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A Conversation with Sister Dolores Oakes, C.S.J.
... A St. Joan of Arc parishioner

“If you maintain a feeling of compassion, loving kindness, then something automatically opens your inner door. Through that, you can communicate much more easily with other people. And that feeling of warmth creates a kind of openness. You’ll find that all human beings are just like you, so you’ll be able to relate to them more easily.” -The Art of Happiness by His Holiness The Dalai Lama

She stood at first in the hallway and then walked through and around several patients in their wheelchairs to greet me. Most every weekday you can find Sister Dolores Oakes, CSJ ministering to her chosen flock as the Director of Social Services at St. Anthony Park Home in St. Paul. “I love my job. And my job is to love this community of patients and caregivers. I come to work each day to help people live well, and yes, to die well.” This is a very impressive mission statement for anyone.

For twenty some years Dolores has been in a working ministry that she did not choose but was asked to do. “My goal is to provide the best of quality care for the elderly.” In 1979 she was asked by her order to become the administrator of Bethany, the retirement and nursing center for the Sisters of St. Joseph on Randolph and Fairview, in St. Paul. Nine years passed and she decided she needed a change so she took the job at the St. Anthony Park Home. “I love this work, I love these people; but one of the biggest challenges I have faced in working with some of the elderly is dealing with their fear of God and their sense of guilt. Many of this older generation of Protestants and Catholics, including some nuns, lived with a belief in a punishing God, a judging God. We both half laughed about the good old days and I asked

Dolores takes a picture of each resident and frames them in the same frame style. They line the walls of the residence.

her why she escaped the shaming and fear. “My mother was a wonderful and loving Lutheran woman with a beautiful positive attitude about life and people so she saved me from the hellfire and brimstone.” Then becoming more reflective, she said; “My workdays are a sea of administrative details but my satisfaction comes when I can take the time to convince another person of God’s love. Facing our own mortality is difficult enough, but it is easier to face believing in a loving creator“

“We invite you to join us in creating a more just world. The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, are a community exploring what it means to work for justice, to care for the earth, and to love God and neighbor without distinction. By responding to the needs of others, we invite the sacred to unfold in our lives. In a world which often does not feel loving, we are challenged to find ways to be a loving presence. The sacred pervades all life and continually calls us to action.” - from Sisters Online - Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Sister Dolores Oakes (Sometimes called Doe by her friends) is one of 420 remarkable women known as the Sisters of St. Joseph. Once known primarily as teachers and nurses, they now are found in a wide variety of gospel ministries. Dolores grew up in Brooklyn Center, a middle child with two older and two younger brothers. “I went to St. Margaret’s Academy and that meant I had to transfer buses four times each way.” At eighteen years of age she became one of fifty-one postulants. The year was 1951 and convents and seminaries were full of young women and men who had been influenced by growing up in a world at war and they wanted a different world. In full habit and in her early 20s’ Sister Dolores was assigned to teach fifty-six 6th graders. Like any nun her age she can recite the litany of places she was assigned; St. Patrick’s, Good Shepherd, Holy Spirit, etc. She was assigned to work toward her masters at the University of Minnesota and then climbed the religious ladder of principal and superior. Dolores, like others of the 50s’, simply understood the words “assigned” to mean doing whatever had to be done to do God’s work.

In 1978 she asked for and got her first and only sabbatical and she went off to study clinical pastoral education in Seattle. In Seattle she got the call from St. Paul asking her to become the administrator for Bethany Convent, a facility for the older sisters. She has worked with the elderly since then and says her plans are to eventually do less administrative stuff and more pastoral counseling. “ There are still a lot of people who I need to talk about a God of Love.”

"The Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, St. Paul Province, are a religious community of women and consociates that engage in works of compassion and justice that respond to the spiritual and material needs of our times. We do this in a way that: challenges, heals and reconciles, serves all without distinction, makes known through our lives the gospel we proclaim; creates a just world with a particular concern for the poor." - from Sisters Online - Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

“So tell me why you came to St. Joan of Arc?” She laughed and said she was not assigned! “I often tell people that I am a good nun but a lousy Catholic. For thirty-one years I lived with another sister, Sister Julie Delange. As we changed assignments, we both tried to find liturgies that spoke to us and let's just say it was a bumpy search. When we walked into St. Joan of Arc and heard the music, we just stayed. Julie died last year after a long struggle with cancer, but her funeral at the Motherhouse was preached by George Wertin and the musicians from St. Joan’s sang. It was a wonderful example of my one community helping my other community of sisters. I come to St. Joan’s because it feeds my soul for the week.. I love to hear the sermons from a variety of women and men, and usually they are well thought out and I know they have spent time preparing. I want to hear different voices talking to me about God.”

The author's mother(left) in her Mother's Day Hat.

We talked for an hour and then we talked about the sisterhood. Dolores, like her twenty-four classmates, has traveled a very long way from the over crowded classes of the late 50’s and the downtown convent of St. Agatha Conservatory that one housed eighty sisters teaching in the various parishes around St. Paul. “Now I have a job like a lot of people, I spend part of my free time this year as a sponsor for a new consociate of the sisters. The consociates, women and men who want to be part of our community in a collaborative way, may be the future. I have great hope in the future, I get some of it from my mother, and some of it I hope from my belief in God’s work in the world. In the 1600’s the sisters were radical when we went out of the convents and worked to teach and nurse the townspeople. Today we continue to study how to live the vows in today’s world and how to be gospel women. During the week this is my calling, my community of elders. The rest of the time it is my community of Sisters, my friends, and St. Joan of Arc."

“Our stories are like small streams joining to make a mighty river. Each member’s life adds to the current, giving it a new identity. Our longing pulls us forward as we stay attentive and responsive to the needs of the time.” - from Sisters Online - Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet

Chuck MacDonald and his wife Beth are parishioners at St. Joan of Arc. Chuck serves on the Executive Committee of the Open Arms of MN Board. He is actively involved with efforts to help victims of AIDS in South Africa. Currently he is working with Joe Selvaggio on the 1% Club.

Janice LaMere is a self-professed (and sometimes publicly acknowledged) girl-geek. She does computer technical support and training, and is a writer, college student, mother of three and grandmother of two. She likes to read, learn, listen to music, walk with her dog (Lady Isabella Augusta, AKA Auggie Doggie) and watch old movies. She can be found on the Internet atwww.janissima.com, or email to lamere@janissima.com.