Through the Narrow Gate: A Nun’s Story

“But why not think about it again after you have been to Oxford?” asked my father miserably. “You’ll be a bit older then, you’ll have had a chance to look around a bit and see …” he trailed off.

“See whether it is convenient for me to enter a convent,” I finished for him. “Put the world first and give God second option.” I was determined to counter this approach. It seemed so reasonable but was, I felt, quite wrong.

“If you’ve got a true vocation it will last a few years,” said my mother rather crossly. I could tell she was feeling that she was losing control of me. I had never really argued with her before. She was so firm and definite in her views and needed so much to impose them on me so that I should be exactly what she wanted. If I argued with her, such an uncomfortable atmosphere ensued that it just wasn’t worth it. She was astonished and hurt, I could tell, by my obstinacy.

“Not necessarily,” I said. “You can throw a vocation away, you know, just like everything else. I might get to like the world too much to want to put God first.” I could see that happening. Once I was at Oxford the world would beckon with all its seductive wiles. I could not imagine what these might be. The world seemed futile and trivial now, but human nature was weak. I could easily persuade myself that the sacrifice I had decided on was not for me. “After all,” I added cunningly, “look what happened to Granny.”

It was a direct hit. My mother gave a start and looked moodily at the fireplace. My father shifted in his chair, which squeaked uncomfortably.

“But you can’t mean to go now,’ my mother said despairingly. “You’re much too young. You’re only sixteen.”

“No, but I can go next year when I’m seventeen,” I replied firmly.

“It’s ridiculous,” said my mother hotly, “quite ridiculous. A child of seventeen—oh, I know you don’t think you’re still a child, but you are. Anyway, it’s quite out of the question. They’d never accept you as young as that.”

“Mother Katherine said they would,” I replied, watching them carefully. It was another hit. They both stiffened. They respected Mother Katherine. I knew that. They were also just a tiny bit in awe of her. Whenever my mother protested against school policy she had been gently and with considerable charm put firmly in her place. Mother Katherine was the only person I knew who could do that to her.

“You’ve already talked to her, then, have you?” asked my mother. I could tell that she was hurt. “How long have you been thinking about this, then?”

“Oh! quite a time now,” I replied vaguely. It was true. The decision had been quietly growing for years, now that I looked back over my life.

“Why didn’t you tell us sooner?” asked my father. “Did you think that we’d be so much against it?” He sounded aggrieved.

“Well, you are against it, aren’t you?” I countered.

Impasse. My mother waved her empty glass at my father, who, glad of something to do, leaped up and busied himself with the ice; he poured out large measures of gin, I noticed. I was sorry for them. They seemed out of their depth.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” my mother said impatiently. “What about all the things you’re going to miss—the theatre, books? How the hell do you think you’re going to adapt to community life? You haven’t even been to boarding school. Believe me, I know what I’m talking about. Life in the forces was hell. Endlessly cooped up with other people—all their annoying little habits get on your nerves till you could scream.” Her voice had risen now as the objections came tumbling out.

“Look,” I said quietly, amazed at my calm. “I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. Of course it isn’t. Mother Katherine has told me how hard it will be sometimes. But if it’s God’s will for me to become a nun, then my whole life will be ruined if I don’t. God has a special plan for each one of us. You don’t want me to mess up my whole life, do you?”

There was another pause. My mother nervously lit a cigarette. My father kept silent. Since the bankruptcy he had become more and more withdrawn. He had lost confidence in his ability to run his family life. I knew how much I was hurting them both, but there was no going back now.

“After all,” I said again into the dead silence, “you believe in God, don’t you? You believe that the religious life is the highest human vocation. Well then, how can you possibly refuse to allow me to enter?”

I could almost hear my parents’ thoughts crackling through the room. I could feel them struggling with the dilemma they were in.

“Of course we believe that,” my mother stubbed out her cigarette. Her voice was quieter now. “But that doesn’t mean that we can believe you are ready to take such a big step. I still think,” her voice rang out confidently now—once she took her mind off the disturbing thought of God and His will, I noticed wryly, she became much more sure of herself, but God was the whole point; He couldn’t just be ignored—"I still think,” she repeated, “that you are much too young. You don’t know anything about the world that you are going to give up. Don’t you think so, John?”

“Absolutely, dear, absolutely,” muttered my father gloomily. He was looking at me with astonishment. “Do you really want to give us up?” he asked, his voice trembling slightly. “Don’t you see how much we’ll miss you?”

I sat there, fighting a lump in my throat. I could barely trust myself to speak. Don’t let them turn on the emotion, I prayed silently. I can’t cope with that.

“Of course I’ll miss you,” I said huskily.

Once again we sat in silence. The cars on the main road outside swept by with a carefree swishing sound. I wanted this to be over. But I knew too that while I was at home it would never be over. The convent was there now, splitting the bond between us. Things would never be the same again.

“The meat must be nearly ready,” said my mother weakly. “John, will you carve? And call Lindsey …” she gestured helplessly toward the kitchen.

“Look,” I said, “it’s pointless going on with this. I’ll never be able to convince you. To you I’m just a little girl. I always will be, as far as you’re concerned, even when I’m"—I paused, searching frantically for an age of suitable antiquity—"thirty! Why don’t you go and see Mother Katherine? She told me that she’d be very willing to talk to you about it. After all, she’s the professional. You know about life and the world. But she knows about life and the world and the convent. She’s known me ever since I was five—almost as long as you have. Why don’t you go and see her?”

“And if she doesn’t make us change our minds, then will you promise to go to college before you think about becoming a nun?” asked my mother quickly. She was already setting her shoulders squarely, ready to do battle.

I had every confidence in Mother Katherine. “Yes, I promise,” I said.

From odd things my parents said after their momentous interview with Mother Katherine, I could imagine exactly what had happened. My parents had been taken into the convent parlor, a room I knew well. There were a sofa, two or three easy chairs, and rugs placed chastely over the polished floor boards. Fra Angelico prints hung tastefully on the walls, and a restrained flower arrangement adorned a little bureau by the French window. It had been early in the evening, and outside they could still have seen the cedar trees and the graveled terrace. They would have been given coffee and biscuits.

The pleasant surroundings were a consolation. “One good thing about that Order,” my mother always said, “is that they have decent taste. No bleeding hearts or anemic madonnas.”

“Too bloody aristocratic,” my father would quip. “What was it that priest called them? A bunch of society ladies!”

They sat in the parlor, filled with determination not to give in.I was too young; later, if I still wanted to enter, there’d be plenty of time. But they were nervous, too; so much depended on their standing firm.

Then Mother Katherine came in. I could see it all—the lilting walk, the beaming smile of welcome. She shook their hands. Mother Katherine’s handshake was a family joke. You’d grasp her hand and it would simply lie in yours like a wet fish, with no answering pressure. And she’d lean away from you archly. That handshake summed up what my parents had often noticed about the nuns.

“They always hold you at arm’s length,” my mother would say. “They seem to be saying ‘Keep off; you can come this far, but no farther.’ Oh, I like them very much as an order. At least they’re all individuals. Not like the nuns I was at school with—you really couldn’t tell one from another; they even looked alike. But for all that, you never really get to know them.” On that evening the handshake must have stopped being a joke. How could you argue with someone who never really accepted your presence?

Mother Katherine fussed over them, urged more coffee on them while they eyed her warily, waiting for the battle to begin.

“She’s too young,” my mother said firmly, stirring sugar into her cup. “Far too young. I mean, I know that a religious vocation is a wonderful thing. We’re not questioning that, are we, John?”

“No, indeed,” my father agreed politely, but I knew that for him it seemed a terrible life, a rejection of all that made life sweet—love, sex, beauty, travel, fun, freedom—even though the faith told him what he really ought to think about it.

“But Karen’s just not mature enough to make such a huge decision,” my mother continued. “She’s never known anything else. How can she make a proper choice? And she’s very emotional, you know, very intense.”

Mother Katherine smiled calmly. “Of course emotion has to be kept in control. But if Karen weren’t as sensitive as she is, all her gifts for poetry and art wouldn’t exist. She’d be a different person. And a poorer one. And I think she is far more mature than you realize. Of course, you will always see her as a little girl,” she laughed kindly. “How can you help that? It’s very, very difficult for parents to see their own children objectively.”

As she said that, my parents began to feel quite helpless. Mother Katherine always managed to make them feel like children themselves. Those pale blue eyes of hers looked straight through you and seemed to spot all your weak points, things that other people didn’t notice. Now she claimed to understand their own daughter better than they did. And how could they argue? Of course they were biased; they were bound to be.

“Now look,” Mother Katherine took a fresh tack, “do you agree that the fundamental question here is not whether you or I want Karen to become a nun next year, but whether God wants it? We’ve all got to empty ourselves of our own limited, human responses. It’s what God wants that matters.”

And with the mention of God the whole thing became much more frightening. After all, if you believed in God, then of course a religious vocation was a wonderful thing. It must have made them wonder, in a sudden guilty moment, whether they were selfishly opposing God’s will. Who could tell? Once God came into it the solid ground of common sense started crumbling away under you.

“But how can we tell what God’s will is?”

And then Mother Katherine gave them the acid test of a vocation as defined by the church, a definition I was to hear many times.

“There is only one way of being absolutely sure whether a girl has a true vocation. She has to be accepted by the religious order she wants to join; that is the only criterion that the church accepts as proof. Feelings, prayers, thoughts, ideals—none of these counts for anything beside that. If the Provincial Superior at Tripton accepts Karen, then her decision has the whole force of the church behind it. And the church, we know, is empowered by Christ.”

“But let’s face it, Mother,” my father said ironically, “you don’t turn people away. You must need new recruits.”

“Indeed, Mr. Armstrong, we do turn people away,” was the rather tart rejoinder. “Look at it this way. Somebody without a true vocation would only be a disruptive influence and eventually undermine the Order. We have to be very, very careful whom we admit.”

“But what if—I know you won’t admit this—but if," my mother pleaded, “a mistake is made—surely that’s possible. Then at seventeen Karen’s whole life will be ruined.”

“Not at all,” Mother Katherine retorted. “Of course we do admit people into the Order who find later that they haven’t got a vocation. But you know, Mrs. Armstrong, I’d hesitate to call that a mistake. If they were accepted by the Order, then God, in His infinite wisdom, called them there for His own special purposes. And this may happen to Karen. She may find after a while that it isn’t God’s will and she will be free to go, or we shall be free to send her home. Yes, Mr. Armstrong, we do send people home,” she laughed, “at any time during the first three years.”

Sadly my parents, faced with these cosmic immensities and Divine purposes, realized that their own feelings didn’t count for much. Helplessly they felt themselves carried along by the force of Mother Katherine’s certainty.