Huntington nuns choose a life of tradition, service

"The bell rings at 5:15 a.m. every day to wake up the Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict at their semi-cloistered convent in Huntington.

By 5:35 a.m., all 21 of them are gathered in the chapel, dressed in long, black habits and starched veils. They pray for a half-hour, then fall into silent meditation for another half-hour.

They spend an hour tending to the 43 elderly residents of an adjoining adult home they run, then return to the chapel at 7:30 for morning Mass. As the day progresses, they will return several times for communal prayer - about four hours a day in all."

I picked up today's Newsday which featured a picture on the front cover of two nuns with the Headline: The Sisterhood LI order awaits Vatican visitation. It showed the article was pages A22-25 so I figured this would be a good old fashioned long piece with lots of reading material, and lots of anti-Catholic, ignorant nonsense too. Unfortunately or fortunately that was not the case - it was typical of today's Newsday: a short article with not much to read but lots of pictures. (I almost long for the good old days of Newsday with its huge amount of reading material and constant anti-Catholic bigotry.) This article paints a nice portrait of this traditional group of nuns and mentions the fact that traditional orders of nuns are awash in vocations, which is not exactly news. It features some nice photos of the nuns assisting the elderly in the guest house they run. Of course there are quotes from Rev. Thomas Reese who says the Vatican Visitation is all about controlling the liberal nuns in America, blah, blah and blah. God Bless the good sisters of Huntington! I will blog something about the visitation soon.