If you’ve ever driven through the intersection of Western and Franklin, you’ve probably noticed the big, white building that is Immaculate Heart High School & Middle School. If you’ve ever driven by around 8 AM or 3 PM, you’ve definitely noticed the onslaught of young girls in uniforms walking to or from the campus (and, possibly, the creepy dudes who lurk around those times). Have you ever, though, looked into its sick, epically feminist history that would lead to the largest group of people leaving the Catholic Church? Here, more or less, is the story.
This past October, Anita Caspary, former IH College English Department Chair, Graduate President, President, and of the Immaculate Heart Order/Community, passed away at the age of 95. Before we get to the good stuff, let’s cover a few facts about Caspary: She became a nun in 1936 after receiving her bachelor’s, she got her master’s in English from USC in the early 1940s, and she got her PhD in English at Stanford in 1948. Not only was she one of the few women pursuing a doctorate in the 1940s, but she wore a habit on campus, which she felt, as written in her memoir, created both “a distance and mystery.” So yeah, she was already pretty amazing and had probably dealt with enough misogyny to make your head spin by the time she was elected to lead the Immaculate Heart Order in 1963.
It was around this time that Vatican II was happening, and the Catholic Church was basically trying to “let in some fresh air,” as Pope John XXIII put it. The Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, with Caspary at the lead, were all for it, so they made a few changes to how they ran things, the most escandaloso of which were not wearing their habits all of the time (I mean come on, it’s LA. That must get so hot.) and praying whenever they want instead of at fixed times throughout the day. Unfortunately, this didn’t sit too well with ultra-conservative Cardinal James Francis McIntyre, Archbishop of LA at the time, who banned them from teaching in any Catholic schools in whatever the Catholic school equivalent of LAUSD is.
The sisters went all the way to the Vatican to try to appeal his ruling, because all they really wanted to do was teach and help people…while, yknow, being able to make decisions about what they put on their bodies and what they did with their time, like adults are generally able to do. The Vatican didn’t help them out, so 300+ nuns from the order made the very difficult decision to be released from their vows. In a Time Magazine interview, Caspary simply said “I wondered how much energy you could spend fighting authority when you could spend that same energy doing what you should be doing.”
So instead of fighting The Man (The Men? Quite literally.), Caspary and the other nuns started the Immaculate Heart Community. The Community would continue to run Immaculate Heart High School and College (until its close in the 80s – It occupied what is now AFI.) and its various organizations dedicated to education, helping the disenfranchised, environmental activism, and pretty much anything else that you’re pretty into unless you’re an awful person.
Caspary even taught a class on Feminist Spirituality at Immaculate Heart College. So cool. Aaaand, in case you needed any more proof of these ladies’ awesomeness, the most famous member of the Community is Corita Kent, an artist-nun best known for her screen prints and stamp design. (My personal favorite hung in my mom’s office and read something along the lines of “I never would like to have lived without offending someone.”) About Caspary, she told Time “She is a quiet leader, perfect for the age of Aquarius, when, you know, there are no big heads.” The perfect leader for the age of Aquarius. Ballin’.
Article originally published on the TENOVERSIX blog.
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