
I mean, heaven was even considered a big stretch. So you had very little agency and no political
power. What is happening is that is coming into question and it's coming into question,
a variety of forces are making that happen. But one of the things is the rising importance
of trade and finance and commerce. And as certain men and some women start to specialize as
bankers, as money lenders, as people who run a business, whether that business is the making
of fine silks or brewing or leatherworks or ironworks, those persons start to achieve
a status that is not based on where they were born or their family name. It's based on they
provide a service without which we can't reorganize in this area. We need all of these services.
And so and then they learn from the Benedictines. I mean, this idea that you bring everybody
together, you listen to everybody, even the youngest is very rash. It's very new. But
the Benedictines have this wisdom that you may not get the decision you want right away,
but you stay at it until there's been enough discussion, enough thought, enough prayer
that eventually 99% of the time you will get harmony. And so I think we're not always very
good about acknowledging how much we've learned from our predecessors, the Benedictines, and
brought it over into the Franciscan movement. But there's an enormous wisdom there. And
the way that the Benedictines have survived longer than we have.
Can you go deeper into that notion of listening to everybody as a core component of leadership
or Clarion leadership in this context?
I think in Claire's case and in Francis in the beginning, listening to everybody wasn't
hard. Everybody was right there. You rang the bell, everybody showed up, you talk. So
in one sense, the call to give everybody a chance to be heard was also supported by size
and architecture. What happens when now you have, let's say on the side of Francis, hundreds,
thousands of men, men who have joined the Franciscan Brotherhood and never laid eyes
on him. You have to start calling people together periodically with instructions. We will come
together at Pentecost and we will meet down in Assisi and we will build little straw huts
and we will gather there. So in Claire's case, it never changes. It's always just the women
under the roof with her. Now other monasteries are following her example, but they don't
live slavishly because they're different women in different places. So you have a diversity
even with the early Claire monasteries. And with Francis, the diversity arises because
distance, different cultures, the needs of the friars change. The ones who were up in
Germany are coming back and saying, we can't get through another German winter unless we
can have sandals and socks and a warmer blanket. So the structuring to hear others. And I would
say that, isn't it very interesting that just a few weeks ago, we were all just tied up
in knots over will everyone who wants to vote vote and will their vote be counted? Unthinkable
that we should even have a worry. Unthinkable that we should have a worry. But when that
trust starts to erode, we really better set up. And let's take Claire and Francis as good
models that you never give up on providing the space for that voice. It's critical.
That's beautiful. And I know we're coming up on the hour here. Anything I left out or
anything else you would like to add, particularly as it pertains to what you just said about,
here's this moment that we're all in right now. There is this mistrust of institutions.
It feels like chaos a lot of times. However, if I'm hearing you correctly, I mean, you
I love the phrase you just used that creating the structure to hear others. Yes. That's
very difficult to do. Steven, it is. But what I would say is that I am very impressed by
the fact that in these last few weeks, what have submerged and you hear it in different
media are precisely what I just talked about structures being created by people who want
to hear each other across a great divide. And I think that may be one of the things
we're called to do in the next decade is to be very intentional about finding ways that
we especially those of us who carry the name Franciscan, is there a conversation circle?
Is there a church group? Is there the Association of Women Vote, the League of Women Voters?
Is there somewhere within reach of who I am, where I am, where I work, a place where people
are working? Because you don't just come into a room and do this. You need skill. You need
facilitation. You need a constant self critique in order to catch yourself when you shut down
when the other person starts instead of keeping that door open. But there are people specializing
in this work. And I think this is their hour and we need to look for them or help create
them, mentor people who are willing. And we do have organizations at regional and national
levels where I think we can plug in and say, we can't do everything, but you know, it's
that whole notion of you think globally, but you act locally. And so trying in our own
locales to find ways to have those conversations.
Yeah. Yeah. One of my favorite things about the Franciscan tradition is all throughout
the stories of Francis, which of course goes back to how he was following Christ, like
you said, but it's just radically affirming the other time and time again, to the point
where it becomes so uncomfortable. And you're like, I'm letting, I'm letting go of, you
know, every preconceived notion I had here. I'm letting go like Christ is in this person.
And therefore there's something to learn. Even if I vehemently disagree on the surface.
I have a cousin who belongs to a Methodist congregation that's doing a lot of work in
this area, but we were talking about how they have dealt with the various exclusions that
we experience, LGBTQ persons, excluding people of a certain perhaps political persuasion
or in their case, you know, the kind of Christian nationalist evangelicals. And she said, our
pastor says over and over, you will never meet a person for whom Jesus did not die.
That stops me cold. Yeah. If I can look and say, Oh my God, Jesus died for you as much
as for me, I better shut up and listen. You know? Yeah. Why does that, why does that move
you so much? It's a really beautiful notion. Because it flips the whole way of thinking
about that other person to what does Jesus think of this person? What does Jesus want?
Of course, I think Jesus wants what I want. But if I can let go of that for a minute and
just say, but I just met this person and Jesus has been loving him or her since birth and
loving them through life. And so I better figure out how to show respect for that.
Yeah. It's such a powerful moment in the conversation, isn't it? And I would consider, you know,
maybe pausing for a second and really think about what Sister Margaret just said. What
rises up within you as you hold her words and focus your gaze upon them, as you consider
her words, as you contemplate her words. I'd like to read this famous passage from Conjectures
of a Guilty Bystander by Thomas Merton about his mystical moment at the corner of Forth
and Walnut in downtown Louisville, where he felt mysteriously connected to all these passers
by who he did not even know. And perhaps whether you've heard this or not, maybe it can become
new to both of us as we meditate upon this passage and in meditating upon it to allow
Sister Margaret's words to plant themselves deeper than our own hearts. So Merton writes,
and again, he's writing about all these people walking by him, all these people he's observing
in the middle of this bustling downtown. And Merton says, then it was as if I suddenly
saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor
desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one
is in God's eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only
we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred,
no more cruelty, no more greed. I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall
down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and understood by a
peculiar gift. Merton goes on, at the center of our being is a point of nothingness, which
is untouched by sin and by illusion. It's a point of pure truth, a point or spark, which
belongs entirely to God, which is never at our disposal from which God disposes of our
lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our
own will. This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us.
Merton continues, it is like a pure diamond blazing with the invisible light of heaven.
It is in every body. And if we could see it, we would see these billions of points of light
coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty
of life vanish completely. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given, but the
gate of heaven is everywhere.
I think, Stephen, that one of the things that we don't have much opportunity to do today
is to be in groups or settings, church, country, you know, ethnic group, although some ethnic
groups and our Black Americans are doing a lot more of this, where we come together to
celebrate what we hold together as sacred. And that is the reason we should go to the
trouble of trying to be in the same room and trying to find a united way forward. And so
I do think that we need those celebrations. I talked to friends who were at the Eucharistic
Congress, for example, and they went not necessarily thinking it was going to be a real good time.
As it turns out, they were the only religious women not wearing a habit. And that became
the point of encounter. People coming up and saying, can I talk to you? What is it like
for you? I mean, this is other religious in habit who have always assumed like, oh, shame
on them, you know, they're not wearing a holy habit. And Sister said to me, it was a real
conversion experience because we care about the same things and we're expressing it differently,
but we could talk it out together. And so those are the moments where they could have
those conversations because there are three days in this center and walking back and forth
and going to Eucharist together and to different devotions. But you have to be willing to cross
over and place yourself there too.
Yeah. Yeah. And it does remind me of some of what some of Pope Francis's writings of,
you know, this culture of encounter he's encouraging. I know that's big in Franciscanism.
Exactly.
Like be humble enough to enter into this encounter is messy and chaotic as it may be.
Yes. Yes.
And Claire did that. I mean,
she did. But I also think we want to be careful. There's a bit of a romanticizing of chaos
theory in our talks. And I'm talking about, you know, the chaos theory that comes from
the sciences. And there was a lot of writing and talking about that about a decade ago
among religious. And the truth of the matter is this is a very tough time for religious
congregations who are experiencing serious decline, trying to think through, but doing
it and doing it with a lot of assistance and smarts how to work through the next decade
of existence. And yet it's very possible sometimes when people are feeling stressed and they
don't have good answers to say, well, we've got to embrace the chaos. And I'm like, if
I'm 90 years old and I just need to know, I'll have a roof over my head and I'll get
my medicines every day. Don't tell me to love chaos. I need some assurances, you know, that
of basic human safety, security, they're real primal questions we have to pay attention
to.
That's a great point. I'm glad you brought that up here toward the end is that, you know,
I mean, that primacy of relationship, that creating a structure to hear others, it almost
contains, it almost either eliminates the chaos or contains it because you're affirming
each other.
Right. Yeah, right. And I think, you know, there's a certain level of chaos in our society
and our world and our church. You can't avoid it. And avoiding it leads to that kind of
fundamentalism, like, you know, this is the only way. But I also think we can play with
it in a way that is not helpful, especially to certain personalities who just become more
defensive and withdrawn.
Yes, absolutely. Well, this has been so great, Sister Margaret, I want to be respectful of
your time. Can I ask you one more question and then I'll let you go?
Okay, why not?
So yeah, I was just wondering, I mean, you're a world renowned scholar on St. Clair and
what impact is she having on your life today at this spiritual part of your own journey?
What impact is she having?
Well, one of the things is, you know, I've had a lot of health issues lately. And she
in her role, as Francis and his, is so precise about caring for the sick. And you look back
and you think, why did they spend so much ink on it? You know, I mean, yeah, somebody's
sick, you do. Because in a big monastic setting, the care for the sick was assumed. There was
a place the sick went, there was a brother or sister infirmary, there was a nerve garden,
there was somebody who knew medicinal arts. But if your life is wandering, being on the
road preaching, no fixed abode, or in the case of the sisters, just this one little
place with its little garden, and you become sick, what are our options? And both of them
go to real trouble to say how the sick are to be cared for, that they're given things,
extra things, whether it's clothing or food or health. And so I have experienced that.
I've experienced that now for almost a decade, of sisters who've been so generous to help
meet my needs that I couldn't have met without their assistance. Really, really humbling.
I would say the other is that I have had years of experience working with the different branches
of the Franciscan Brothers. And I'm a little more distanced from that now that I'm no longer
in physically at St. Paul and Adventure. But it's really important for me to keep those
relationships alive and to keep working together to be a model in the church of men and women
who follow a shared path. So I think those would be two.
Yeah. Well, you certainly are an incredible model of Franciscan spirituality, not only
in your writing, but in how you live and lead the way in that regard. So thank you for your
time, Sister Margaret.
But you catch me on a good day, Stephen, every now and then. Every now and then. But thank
you very much, Stephen. This was a great conversation.
Let's catch each other on a bad day. We'll really have some fun.
Ooh, yes.
Well, thanks for coming on Off the Page, Sister Margaret.
Okay. Good to be with you, Stephen. Take care. God bless. Bye-bye.
Once again, that was Sister Margaret Carney. Sister Margaret's biography on St. Clair,
Light of Assisi, is available in print, ebook, and audiobook. And if you're interested in
donating to our Rebuild God's Church initiative to help us create more content like this,
you can visit franciscanmedia.org slash rebuilding hyphen gods hyphen church. It's truly an honor
and it's a joy to hopefully create content that accompanies you on your spiritual journey.
So thank you for your support. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you to Sister Margaret. And
final thank you to Father Cyprian Concilio for providing the music for this episode.
This is Stephen Copeland signing off. Peace and all good.