Sault Ste. Marie, place mentioned in article, is about almost 1,000 kms. north of Toronto in Ontario.
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Mission possible: sell a life of chastity. Nun hires top ad man to persuade women of the possibility of life as a religious sisterComment on this story »
Leslie Scrivener
(Dec. 11, 2009)
STEVE RUSSELL/TORONTO STAR
Ask Sister Bonnie MacLellan anything. She seems cheery, open-minded and smart – she has a PhD in human and organizational systems – and is not beyond understanding life's pleasures. When she was 19, she bought herself a 1973 Mustang. It was dusty orange.
"Mach III," she adds, with a trace of wistfulness.
Those days are behind her now that she is general superior of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Sault Ste. Marie.
She has another mission: to encourage women who may have felt a call by God to join a religious order to act. To pick up the phone and call the Sisters of St. Joseph. For help, she has hired one of Toronto's top ad men, Terry O'Reilly, the popular host of CBC radio's The Age of Persuasion.
It may be the first time a Canadian religious order has stepped into the pool of popular media for an ad campaign. Mostly, nuns have advertised in diocesan newspaper and other religious publications.
MacLellan is smart enough to anticipate questions, especially the hot button one: how do you sell someone on a life of poverty, chastity and obedience?
She sharpens it even more than her interviewer dares: "The question everyone will ask is how do you live without sex?"
Indeed.
"You live without sex, but not without love," she says.
"I don't feel unfulfilled. I feel I have a love relationship with God."
Sexual energy is not suppressed, she says, rather it's channelled. "To free your heart and free your energy to be of service to a broader community and broader world."
Poverty doesn't sound as challenging as it once may have. She gave up her job and sold the Mustang when she felt the call to serve 37 years ago. And, she notes, she doesn't own anything, not even her clothes. Everything is held in common by her religious order.
She submits an annual budget and is accountable for what she spends. Every month each sister submits a financial report. In the old days, the vow of poverty meant she wouldn't have carried any money. That's no longer the case. While in Toronto this week, taking a computer course on qualitative data analysis, she took a cab when she needed one and stayed at a downtown hotel.
As for obedience, it used to be that sisters were given their work assignments for the year every August. There wasn't much conversation. Now these are more consultative meetings so that the sisters' talents and education are matched to their work, which includes teaching, nursing, care of AIDS patients or people with addictions.
She got to thinking about the benefits of creative advertising when she was sitting in another car, an unmemorable Chevy (or was it a Hyundai?) at 5:20 one morning last year waiting for the YMCA to open. She heard O'Reilly being interviewed – she recalled she knew his mother in Sudbury – and she liked what she heard. He was sharp and creative.
"I need to talk to this man," she thought.
O'Reilly made conference calls to the sisters in the Motherhouse, which overlooks Lake Nipissing in North Bay. He was surprised at first at how much everyone enjoyed a good laugh. "They were as smart and insightful and hip as any clients we've got," he said Friday at Pirate, his post-production sound studio on King St. E.
They all met later in Toronto. O'Reilly and his creative team distilled the sisters' conversations, which can have a cosmic bent. As in: "God longed to have his love expressed in all of creation" or "Find the wholeness and fullness of life."
MacLellan just wants women to think about the possibility of life as a religious sister. "That God may be calling you," she says. "There might be something in your heart that says `I want to make a difference in this world.'"
Certainly, fewer and fewer women are entering religious life. In 1988 there were some 24,000 nuns in Canada; by 2004, there were about 18,000. In 1992, some 252 women took the first steps toward becoming a nun, by 2004 only 68 had.
O'Reilly's team also had to address the poverty, chastity, obedience question. The ads they're working on don't get into details, he says. "We are just trying to create a door, or a touch point where people get a message about the sisters and a way to channel it. Meaning, ultimately, a call to the Sisters of St. Joseph.
"We are tapping into women who already feel these stirrings, who are already considering that kind of life."
The ad campaign for the Sisters of St. Joseph will launch early next year in radio spots and bus transom ads in Thunder Bay and North Bay.
In recent years, there's been a trend for young women considering religious life to choose more traditional orders – those that are cloistered or contemplative, where wearing habits is the norm, and the focus is on a life of prayer and personal spiritual growth.
"They are young adults looking to live together in large numbers, to do things together – they are looking for community," says Sister Maureen Baldwin, a member of the Congregation of Notre Dame and executive-director of the National Association of Vocation and Formation Directors. "The question is, why is that such a big draw? Being a little skeptical I wonder how long that would last."
The average age of Canadian nuns is about 70.
Still, MacLellan is confident about the ad campaign.
O'Reilly is urging her to be prepared for the calls, and use the web, Facebook and even Twitter. A devoted BlackBerry user, she is open-minded about all of that. "We have such faith in Terry and his staff."
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