Sister Kay. (Video Review).

What to say about "Sister Kay"? When I noted that this video was a production of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), my antennae went up. The NFB has often been perceived as a markedly secular institution, inimical to Christianity and its core values; yet here we have a laudatory biography of a Catholic nun. One has to wonder--what's the angle?

Sister Katherine (Kay) Macdonald, born in 1931, was a gifted student at the Sisters of Sion's high school in Saskatoon, SK. She joined the order in her teens and became principal of her alma mater in 1959. Thereafter her rise within the order was meteoric--Canadian Superior, member of the governing council of Sion in Rome, finally president of the International Union of Superiors General. Her vocation survived (perhaps even triumphed over) the chaos experienced by many religious following Vatican II; the Sisters of Sion in Canada doffed their habit and abandoned adherence to the strict rule of their order.

The Sisters of Sion were founded in Strasbourg, France, in the mid-nineteenth century by two priests, Theodore and Alphonse Ratisbon, converts from Judaism. Until the 1960s, the main thrust of the order, aside from their work in education, was to work with Jews and pray for their conversion. In the first shot, Sister speaks of her mission to transform the Church's attitude to the Jews. Obviously, she had some work to do in her own order first. And then the angle is revealed. Voice-overs quote from Pope Innocent III in 1215, "The blood of Jesus is on the Jewish people. The inherited guilt of the Jews follows them...." Next there is a comment that the Roman Catholic Church's contempt for the Jews ebbed and flowed over the centuries as a 'dark blemish' which reached a climax in the Shoah. More familiar canards are now declaimed: the Church, under Pope Pius XII stayed silent amidst the slaughter, and the Nazis' success in carrying it out was "facilitated by traditional Christian teaching."

Having realised the full horror of the Holocaust and being troubled by the order's involvement in a sensational French custody case which resulted in the "forced conversion" of two Jewish war orphans, Sister Kay came to see her community's attitude as 'unhealthy'. In the course of the movie, in reference to the Holocaust, she says, "I do not consider myself personally guilty, but I consider myself responsible within my church.... We were on the wrong side." She and, through her, the Order made a complete turnaround. There were to be no more attempts at conversion; Judaism was to be recognised as a way to God on its own merits, a religion of equal value with Christianity. (Later, Sister extended this attitude to other major world religions when she returned to Canada to serve on an interfaith council).

The reversal of the conversion of Jews policy was set out in the revised constitution of the order, which she was shocked to find was not immediately accepted by the Vatican. In the light of Pope John Paul II's personal history of friendship with Jews in Poland and of his ceaseless attempts to offer gestures of apology towards them for any discrimination ever practised by Christians, one has to wonder why he took four years to approve the new constitution of the Sisters of Sion. The movie's narrator leaves us in no doubt that Sister "underestimated the Vatican's male-dominated bureaucracy", those people who "didn't understand what women were like."

But, could it have been that the Sisters were seen as too involved in feminism? Or, perhaps that, under their Canadian superior, the Sisters were going beyond ecumenism, and that, aside from Sister Kay's conviction that religious differences could lead to trouble, the Order's renewed philosophy contravened Catholic teaching that Jesus in the New Testament is the fulfilment of God's promises in the Old? This documentary was probably completed before September 2000, the date of the Vatican document 'Dominus Iesus' which reiterates that Jesus alone is "the Word of God made man for the salvation of all" and that the Catholic Church, as the one church of Christ, is necessary for salvation. It would have been interesting to have seen Sister's reaction to or comments on these statements.

Sister Kay MacDonald, now semi-retired in Saskatoon, comes over as a strong-minded and determined woman; she is Sister Super-administrator. However I listened in vain throughout the presentation for some indication of her views on the life issues or for any practical evidence of her work in education, a major focus of her Order. We find that she has devoted most of her efforts to reconciling Christianity and Judaism and to promoting tolerance of other world faiths. During the decade previous to her return to Canada, she appears to have made valuable contributions to improving Christian, Jewish and Muslim relations in strife-torn Jerusalem.

According to the producers, Sister Kay is the acceptable face of Canadian Catholicism. Quick quotes from such luminaries as the politically correct "theologian", Gregory Baum, cannot but help. At 48 minutes, her story is just the right length for television, give or take some time for advertisements. Look out for her on Vision TV, or even on our "unbiased" national broadcaster CBC.