News Archives

Brigid McDonald, CSJ, interviewed by columnist
Nick Coleman in the St. Paul Pioneer Press

Brigid McDonald, CSJ, in her usual festive mood
at CPCSM's membership meeeting last spring.

CPCSM's Board Member and Hospitality Coordinator, Brigid McDonald, CSJ, was interviewed by columnist Nick Coleman in the September 30th edition of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, along with her three biological sisters, Jane, Rita, and Kate, who are also CSJs. Well known over the past 20 years for their participation in protests against militarism and for advocating for peace in many other ways, the four sisters were featured in Coleman's column because of their recent protests at the offices of Minnesota's representatives in Congress concerning the war being planned against Iraq. (The news story appears below.)

(Web Coordinator's Note: The CPCSM Leadership Team has been honored over the past five years that Brigid has also chosen to work with us in our ministry efforts as we advocate for social justice for GLBT persons in the Church and in the greater society. We have been richly blessed by Brigid's wisdom, her quick Irish wit, and her wonderful joy for life.

However, we were saddened to hear this past summer about Brigid's cancer diagnosis. We ask, therefore, for you to join us in our prayers for this holy woman as she continues to wage her own personal struggle against cancer. May God heal her and give us many more years of her leadership in working for peace and of her love of life and of all living things.)

Sisterly Sisters
Four sibling-nuns, veteran peace activists, seek peace in the world — and in their own family.
By NICK COLEMAN
Pioneer Press Columnist
St. Paul Pioneer Press, September 30, 2002

The four McDonald sisters -- also Catholic nuns -- participated in a peace vigil last week at the St. Paul office of US Senator Paul Wellstone. Joining the McDonalds -- Brigid, left, Kate, Jane, and Rita -- in saying the Prayer of St. Francis were John Brown and Julie Eschenlauer, both partially obscured in photo. (RICHARD MARSHALL, PIONEER PRESS.)

They are sisters who are sisters. Together, they make a powerful quartet for peace.

Their names are Jane, Rita, Brigid and Kate McDonald and they are members of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, a Catholic order of nuns. If they ever show up at your door, you might as well invite them in: You're about to get good and prayed for.

Last week, for example, U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone got the Full McDonald.

For three days, the four McDonalds rotated through the offices of area congressmen (joined by a number of other peace activists, including several other nuns). Wellstone, who is up for re-election and has kept an uncharacteristically low profile, was the focus of the most intense effort. Activists were permitted to stay in his office while they did "vigiling" for peace and tried to stiffen the liberal Democrat's resolve to resist a war with Iraq. You don't have to agree with the good sisters' politics to appreciate their passion and their prayerfulness.

"We come with rage about what's happening in our names," Sister Jane said the other day while breaking bread with her sisters and me in a café near Wellstone's St. Paul office. "We want our beloved Jewish brother Paul to be a stronger voice against war."

The Sisters McDonald, who range in age from 68 (Jane) to almost 80 (Rita) have been working toward a vision of the Kingdom for 20 years now, teaching English to new arrivals, working with battered women, abandoned children, recovering alcoholics, the homeless and the hungry while, all along, pricking the consciences of the powerful and the complacent.

They threw off their habits after the reforms of Vatican II, rolled up their sleeves and got busy trying to do the Lord's work in the real world.

"That's when we became people," jokes Sister Brigid.

Joining Women Against Military Madness and finding themselves gradually drawn to action, the McDonalds have been in the middle of most of the major Twin Cities protests over the past two decades, from demonstrations at munitions plants to anti-war protests. Each has been arrested for acts of civil disobedience and each has spent brief stints in jail (they don't keep count but say Rita has the most arrests). They know some people think nuns are naive and have no business protesting. But in the words of Sister Brigid, that gets their Irish up.

"We are not naive," says Kate. "We have read and studied and thought about these things more than most people. When we were young, I don't remember anyone questioning anything. We just swallowed whatever we were told. But not anymore.

"Today, most people I know are as tortured as I feel. It feels like the whole country is out of control. We're obsessed with revenge, striking back, and retaliation. It's a total violent path that I think would scare anybody if they had any sensitivity, and I feel so bad for people who have children who might be called on to be slaughtered over there. I'm not afraid for me. I'm over the hill (she's 73). But I can't imagine a parent who wouldn't be totally disturbed right now, even if they didn't give any thought to what will happen to the children in Iraq."

"Bush is becoming a dictator," declares Brigid, the most sharp-tongued of the McDonalds, despite undergoing treatment for cancer. "We need 'regime change' in the United States."

"I warned you," Sister Rita says, leaning toward me. "Chemo won't shut her up."

"I'm losing my hair, not my mind," Sister Brigid retorts.

Growing up during the Great Depression, the Four McDonalds were part of a large and close-knit Irish-Catholic farm family in Carver County (the McDonalds call it County Carver, in the Irish fashion). But there have been some tensions in the family in later years because the sisters' peace work has sometimes brought them into conflict with their brother, Kenneth.

Kenneth is better known as K.J. McDonald, a Korean War vet and American Legion official who served in the Legislature for 14 years as a conservative Republican. There were 11 children in the McDonald family and K.J., 71, fondly recalls that each day began with morning prayers and each evening ended with the saying of a family rosary.

"Our parents were patriotic, hardworking and deeply religious people," he says. "Our belief in service comes out of the good old Catholic catechism, where it says your duty is to your neighbor. We were brought up to believe in service to our fellow man and patriotism, and I know they're doing what they think is right."

Where he says he parts ways with his sisters is in his belief that the military can help make peace, as when the United States and its allies defeated Nazi Germany.

"The military brought peace to the world," he says. "America hated war — we were a peace-loving people and the military was not the warmongers." He says his sisters favor "too much socialism" and attributes that to their years living communally as members of a religious order. But he says he respects their dedication to the cause of peace, even if he doesn't agree with their politics.

"They're fun-loving and they love life and they love the Lord and they do great charitable works," he says. "Their hearts are obviously in the right place and I love them dearly, even though we have disagreements as to how to defend peace and bring justice to the world."

Right now, however, the McDonald clan is not as divided as it might seem. When it comes to the prospect of a war with Iraq, the sisters can count their brother among the worried.

"I detest and abhor war," says the former combat photographer, "and I'm very leery of us going to war in Iraq."

All of this must make for some very animated McDonald family conversations at holiday get-togethers. But when I mentioned that I'd enjoy seeing them all in action, the sisters roll their eyes and shake their heads. Often, they tell me, they have to rein themselves in for the sake of family harmony. One Thanksgiving, Sister Jane confides, a tense pre-dinner argument threatened to carry over to the table and to ruin the dinner.

Fortunately, Jane saved the day by resorting to an old Irish toast. Raising a glass of wine to her brother, she restored family peace by saying:

"That's when we started in about the weather," says Brigid. "Thank God for the weather."

Columnist Nick Coleman can be reached at ncoleman@pioneerpress.com or (651) 228-5472.