Word: nuns
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Nun's Story...
Reader G. H. Lindsey's letter [Oct. il referring to The Nun's Story displays in a very few words the prejudice, bigotry and intolerance that he attributes to the cloister. He is certainly guilty of presumption in professing to "know" in what kind of world God meant Gabrielle Van der Mai to live. I think she might be one of the first to object to his interpretation of her decision...
...This I Cannot Do, O Lord." Labeled an "intellectual snob" by a fellow nun at the School of Tropical Medicines, Gabrielle was asked by her Mother Superior: "Would you, Sister Luke, be big enough, tall enough, to fail your examinations to show humility?" Gabrielle prayed for guidance, but concluded with her own answer: "This I cannot do, O Lord." She graduated fourth in a class of 80. The daughter of a doctor, Gabrielle had fervently hoped to be sent to the Belgian Congo as a missionary nurse. She was assigned instead to an insane asylum where 100 overworked nuns cared...
After taking her final vows in 1932, Gabrielle's wish was answered at last; she was sent to the Congo. The next seven years of selfless, 16-hour-a-day dedication to the health of the natives gives The Nun's Story the warm glow of Albert Schweitzer's "reverence for life," and probably brought Gabrielle close to peace of mind. But once, when she learned that three men were caught in quicksand and rushed out of the convent in a vain at tempt at rescue, she was rewarded with a dressing-down that probed deep into...
...Thus The Nun's Story is the story of a failure. As such it tells-far more convincingly than many a spiritual success story-the tremendous, unsuspected battles of the soul that are fought behind cloister walls. As for Gabrielle Van der Mal (a pseudonym), she came to the U.S. in 1951 with Author Hulme, under whom she had served in a U.N. refugee mission. The ex-nun has since become nursing supervisor of a large Los Angeles hospital and last month she became an American citizen. If she has any more to say it is probably what...