Sister Simone Campbell

Sister has instituted the  Nuns On The Bus campaign to drive from city to city showing The Ryan Budget to be an immoral set of proposals. I am so proud this is happening. It shows that some
Catholics are active for the best and most human policy a citizenry can advocate.
When I was four, I was baptized Catholic because my parents became converts. My mom was
isolated with three kids too young for school. Two of them were toddler twins. The nuns from a
neighboring convent realized she was in trouble, and began to stop buy. They would sometimes,
if memory serves, wash dishes or wipe windows, and always sit a few moments. When mom is very
alone, some things blossom in a kid's memory at odd points in time.
A set of unusual happenings stands out.
I didn't much like the nuns in my school, but I liked the ones at Our Lady of Sorrows summer school.
I heard a story from one of my Catholic friends for the first time yesterday that the nuns at her school
were teachers in her all black elementary and middle school. I had never heard of an all black lower
school in our city. My sibs and I had a hard time in our neighborhood because most Catholic schools
where I lived taught a majority of white children. I didn't know my friend, though, until I was fifty.
My friend was freaky smart. She went to high school at twelve. She was valedictorian at the educationally precision-oriented all girls' Catholic  high school from which she graduated four years
later. She then attended University of Michigan, at a time when women had not been admitted for
very many years at all.
Apparently, the nuns she knew were much more evolved than those I had encountered after nursery
school. The nuns at my school were both rigid and racist. My parents asked me to work around that
for the sake of a somewhat affordable private school education, and the freedom from buying a variety of school clothes. A uniform could last a year! Those nuns were crushing, though.
When I was a high school freshman, for instance, our principal, Sister Mary Roberts, got on the
PA system to announce that one of our seniors had gotten a four year engineering scholarship to a major city university. The student she named was a black guy, so I felt immense pride.
Then she went on to say, enunciating as she went, that she was not going to write the requisite
recommendations, and neither would the other teacher staff, because if he got that degree he would
find it useless since firms did not hire Negro engineers. This was at the start of the sixties. People
like her deserve a lot of the credit for so much of the upheaval and the urgent demand for rights of that
decade. She helped give a face and words to some of the hateful blockage people espoused in the
racism sector of our country.
That young man died before he had been out of high school five years. I don't know that his high school principal had a contributory effect; but I do know he left school without her help to study his
chosen field. Thanks a lot for a Catholic education, Sister.
When I was a junior, I tried to get the nuns in that school to help me get a job in one of the downtown
department stores. They were helping a lot of girls: but me they gave a job peeling potatoes at the convent. Poor me. I went every day and was happy for the vote of confidence. I thought they were
donating food, until they asked me one day why I kept showing up when there were only so many
potatoes they could eat.
 I felt I had been begging, and should be ashamed of myself for so troubling these generous people.
 Boy,was I dumb. I did get my state four year scholarship later, and in the ensuing years have met
more nuns, both awful and genuine. I realized at some point nuns were after all, just people.
Back to my friend, however, I was so glad to hear one of the nuns at her high school called her while
she was at U of Michigan to tell her she had gotten her a job at one of the two major newspapers
in our city. So (I'll call her J.) J added her last nine credit hours needed for graduation, got her degree
early, and took a newspaper job. That nun helped so many people with that one act of generous
kindness. J later went on to one of the Big Three auto companies, working in public relations.
She worked there nearly thirty years, retiring for family reasons. I am ever so proud of her, and of the nun
who helped her get her first professional job. That is the way a Catholic girl is supposed to get a job, even
a black Catholic girl. So far, my friend has bought two really beautiful homes, highlighting two of her income
successes. So I am glad to know nuns like Sister S.Campbell continue to work for public policy equanimity
in our society.
I agree with Sister Simone's concept; but not with her solution that we all need to pay more taxes.
The middle class, and most especially the working poor, pay quite a punitive bunch of taxes now.
If the rich cannot pay their share, they need to get out, returning to our country, all their patents and licenses.
Think we could not replace every one of them in a DAY?
Think again.