Sister Act (IVIST)

MANILA, Philippines - What are nuns made of? Sugar and spice and everything nice? Nunsense!

At least, not if you’re talking about Sister Mary John Mananzan, an activist nun who lived through the darkest years of the Martial Law era and the nation’s many political crises, one fist clenched and raised, while the other one lovingly touching those who needed it most.

Some snips and snails, and puppy dog’s tails? Yes, definitely, and probably a little St. Bernard’s growl too for good measure.

Coming home from overseas studies a year after the declaration of Martial Law in April 1973, she was greeted by the political chaos, most notably labor protests, and the accompanying police and military brutality at the picket lines. Like most known activists of that era, she got caught in the maelstrom and it wasn’t long before she left the ranks of the uninvolved.

Her baptism of fire, she recalls now, was a midnight call urging the religious to help protect striking workers at a liquor factory threatened by the military.

“Since my superior was already asleep, I wrote her a letter: ‘Dear Sister Catherine, I am going to the La Tondeña strike. I don’t know when I will be back. Love, Sr. Mary John’,” she recalls in her new book “NunSense: The Spiritual Journey of a Feminist Activist Nun.”

It was her baptism of fire in political involvement. Hundreds more followed. Memories of the era – now preserved in black and white grainy video footages and sepia photographs – bear witness to the radicalization of the church.

“We started to rethink our theology, talking about ‘integral salvation.’ There is no soul that is saved without the body. So if there is an obstacle to the well being of persons, if we call ourselves Christians who take Jesus’ message seriously, then we have to be there. That was our spiritual rationalization, if you will,” she explains.

And where was Sr. Mary John when she was not at the picket lines? On top of ten-wheeler trucks urging people to resist oil price hikes. She eventually went on to become one of the co-founders of Gabriela and one of those who initiated the development of feminist theology of liberation in Asia.

Her book’s publisher, Anvil’s Karina Bolasco, who was in college when Sr. Mary John became college dean of St. Scholastica’s College, attests that she found her moral commitment and the balance that prepared her for life ahead from the strong-willed nun.

She recalls the La Tondeña strike being the banner story of the school paper against the better judgment of its student editors.

“We heard about our nuns being there, arm in arm with other religious. Our classmates were shaking their heads in disbelief why the school paper would carry such a headline that had no relevance whatsoever to their lives. We said the metro dailies were controlled and only school papers told the truth,” she says.

Generations of Kulasas (a monicker given to students of St. Scholastica’s) are seemingly connected through the years by these active social and political awareness involved that produced many of the country’s women leaders, including its most famous alumni, President Corazon Aquino.

“I am not saying that she didn’t live like a sister or a nun with vows of poverty and simplicity. She did. But it is her zest for life, her energies and her passions, which have made all the difference,” Bolasco says.

Another Kulasa, her book’s editor Paulynn Paredes-Sicam, experienced this boundless energy during the writing of the book, describing her as incredibly persuasive and fascinating.

“Last year, when she asked me, through Karina, to edit her book called ‘Nunsense,’ I jumped at the opportunity. The journalist in me wanted to have a first crack at what I anticipated would be a great story. But working on her book was not as simple as I expected it to be. Mother MJ’s mind, as we all know, runs at a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. It was so quick it goes ahead of her capacity to write a story in great detail,” she says.

“In effect,” she adds, “I asked her to slow down, catch her breath and focus on the flowers, so to speak, so she could enrich her narrative with the fascinating details of her multifaceted life.”

The editor’s verdict of the final copy: “It’s still breathless. It’s like being on a world tour with a complicated itinerary.”

Finally taking the podium after the all introduction and tributes, Sister Mary John thanked people who helped her across the years, calling everyone to the stage to receive a complimentary copy of the book in a loud, booming, happy voice.

“I’m really sorry that I cannot thank all the people worth mentioning. There are so many that I have to mention. And I don’t how to apologize that they are not here. So I’m looking forward to another edition. There’s pa naman a future, ‘di ba?” she says with a hearty laugh. She’s 74.

One of those she called to receive the book on stage was the controversial whistleblower of the government’s NBN-ZTE scandal, Jun Lozada, whom she and the religious community protected during the crisis.

“Whenever I am asked if it is difficult to protect and defend whistleblowers, I can truthfully say that I have gained much from the experience, I believe that it has made me a better religious,” she writes.

“Nunsense” is not all radical and hilarious though, but also filled with musings and reflections of a life lived in the spiritual confines of a religious order. Sr. Mary John also offered a peak into her girlhood in Bayambang, her life as a novice when she entered the convent at age 19, her trials in life, including failing the grade school exam at St. Scholastica’s College, and a spiritual crisis while she was in Spain.

“I count as my deepest insight the realization that God is not only everywhere but is primarily within my own heart,” she writes in the book’s final chapter.

“I have seen the importance of silence and stillness, not only of one’s tongue but of one’s thoughts and one’s emotions, of one’s whole being,” she writes.

“But being contemplative does not mean being passive or indifferent to the world’s problems,” she adds, “I have learned that we are called to the prophecy, and this means announcing the good news and denouncing the bad news.”

As Mother Irene Dabalus, OSB, former prioress general of the Missionary Benedictine Sisters of Tutzing, recounts in the book’s foreword: “It’s true what people say that ‘Mary John is like a typhoon,’ but she can also be ‘like an island placidly basking in the sun’.”

“Nunsense” is available at leading bookstores.