Sensible Shoes are Hard to Fill

When the Daughters left Austin in 2014, the administrative roles they had played for decades now had to be filled by others. Sister Teresa George, for example, was also the Chief Operating Officer of Dell Children’s Medical Center (as well as the Children’s Hospital of Austin that preceded it).

It wasn’t long before I began to miss seeing the Daughters as we continued our work in their name. Whether sharing a table in the cafeteria, exchanging pleasantries on an elevator, or shooting the breeze while hanging out by the printer.

With their presence represented mostly in two-dimensional imagery, carefully framed and arranged in public places, the work environment began to evolve.

Health care advocates demonstrating outside the office of Senator John Cornyn.

As fate would have it, health care was becoming a more prominent political issue around that same time. Before long, it would be ubiquitous – with many re-positioning health care as a basic human right, rather than a privilege.

Selfless Advocacy

The Daughters of Charity live a life of humility and simplicity dedicated to charity. Those I knew in Austin lived communally, and donated their salaries back to the organization. Of those, JT Dwyer was another Sister who obliterated the typical nun mold in my book.

Sister JT can scurry around a room, gesticulating and sputtering, with more energy than most people I know – all while bent at the waist in a 60° angle. When I learned that one of her duties included advocacy at the Texas state Capitol, I was awestruck. Texas politics were still new to me at the time, so the notion that some of the shenanigans going on occurred while Sister JT played witness in the gallery, or testified in open hearings, was even more shocking.

Three years after the Affordable Care Act became law, yet the governor of Texas had still declined to participate in its expansion of Medicaid expansion. An organization comprised of advocacy groups and health care providers, called Texas Left Me Out, created a campaign to raise awareness of the resultant gap in insurance coverage.

                                                                                

Sister JT Dwyer holding a t-shirt that says: "My name is Jesus. I have no papers." 

According to Sr. Dwyer, who participated in the group, "All of us know the people being left out of coverage; they are the working poor and we work with them every day. It's the veteran and his wife, the construction worker who helped build your neighborhood, the person that takes care of your child at the nursery, and the health attendant that helps care for your aging parents."

Texas Left Me Out was unable to change the mind of Rick Perry when it came to Medicaid expansion. But at least they tried. And they weren't afraid to shame elected officials in order to persuade them to do the right thing. Sister JT has since relocated to the Daughter's mission in San Antonio, where her work now focuses on immigration and asylum.

 This tweet received more engagement than most posted by the organization, but 85% of the comments were negative.

Her successor, however, takes a different approach to advocacy. He isn't a man of the cloth; his background is politics. More of a schmoozer . . . than a shamer. 

The kind of guy who would gladly pay a friend $12K a month to write speeches for Seton leadership (I know at least one doctor who was being paid much less at the time), or hire the son of a state senator fresh out of college even though it means laying off a long-term employee who recently learned she was expecting a newborn. Someone to whom patronage and nepotism are normal ways of conducting business. 

And last time I checked, selfless pols are few and far between these days.

Followers of St. Vincent de Paul

The Daughters of Charity devote their lives to serving the most abandoned individuals in our society. Today, there are about 16,000 of them living and working in more than 90 countries throughout the world. The ministry I was fortunate enough to work with was committed specifically to caring for and improving the health of those they encountered.

The Daughters also believe that God created each of us exactly as we were meant to be – a concept that was entirely new to me – and that they could not serve a community unless they truly understood the community. Because of that, they were also firmly committed to being an equal opportunity employer. 

As a gay man, I had perceived the Catholic Church as being a bit more judgmental when it came to matters such as sexual orientation.

Daughters of Charity painting by Karol Tichy (1871-1939)

I should add that the Daughters came into my life after surviving four tumultuous years of living in New York City, preceded by a relatively cocooned existence in the Great Lake states. If someone had told me 20 years ago that I would end up living deep in the heart of Texas, I never would have believed them. But landing in the welcoming arms of such selfless and non-judgmental women of the cloth – who choose to focus on the good in people, rather than their weaknesses – was an equally unexpected life event.                                                

Matthew Dowd is very familiar with the Daughters of Charity and how they served Greater Austin.

A Foulmouthed Nun

“You made me feel closer to God than any person I’ve ever met. And for someone who has identified as a non-believer for most of my adult life, that’s means quite a bit.” I practiced those words carefully before sharing them with Sister Teresa George two years ago. The occasion was a farewell mass – to commemorate what the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul had accomplished in Austin since first arriving in 1902.

Sister Teresa George

     
Sister “T” (as she is more commonly referred to by those who know her) is a member of the Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent DePaul. She is also the most extraordinary spiritual leader I have ever encountered. The first time I met her she made quite an impression, mainly because she was so different from the image in my mind (at that time) of a woman committed to the religious community of the Catholic church. 

That was ten years ago, shortly after I moved to Austin. Describing herself as “a hot-blooded Lebanese extrovert with a temperament like that of a matchstick: quick and flaring.” She also confesses to cursing frequently, "which is inconsistent with my values. But that's my humanness. I can't stop, even though I try."

It was her humanness that captivated me the most.