Columnist Susan Snyder: Nuns gain opinionated habits

Friday, June 7, 2002 | 3:01 a.m.

It's amazing what you can learn about the world from someone who lives in a monastery.

In Indiana.

The Carmelites of Indianapolis, an order of cloistered nuns, have developed knowledge and views on everything from the Middle East to Yucca Mountain to pedophilia in their own church.

Forget Sally Field and Spartan digs. These nuns have doctorates, The New Yorker, the Internet and a website: praythenews.com.

Their daily prayers encompass the world's news, which they read in newspapers, magazines and on the Web. True understanding, they say, comes through reading, contemplation and prayer.

"In this, you make the world so much better," Sister Terese Boersig said. "Our actions, our thoughts -- all of that affects the world around us, whether it's positive or negative."

Sister Boersig, 69, listens to National Public Radio all day and can tell you about The New Yorker's latest cartoons. She's among the six Carmelites who write weekly commentaries and post them on the website. Last week's topic was the erosion of trust. An excerpt from Sister Boersig's comments:

"Personally, we have been duped by institutions: Enron, investment companies such as Merrill Lynch who promoted stocks they knew were worthless, our church who under the guise of secrecy protected pedophiles, our government who cries out righteously against terrorism as it quietly revokes environmental gains made in the past. I am not so worried by the bio-terrorists in Iraq as the bio-terrorists in Washington, D.C.!"

Whoa, Sister. Did she dump her church's hierarchy and Enron executives in the same basket? You betcha. She says an "old boys' club" has for too long turned a blind eye to reprehensible behavior.

"You have to be honest," Sister Boersig said during a telephone conversation Thursday. "We love the church. But we can't stand behind what is done. We can't cover up. If you don't call (the church) to task, you're not doing it a favor."

Abuse allegations aren't the only crisis her church faces. The Carmelites aren't getting any younger, and others aren't joining religious orders as they used to. So they're inviting single women ages 25 to 45 to stay in the Carmelite monastery for a week to experience the lifestyle.

"It's sort of like going into the Peace Corps," Sister Boersig said. "We are privileged in that we really set up everything around the values of prayer and community. But it's difficult to live."

(And car payments, frustrating urban commutes, 60-hour work weeks and mountains of credit card debt are easier?)

Anyway, we got back talking news -- specifically, Yucca Mountain's nuclear waste repository.

"East of the Mississippi, it wasn't that publicized," Sister Ruth Ann Boyle said. "I am very much opposed to it. The geology of it, in an earthquake zone and the volcanic issue -- this is very troublesome to me. Transporting it within a half-mile of 52 million Americans is also troublesome to me."

But by now we must realize our concern comes too late. The time for songs and placards is decades past. We pack our lives with so much and gain so little.

"We don't look at the big picture," Sister Boersig said. "We're myopic."