It was Maine Catholic Schools Week.

Is that a surprise or what? I didn’t think there were enough Catholic schools left to give a whole week to.

But sure enough, there it is: Maine Catholics School Week, from Jan. 28 to Feb. 2.

You may not be Catholic and don’t have the faintest idea of what I’m talking about, do you?

Here’s a couple of amazing facts gleaned from the internet, to keep you abreast of your Catholic neighbors.

There are 6,429 total Catholic (elementary middle and high) schools in the United States. That’s a lot of nuns. Relax, things have changed.

I’ve read those who follow this stuff, and they say there’s no way to know how many nuns who still teach, continue to wear that familiar habit we grew up fearing, or even veils and “modified veils.” What does that mean? Flowered?

It’s no secret about my Catholic faith, even though I really don’t practice it much anymore; it’s like tennis or riding a bike, the church rules never really change.

I ask you this. How does Mother Church have the nerve to celebrate Catholic Schools Week without the “properly garbed” Sisters?

That’s right, I’m talking about nuns, that holy flock of women in black and white garb, who were always the driving force of Catholic education.

Yes, I know, I have described them “ad nauseam.” (That’s Latin for boring others. Get used to it.)

It all happened like this. When my father passed away, my mother had to take me out of Catholic school, being a time when expensive uniforms were being introduced, and she sent me eight blocks away to Virginia Avenue Public school, and Ms. Gorman.

And so this is who I am today, a nonagenarian Catholic school boy who remembers Latin but not Ms. Gorman’s first name.

Of course, there were all kinds of Sisters at St. Mary and Joseph School and in the convent, where they lived in spiritual peace far distant from the fogs of modernity.

The sisters had tight schedules, and went to bed at 8 p.m. Wow!

I often wondered as a child how they managed all that discipline, while we who played under their windows and street lights until bedtime shouted and kept them awake.

Each one was different, either a proper nun like my sweet Sister Roseanna, or the troubled Sister John Bosco, who was a descendant of the founders of the Inquisition.

But won’t we, the imperfect children of that imperfect faith, always remember that we had spent some time in our childhood with this group of mysterious, magical creatures, who taught us to read and count and form friendships in a brutally changing world?

The school and the old church where the Sisters taught us as children is closed now, empty and full of the echoes of their beads, as they walked down the polished halls.

It all sits there now in years of setting suns, like an Edward Hopper painting, protected by church law.

I’m confident, as I age, that the sun still sets each evening on those windows, with the angelus bells still tolling at sunset.

If I get a chance next year I would, as some of my family still do, go and shout up at the ghosts behind the curtained windows.

“Happy Catholic Schools Week, Sisters.”

J.P. Devine is a Waterville writer. 

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