My sister Philomene Tiernan entered the convent in February 1957.
We said goodbye to Phil in the parlour of Rose Bay Convent in Sydney. We stood silent as the Mistress of Novices escorted Phil from the room carrying her single suitcase. It held a prescribed contents of modest skirts, blouses and flat shoes. Mum, Dad, my two brothers and I made our way through the heavy front doors back to our car. How we missed our sister as we drove through the starless night to Brisbane.
Phil had entered the Society of the Sacred Heart, a semi-enclosed order. Never again would she visit home. A heaviness descended on our household. We sent lots of letters, and received sanitised missives from Phil. She must have been lonely too. At Easter we were permitted to visit. Again we packed into our early model Holden and headed down the New England Highway. We were allowed two hours with Phil on Easter Sunday afternoon, and after a meeting with the Mistress of Novices and a formal afternoon tea we escaped into the grounds, to hold Phil’s hand, to look at photos.
In 1957 it was quite usual for teenagers in Catholic families to join religious orders. By the early 1960s my brothers and I could count a sister and seven first cousins as nuns and priests. Sunday drives and family holidays often included visits to seminaries and novitiates.
Older cousins whom I’d admired from afar, and those nearer my age I’d played with and been teased by, now had a very different presence. Gone were unruly red curls, sleeveless dresses, bare legs and gravel-rashed knees. Transformed into holy nuns, my female cousins had disappeared beneath thick full length black or brown gowns, starched caps and floating veils, and the boys into priestly black soutanes.
Mum and Dad were very proud of Phil, but the authority of the church and the religious order overarched that of the family, and ‘detachment from earthly things’ included emotional distancing from those closest to her.
Six months after entering, Phil received the habit. She stood before the altar in the Rose Bay chapel in full bridal dress but without makeup. The brides processed out of the chapel and returned in nuns’ habits with white veils. Mum wept silently beside me and I imagined she was thinking of Phil’s lush brown curls cut quickly and carelessly discarded on the polished parquet floor. I held Mum’s hand. My sixteen-year-old brother stared blankly ahead. But Phil glowed, happy to have been accepted as a novice, the beginning of a new life as a nun.
Family habits changed too. For the next decade, Mum and Dad’s focus shifted from planning a celebration of Christmas or birthdays at home to arranging holidays around visits to Phil.
After three years away, Phil returned to teach at Stuartholme in Brisbane. I was in Year 12. The traditional black habit, with its snowy-white frilled wimple encircling her face, enhanced Phil’s warm smile. We were allowed a sisterly walk once a week. I was about to go into the outside world, and Phil’s heart was firmly secluded behind the tall closed doors of the cloister.
During the 1960s, great change took place. John XXIII exhorted the church to let in some air, and the Religious of the Sacred Heart breathed afresh. The strict rules of enclosure softened, and Phil was able to eat with us at family picnics in the convent grounds. In 1967 the rule restricted Phil from attending my wedding, but allowed her to accompany us in the bridal car from the convent at St Lucia to Stuartholme in Toowong. Phil now wore a simplified white habit, and soon the nuns left the habit behind to dress in modest sensible civvies.
Phil embraced the changes with enthusiasm. In the following years she re-entered the family, often staying in our homes, central to our marking of joyful and sorrow-filled moments. She joined us for many holidays. Phil never forgot a birthday, the phone was her lifeline to family and friends.
Phil’s ministry also expanded with the widening horizons initiated by Vatican II and her readings of liberation and feminist theologies. She studied throughout her life, and one of the family’s happiest memories is of the weekend we attended her graduation from Macquarie University in 1976. No longer did we meet formally in a convent parlour. My father had suffered a stroke and had limited mobility, so we all gathered for dinner in my parents’ suite, an informal evening, parents, brothers and sister and lots of nieces and nephews. Phil had returned to the intimacy of family life.
‘I want to throw open the windows of the church so that we can see out and the people can see in’, said Pope John XXIII.
Phil died suddenly on Flight M17 in July 2014, and former students, colleagues and friends from all walks of life joined the religious sisters and family to celebrate this generous and loving woman who helped open those windows.
