Posted by When he was growing up in Louisville, Kentucky, Morgan C. Atkinson’s friends, who attended Catholic school, usually described their teachers, the Ursuline Sisters, as “the toughest, meanest women on earth.” Morgan had no firsthand experience of the Ursulines, coming as he did from a Presbyterian family, but those descriptions stuck in his mind years later after he converted to Catholicism and embarked on a career as a filmmaker.
His first documentary about the Ursulines in the 1980s dispelled the “tough and mean” mythology of his childhood friends and led him to admire these women and their devotion to their vocation. His newest film about them, titled “In the Company of Change,” explores their history, their faith, and their decline in numbers.
For Morgan, the road to the Ursuline Sisters was paved by Thomas Merton, whose work he came across during his 20s, when he had “drifted away from any sort of religion or spirituality,” he recalled during a “Christopher Closeup” interview. Attracted by Merton’s “Bohemian” style, Morgan attempted to read his spiritual classic “The Seven Storey Mountain,” but had a hard time getting through it because “he used language and an approach to life that was not really familiar to me.”
Instead, Morgan visited Kentucky’s Abbey of Gethsemani, where Merton had lived. “In that weekend,” Morgan observed, “the presence of the place, of the Office, the liturgy, everything about it spoke to me in a very profound way…When one settles down a little bit and turns off a lot of the external noise and begins to listen to things, I gave that a chance to happen at Gethsemani. And it happened in a big way…so much so that six weeks later at Pentecost, I became a Catholic.”
Morgan went on to produce documentaries about Gethsemani and Thomas Merton, and he eventually turned his attention to the Sisters his childhood friends had told him about because “so often in media and in popular culture, religious sisters get a pretty rough go of it…What often happens with my work, you get to know your subjects and you fall in love with them. And that was my case.”
When Morgan interviewed the Ursulines back in the 1980s, they admitted they could be strict, but added that they were young women dropped into classrooms to manage 50 sometimes-unruly children. What else could they do but establish rules and guidelines?
“For all the complaints I’ve heard about the Sisters,” Morgan explained, “I’ve heard far more people who say, ‘They changed my life. They directed me. They saved my life in some instances.’…As the years went by, I became friends [with] some of the Sisters…In fact, one of the Sisters, Sister Martha Buser, became my spiritual director.”
Up until her death in 2023, Morgan would interview Sister Martha from time to time to get her take on various topics, so he had existing footage of her insights that could be featured in a follow-up film. He thought now was the time to do it because even 40 years ago, “the handwriting was on the wall…[The Ursulines] were declining in membership and in age, and they weren’t getting new members…I began to think I’d like to put a bookend on the first program. And by this time, the Ursulines had been reduced to less than 40 members with a median age in the upper 80s…The way they approached it really impressed me. Obviously, there was sadness…but also the way that they made hard choices and confronted reality…I thought was a very responsible and brave way [that] ensured their legacy as a group of women that gave so much, not only to the community of Louisville, but beyond.”
One key part of the film is the history of St. Angela Merici, the Ursulines’ founder. Sister Martha wrote often about how this Sister from 500 years ago remained relevant to our lives today.
Morgan noted, “[St. Angela’s] devotion to God and Jesus was very obvious and deep and moving, but [also] the way that she saw what they were called to do. They were wanting to be conventionally religious, but they did it outside of the conventional boxes of the time. They weren’t cloistered in a monastery. They lived in the world and did their good deeds, good practices, their worship in the world. I didn’t realize how revolutionary that was at the time, but it was. The hierarchy was not very approving of that because, as with any institution, control is valued. And here were people that were…freelance spiritual do gooders. Seeing that, and seeing the way it evolved, was very interesting for me. And Sister Martha said…when she joined in 1950…they were not schooled at all on St. Angela. It wasn’t until Vatican II where the directive was, ‘Go back to your founders…Look at what motivated them to be the spiritual force that they are.’ And that’s what they did when they went back to St. Angela.”
Many of the women with whom Sister Martha entered the novitiate wound up leaving the order, but she and numerous others opted to stay, in part, because of their sense of community. Morgan observed, “They could see their predicament, see the obvious aspects of it, but also say, ‘Hey, we’re in this together.’…One of [Sister Martha’s] recurring thoughts is – you must go where there is life, and if you are still finding life in this way of life, let’s do this together. And there was that core of women who really have been vital and are still vital to this day.”
One of Sister Martha’s pearls of wisdom in “In the Company of Change” is, “Jesus was the only one who wanted to be human. The rest of us want to be God. We want to be in control.”
It was insights like that which kept Morgan coming back to her as his spiritual director. He said, “In a world where everything is going at 150 miles an hour…she was this island of calm and wisdom with a sense of humor… She was pious and she was sweet, but she packaged that with a great sense of humor, a great sense of outrage on things in the Church and in the outside world that you should be outraged about. So, I found her a great barometer of how I wanted to be in a lot of ways. Much of the work I did was very secular in direction, very commercial. With Martha, I could see the value of things beyond that. I’m always grateful of being able to speak with her, to share my doubts, to have her be a booster when I wanted a booster, but also to be someone who would hold up a mirror and say, ‘Is this really the direction you think you should go?’…What a gift she was to me and to so many other people that she interacted with.”
The influences of Sister Martha and Thomas Merton are evident in “In the Company of Change,” and Morgan hopes that viewers are touched by their messages. He concluded, “One of the things about Merton that appealed to me so much is…though he wrote some purely theological work, a lot of his work was directed to people who are – what I always would call – outside the choir. It may not be your conventional churchgoer. And I would hope that the work I’ve done, without dumbing it down, makes a form of spirituality accessible to people. That’s a high goal, but it’s one I hope that comes through, that people go, ‘Oh gosh, a film about a nun or a film about a monk,’ but then you can see the human dimensions and maybe relate to your own life through it.”
“In the Company of Change” premieres on KET/Kentucky PBS on Sept. 14th. You can view through Morgan’s website a few days later: MorganAtkinson.com.
(To listen to my full interview with Morgan Atkinson, click on the podcast link):
Light One Candle - the blog of The Christophers 