Casting Down the Strange Gods – Crisis Magazine

Catholics who feel somewhat cast adrift in the choppy waters of modernism and innovation would do well to make Mother Francis’ acquaintance.

America’s atomic age saw the arrival of aliens in Roswell, New Mexico. You might be thinking of those infamous little green men supposedly secreted away in Area 51, but they and their flying saucers might seem a little less out of place to modern eyes than Roswell’s other hidden-away inhabitants: the cloistered Colettine Poor Clares of the Monastery of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The monastery’s long-term abbess, Mother Mary Francis (1921-2006), was one of the best-selling American Catholic authors of the 1950s and ’60s. One of her books, Strange Gods Before Me: A Poor Clare Nun Topples the Myths of the Cloister, has just been re-released by her monastery. Originally published in 1965, the same year that saw the conclusion of Vatican II, the book has only grown more relevant in the intervening years. Catholics who feel somewhat cast adrift in the choppy waters of modernism and innovation would do well to make Mother Francis’ acquaintance.

Perhaps the most important aspect of Strange Gods Before Me is its authoress’ arguments against the progressive attitude that what the Church and her monasteries need is a thorough stripping of “outdated” tradition in favor of a more “enlightened” and “sophisticated” modern stance. Mother Mary Francis was a tireless defender of the contemplative vocation, and she played a vital role in the chaotic years after the Council to save the order’s strict enclosure, original habits, and faithful adherence to the same precepts set down by St. Clare and St. Colette. 

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Casting Down the Strange Gods – Crisis Magazine