'She saw our kids as people, not as disabilities'

Sister Rosemary Connelly (photo by Heidi Zeigler)

   

      I feel blessed to have known Sister Rosemary for over 30 years, and to have worked with her on many stories. She's the only person who ever caused me hesitation over this blog's name. We were having lunch at the Greenhouse Inn, maybe a decade ago, and I mentioned something about the blog. 

     "And what is this blog of yours called?" she asked. I looked into the wide blue eyes of this good nun, bright with curiosity, and my mouth dropped open. I just couldn't say it.

     Catholic women who became pregnant out of wedlock in Chicago 100 years ago would quietly disappear into the Misericordia Maternity Hospital and Home for Infants on 47th Street, to bear their illegitimate babies under the care of the Sisters of Mercy, joined by indigent married women and those "of foreign birth or parentage."
     They often emerged without their infants. Most healthy children left behind would eventually be adopted. But those with disabilities became charges of the Archdiocese of Chicago, which warehoused them "out of sight, out of mind" until they turned 6, and could be delivered to the state of Illinois and its notoriously nightmarish mental institutions, where residents were tied to beds and worse.
     By 1954, the Home for Infants housed about 50 children with developmental challenges like Down syndrome and cerebral palsy. In 1969, the task of keeping them alive until the state could take over fell to a 38-year-old nun with the Sisters of Mercy, Sister Rosemary Connelly, who knew little of Misericordia, but immediately realized she had found her calling.
     "I felt God's presence on my very first day at Misericordia," she said. "I could tell that all the children were loved."
     Loved, but not busy. They were well-dressed, but stayed in bed all day. They ate there. Sister Rosemary decided that these were not inert objects that could just be allowed to languish, but God's children, precious souls, each with the spark of humanity, no matter how buried. That flame had to be nourished, physically and spiritually.
     She would provide them with the rich and rewarding lives they deserved, and since programming for such children didn't exist, she created it. In the process, becoming the dynamic, irresistible force building Misericordia into the pre-eminent home in Chicago for children and adults with developmental challenges.
     Beloved for the energy, skill, devotion and unwavering faith she brought to Misericordia for more than half a century, Sister Rosemary Connelly died June 19 at Misericordia. She was 94.
     "Sister Rosemary was the heart and soul of Misericordia for more than 50 years," said Fr. Jack Clair, president and executive director, of Misericordia. "Her love and guidance helped build a community where hundreds of people with developmental disabilities enjoy living the highest quality of life. Sister’s life was a life of faith dedicated to God’s promise of eternal life.
     "There are few people in the City of Chicago who have done so much for so many as Sister Rosemary," said Richard M. Daley, then mayor, at her 40th anniversary as head of Misericordia in 2009. "Her extraordinary devotion to those in need and their families make her a role model for us all."
     "When you think of the number of lives she touched — thousands," said David Axelrod, the former senior adviser for Barack Obama. "Not just the folks who lived in Misericordia, but their families. It changed my daughter's life and it changed my whole family's life for the better. This whole place exists because of the force of her will."
      Rosemary Connelly was born in Feb. 23, 1931 on Chicago's West Side, the third child of a pair of immigrants from County Mayo, Ireland, pub owner Peter V. Connelly and Bridget Moran. She joined the Sisters of Mercy at age 18, served as a psychiatric social worker in Aurora, and a school teacher in Chicago before drawing the Misericordia assignment.
     Why her? Nobody ever explained.
     “I don’t know,” Sister Rosemary said on her 90th birthday in 2021. “That’s been a mystery. They always had a nurse in charge. And I had a master’s degree in social work and one in sociology. Maybe that’s why.’”
     She graduated with a degree in social science from St. Xavier University in 1959, received her masters in sociology from St. Louis University in 1966, and a masters in social work from Loyola in 1969.
     One of her inspirations was a nephew who had disabilities. Her first order of business after being put in charge of Misericordia was to go to Sears for tricycles and wading pools. Then she opened a dining room, so children could eat together, as a community.

     Misericordia — the word means "mercy" or "compassion" in Latin —stopped sending children to the state.

     "I decided we'd keep them," she said.
     That meant the population grew, and by 1976, the Misericordia Home for Special Children, was too small.

     Meanwhile, the largest Catholic children's home in the city, the Angel Guardian Orphanage at Devon and Ridge, had closed for lack of state funding and the rise of foster homes. Sister Rosemary saw its possibilities, and talked Catholic Charities into putting the 31-acre campus under her control.

     On March 29, 1976, 39 children boarded a yellow school bus for the trip from 47th Street to the North Side. This being a Sister Rosemary Connelly operation, on the way the bus stopped at the Lincoln Park Zoo, so the children could visit the animals.

     "To put these children in a nursing home is unfair," she said. "We want to help them become caring people. We're trying to break this whole condescending world in which retarded people live."

     Sister Rosemary inherited an aged campus of cottages in need of repair, and exercised two strengths she showed a positive genius for: mobilizing volunteers and raising money.

     "She was the best politician in town," said Axelrod, who was also founding director of the University of Chicago's Institute of Politics. "She knew everybody. You didn't want to disappoint her."

     Axelrod said she called Joe Biden "My brother Joe," and once, when she was visiting the White House, Biden walked her into the Oval office to meet Barack Obama, introducing her with, "Mr. President, this is why I'm a Catholic."

     "She looked like a sweet white haired nun until you realized she was made of structural steel," said Carol Marin, the former newscaster and co-director of the DePaul Center for Journalism Integrity & Excellence.

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Working with photographers

Ashlee Rezin, left, at Roseland Community Hospital on Wednesday.

     One of the best things about working at a newspaper is working with newspaper photographers. 

     I can't begin to recount what I've learned over the years, the insights, the tips, the stories that came my way. Just doing our jobs together. Cruising slowly through a low-rise CHA project with Pulitzer-Prize winner John H. White, soft-spoken and wise. Running out of the newsroom after Brian Jackson because of the Rose of Sharon Church was on fire. After a hose split in the sub-zero cold and my feet got wet, Brian dragged me into a bodega, and the owner gave us tea while I put my feet on the radiator. Covering a candlelight vigil for a murdered woman with Bob Black. Scottie Stewart, himself a paramedic, knowing everything there is to know about fire fighters. Rich Chapman, covering a Playboy photo shoot.

     Bob Ringham and I driving downstate to cover the Mississippi floods, talking, him telling me about lying in a foxhole in Vietnam, severely wounded, after a shell killed the other guys in it.  Then years later, allowing me into his home, to write about a story about his wife Peg as she died of Lewy body dementia.  

     And Bob Davis. We were a team, and really should pull a book together about the stories we did in the late 1980s and early 1990s. That day in 1991 at the medical examiner's office. Him getting up close, right into the face of a corpse that had lain on the floor of a transient hotel for two weeks in August. Clinging to the boom of a tower crane atop the Park Hyatt. Traveling up the Mississippi on a gravel barge after they re-opened the river following the floods. Holding onto the back of his belt as he hung out the window of a cab hurtling through Taipei, capturing the colorful blur of nightlife. 

     During one visit downstate during the Mississippi floods, finding an enclave of Harlan County coal miners who had retired to the paradise of Southern Illinois, only to have the river destroy everything they owned.  "What's it like inside?" Bob called to a gaunt man sweeping off his porch. "Can't get inside," the old man said, and Bob and I put our shoulders to the door and pushed it in—a couch had floated against it. The waterline was a foot below the ceiling, with framed photos face down in the muck. Bob stepped in first, turned, and framed the man looking in the doorway. "A poor man can't get a break in this life," the man said. 

      Then in 2013, the Sun-Times, desperately trying to keep afloat, fired all of its photographers. Twenty-eight people. Reporters were expected to fill the gap with our iPhones. It was a terrible, false economy, like putting out your eyes to save on mascara.

     Working without a photographer began to feel like the regular routine, the new diminished journalistic world we all had to live in, if it could be called living. We got used to it, or tried to.

      But that has been changing, for a long time now, actually. At least five years. Now we have people like Ashlee Rezin. I won't embarrass her by going on about her too much. We've worked together on a number of stories, particularly medical stories after COVID hit. On one, about an overworked head nurse, Ashlee provided so many important details that I wasn't there to see, I shared the byline with her, something that hardly ever happens. She called me Monday and pointed out that hospitals are heating up again. The words "...so get off your ass" were not required—and of course Ashlee would never say that, but I got the message, made the call, and Wednesday we were at Roseland, on the far South Side, which you can read here. 

     I do want to point this out. When I wrote my lede sentence, it was, "Jean Joseph's patient is thrashing around." She read it in the paper's system, and observed that I was overstating the case. I instantly saw that she was right, and dialed it back to "is struggling against him."

      That sensitivity to nuance, and willingness to speak up—hey, this isn't quite right—without drama or fear that it would be taken wrong, is a rare and valuable thing.  We both know we're trying to tell exactly what happened.

     Nor is she alone. The 2013 firing created so much ill-will against the paper, I think some readers somehow don't quite realize that we have photographers now.  Not only is there Ashlee, but people like Pat Nabong—she took the wonderful portrait of Sister Rosemary Connelly that ran on our front page a week ago Sunday. Energetic youngsters—Tyler LaRiviere, Anthony Vazquez, Brian Ernst—I've worked with them all. They're out there, every day, exploring every corner of the city. 

     With the endless COVID lockdown, and all the terrible isolation that comes with it, I think it's extra important to recognize the value of working with other people, for a spectrum of reasons, from camaraderie to a second set of eyes to, with photographers, the resulting pictures, which really are worth 1,000 words. Or more.

      Could we use additional photographers? Sure. But that doesn't negate the constant, gerbil-on-a-wheel work that the newspaper's photographers are doing every day. If you haven't seen the best of their 2021 photos, give it a look. Chicago should be proud to know they are out there, capturing our reality, today and for all time. I know I am. I wrote Monday's Roseland story. But Ashlee gave the push that got it written.

‘I’m overwhelmed with God’s goodness’

Sister Rosemary Connelly (Photo for the Sun-Times by Pat Nabong)

     “The day I walked into Misericordia, I really felt God’s presence, and wasn’t afraid,” said Sister Rosemary Connelly, 90, lunch untouched as we caught up at the venerable Chicago institution — 100 years old this year — where some 600 people with developmental challenges live and work.
     That was in 1969, when Misericordia was still on 47th Street. I wondered: why did the archdiocese pick her?
     “I don’t know,” Sister Rosemary said. “That’s been a mystery. They always had a nurse in charge. And I had a master’s degree in social work and one in sociology. Maybe that’s why.’”
     I’ve been visiting Misericordia since 1994, more than half her tenure. It’s a good story. When I read last week that Sister Rosemary is shifting her duties, now heading Misericordia’s new foundation, a role that “will likely involve public relations work,” I couldn’t help tamping down a smile and phoning her up to point out that PR involves taking media jackals to lunch. She could start with me. 

     Has COVID-19 been tough?
     “It has been,” she said. “Our kids have been wonderful. For a while they couldn’t go home, the ones able to go home. The staff just made it so pleasant for them. It’s been wonderful.”
     Notice that pivot Sister Rosemary does: always away from herself, toward others. Always grateful, never complaining, not that I didn’t try to draw complaint out.
     But how about her?
     ”l thought it wouldn’t last this long,” she began, deflecting the question like a matador. “They’re wonderful, the residents. Neil, they have been unbelievable. Because of the staff. They’ve stepped up. They’re extraordinary.”
     They’re also in short supply. Misericordia usually has 1,200 employees augmented by two dozen daily volunteers. Now they’re 100 staffers down, and the volunteers have to stay away.
     “It’s been hard on our kids, not having volunteers around,” she said.
     Projects have been on hold. Their 14th and 15th independent group homes — one on campus, one in Evanston — should have opened by now. By March, Misericordia will open a drive-thru bakery, and if you take away one thing from today, it should be the name “Hearts and Flour Bakery.” Started to impart vocational skills, it grew into a humming commercial establishment that’ll mail 10,000 packages this month. I’ve sent their products to my mother, my sister, friends. Fantastic. The heart-shaped brownies. I can’t recommend it enough.

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Flashback 1994: Group Serves Up Hope for Disabled Residents

Server at the Greenhouse Inn

    Having just written a blog post Tuesday about putting my suit jackets away, it makes sense that Wednesday I found myself slipping into my blue Lauren blazer to go to lunch with my old friend, Sister Rosemary Connelly, at Misericordia, the revered Chicago residence for people with development disabilities. 

     I thought I might feature that conversation Friday but, honestly, she was so inspiring, I think I'll save it to closer to Christmas. It'll perk up the holiday.

     In the meantime, we reminisced, and I mentioned how I first heard of Misericordia. I was the charities, foundations and private social services reporter, and called them for an article I was writing about charities that go door-to-door. I cold-called Misericordia, which does not collect door-to-door. But while I had someone on the phone, I asked, "What is Misericordia anyway?" I had no idea; it could have been a disease. (The word is Latin for mercy).

     She mentioned the various programs they have and then added that they also have the Greenhouse Inn, a restaurant fully staffed with people with Down Syndrome and other challenges. I asked if it was some kind of training restaurant, something to help residents learn skills, and was told no, it is a public restaurant, with a sign and menus and customers who pay money. I had to see for myself. It's been closed due to COVID, of course, but this will give you a sense of the place until it reopens. Misericordia now has 600 residents, and their bakery will turn out 10,000 gift baskets this season. I've sent them to friends and relatives, and if you are stumped as to a great Christmas gift, their Hearts and Flour Bakery is the answer to any dilemma. 

     The Greenhouse Inn at first glance seems to be a regular, run-of-the-mill family restaurant, perhaps a little nicer than most.
     The decor is sea-foam green and pastel pink, with cheery if not quite inspired artwork and hanging plants. The napkins are linen, and slices of lemon float in the ice water. There's a salad bar with melon slices and hearty soups, and even a little bakery section, where customers can take home specialty breads and delicate pastries.
     But the Greenhouse, 6300 N. Ridge, is one of the most unusual restaurants in Chicago. You get a hint of that before you even have a chance to sit down.
     "Hi, I'm Rhonda," says a waitress, earnestly, extending her hand to shake.
     Rhonda is a slight woman, 23, and her features have the distinctive cast of a person with Down syndrome.
     So does Richard, in his chef's hat, filling orders back in the kitchen. And Brian, washing dishes. And Bill, clearing tables.
     In fact most of the employees of the Greenhouse Inn are people with disabilities, either Down syndrome or some other type of condition.
     "The restaurant reminds me of a tea room, so light and cheerful and happy," says Lesley Byers, a spokesman for Misericordia, a residence run by Catholic Charities housing some 450 people with disabilities at two locations. "It shows such a positive feeling, and is so non-institutional. It surprises a lot of people here for the first time."
     The Greenhouse Inn, reopening today after its summer hiatus, is one of many businesses run by Misericordia, from a crafts and ceramics manufacturer to a greenhouse to a full-size professional bakery.
     All are designed to give residents job skills and, not incidentally, offer the public a chance to learn that people with mental and physical disabilities are capable of functioning in productive ways.
     "You think, `This is the '90s, people are more open and understanding,' " Byers says. "But there is still such a stigma against people with any type of disability—minds are closed against them."
     The Greenhouse differs in a few ways from a regular restaurant.
     Since some of the employees can't read, patrons mark their own orders on brightly colored order slips. The restaurant cannot advertise because of its nonprofit status and, perhaps most unusual for an urban eatery, the workers are not all aspiring actresses or playwrights, but people who really want to work in a restaurant.
     "I like to serve food and drinks," Rhonda says. "It's fun."
     "It helps me with my confidence," Bill, 25, says. "It's also good for friends and volunteers. And the free lunch."
     That is not to say that the job is without its drawbacks. Like anywhere else in the food service industry, the pace sometimes gets to the employees of the Greenhouse.
     "Stress," Bill says, asked about the drawbacks of the job.
     "Walking around too much," Rhonda says.
     Another waiter, Scott, looks weary as he trundles toward the kitchen and, asked why, slaps the back of a hand to his forehead and says, "I'm a wreck."
     About 40 residents work for the restaurant daily, aided by Misericordia staff and volunteers, who do some of the more dangerous tasks, like working the grill.
     Like any restaurant, the Greenhouse attracts a particular clientele. No sharp guys in Armani suits with cellular phones stuck to their ears here. Patrons tend to be older and many are from the neighborhood, such as the Bible study group that was having a going-away luncheon for one of its members. "We like to come here—it's always fun," Don Breting says. "The servers are happy people."
     The Greenhouse Inn is open weekdays from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

                        —Originally published in the Sun-Times, August 8, 1994

• 
  

"The most difficult cuts I've ever seen"

     Illinois was 50th out of 50 before.
     Dead last, of the 50 states, behind Mississippi, behind Alabama, behind Texas, for services to help people with disabilities live independently.
    That was five years ago.
     Now dig a hole, because Illinois is going lower, as Gov. Bruce Rauner's new budget, unveiled Wednesday, chokes off help to Illinoisans struggling to get by.
     "It's going to be huge," said Gary Arnold, spokesman for Access Living, which supports independent living for those with disabilities. "Tens of thousands of people are in these programs."
     Sister Rosemary Connelly, the 83-year-old nun who founded and directs Misericordia, the North Side residence for people with cognitive challenges, did not mince words.

Sister Rosemary Connelly, and Terry Morrissey

     

     "The budget scares me very much," she said, "because they're trying to resolve a problem on the back of God's most vulnerable people. It's so unfair, if this is a society that really cares about people."
     In addition to community support, care for the emotionally disturbed, as always, gets hacked.
     "Mental health always seems to get cut first," said Tiffany Taft, a licensed clinical psychologist in Oak Park. "Because of the stigma associated with it. It's easier to sweep under the rug."
     Taft pointed out that, in Rauner's defense, this kind of budget is nothing new.
     "It's been ongoing; Quinn did it too," she said. "I think it's horrendous."
     Taft can't take Medicaid patients, so spends hours on the phone trying to find public clinics whose waiting lists aren't three months long.
     "They cut options to people in crisis," she said, "and then they wonder why people go on shooting rampages."
    Like many private charities, Misericordia, uses public funding, and when that falls short, must make it up the difference with private donations. Last year that meant finding $15 million in donations. With the new budget, that jumps to $21 million.
     "I don't know if I have that capacity," said Connelly. "We're worried about the future."
     And they're in a better position than most.
     "So many people scared silly by this budget," said Connelly. "Looking beyond Misericordia, looking at Catholic Charities."
     "It's hard to tell right now," said Monsignor Mike Boland, president of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago. "It'll affect a lot of our programs if fully implemented the way it is, it will greatly affect the most frail people in the state, especially frail seniors...The budget is balanced on the backs of every poor people. It'll affect all our early childhood centers. This has a negative impact, a very negative effect, upon all the populations we serve."
     Director of Catholic Charities for 15 years, Boland has seen austerity budgets. But never one like this.
     "This is probably the most difficult cuts I've ever seen," said Boland. "I never seen these kind of profound cuts proposed. It's just so incredibly challenging to all of us trying to care for people who oftentimes don't have anyone to speak on their behalf."
     For those long in the business of extracting funds from the government to help people, a common refrain is that the announced budget, dire though it is, isn't the end, but the beginning of the true battle.
     "We have a new administration; they've got a lot to learn," said Tony Paulauski, executive director of The Arc, the largest disability advocacy organization in Illinois. "We would like the opportunity to sit down with them and educate them of the importance of community living. This is the first step in a budget process that's going to go on four or five months."
     Access Living's Gary Arnold pointed out that one of the cruel ironies of the cuts is that since they dismantle programs that allow people to live on their own, they'll end up back in institutions.
     "You lose your independence and it costs more," he said."If the goal is saving money, we're going about it the wrong way. The right way is good strong programs that support people with disabilities in integrated communities and their own homes."
     Yes, Illinois is in a terrible financial hole. Cuts have to be made. But picking over the stories about Rauner's 2016 budget, all you see are programs for the poor, for children, for the homeless, for the mentally ill and physically challenged. If there is a cut that's going to hit businesses, that's going to affect rich people like Bruce Rauner, maybe encourage them to own five mansions instead of nine, I missed it. The pain is going to be felt by the sort of people who never show up at Rauner's cocktail parties.
     Sister Rosemary said she has to wonder what motivates the governor.
     "I think it's a real indictment of a philosophy of resentment [that] there are people who need more help and have to depend on the goodness of others," said Connelly. "What we're doing is important. I wish the governor would come and take a tour."
     Paulauski did mention a bit of good news: Illinois is no long the last state; it has climbed to 49th when it comes to providing community services to people with disabilities.
     "We're ahead of Mississippi," he said. "I remain optimistic."

Rahm Emanuel: the nature of the beast

     When Esquire phoned at the end of October and asked me to profile Rahm Emanuel, I was both excited and slightly dubious. The last article they asked me to do never saw the light of day, and I told the mayor that we might go through the whole process and end up with nothing in the magazine. But he was game, and it wasn't like I could say No. It's Esquire. I spent four days with the mayor, and while I didn't feel like I exactly saw a candid slice of his working life—we spent a lot of time doing fuzzy activities such as reading to kindergarten classes and cutting ribbons at tot lots— I got to know him a little, to the degree that he can be known.  It was a ton of work -- a very busy November, December and part of January — but it ended up nine full pages in the magazine. I learned much, got a chance to speak with people — David Axelrod, Garry McCarthy, Karen Lewis — I hadn't spoken with in depth before, and am satisfied with how it turned out. A few things didn't end up in the article that I wish were there — such as a fleeting encounter with the ever charmless Rich Daley — but I suppose those will find their way into print eventually.

     Sister Rosemary Connelly was not pleased with the mayor of Chicago. The head of Misericordia, a beloved home to 600 people with Down syndrome and other disabilities, the eighty-three-year-old nun might not at first glance seem to be in a position to carry much influence over city politics. But this is Chicago, and Misericordia offers gold-plated care in a state notorious for its nightmarish residential institutions. The children and siblings of the powerful—politicians, TV anchors, lawyers, developers—are cared for there, and an A-list of Chicago’s leadership arrives on command, on bended knee and with an open checkbook.

     It was 2011, and the City of Chicago had to bridge a massive budget deficit. Before he was even sworn into office, the mayor had announced that churches and social services would have to pay for the water from Lake Michigan like everybody else. With a stroke of the mayor’s pen, Misericordia’s water bill would go from zero to $350,000 a year. Sister Rosemary invited the mayor to speak to her fundraising breakfast. To his great credit, he showed up.

     In his benediction, Misericordia’s Father Jack Clair felt inspired to bring a visual aid, a glass of water, to hold up and say, “Thank you, God, for the gift of water.” Then he paused. “Oh,” he said, looking at the mayor, “it’s not a gift anymore.”

    At his turn to speak, the mayor returned fire. “I thought Jewish mothers had a corner on the market as it relates to guilt,” he said. The issue lingered, and two years later, when he appeared at a Special Olympics breakfast at the lush University Club, he spoke about the hard decisions that reality forces on leaders and about that time he made everybody pay for water, including Sister Rosemary, who was sitting in the audience. As soon as he finished speaking, he strode directly over to her and gave her a big hug. In a city known for political brawling, the mayor is a bastard’s bastard, profoundly profane and epically vindictive. But this was not a fight he relished. Give him a ward heeler or a senator or a president, no problem. But a nun?

     “You know what the mayor says about me?” she had told the table, minutes before, smiling beatifically, her pleasant, deeply lined face ringed with an angelic halo of white hair. “He says, ‘Sister, you scare the shit out of me.’

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Paddling the divine canoe

   

      An ellipsis, as you no doubt are aware, is the little train of three (or four) periods signaling there's more, either words that are missing, or yet to come. Or just a pregnant pause. 
     And yet...
      My wife has a rare ability to actually pronounce ellipses.
     "I liked your column today..." she'll say, in such a way that I hear those three dots and think, Oh boy...
      "...but?" I'll add, encouraging her to get on with it. Just pull the Band-Aid.
      "...but I think you misunderstood what Sister Rosemary meant," she said Friday morning, regarding my column on Sister Rosemary Connelly of Misericordia, telling an audience, "Who's God but us?" My wife explained that Sister Rosemary didn't mean, as I archly suggested, that we are supposed to step in when God lets important matters drop. But rather that we are the agency God uses to perform His good works. 
    To illustrate this, she referred to one of my favorite jokes, the canoe joke. More about that in a moment. 

Chapel in the Sky in the Chicago Temple

     I said something like "Yeah yeah." I was feeling good about the column and didn't want to entertain its deficiencies, didn't want to take what she said to heart. As people in marketing know, sometimes a message has to be delivered a few times before it is actually received. It wasn't until later Friday morning, when I got the following from reader Scott Whited, that I began to give the question serious thought. He wrote:  

     My wife and I met each other while working at Misericordia, and we were blessed to be a small part of the magnificent organization that Sr. Rosemary built and continues to build. Without assuming to know exactly what is in her mind, I think you misinterpreted the meaning behind her comment, "Who's God but us?"  Rather than rebuking God for failing to help those in need, she recognizes, embraces and acts upon the concept that God uses people to do His work.  It's like the joke about the man surrounded by flood waters who turns away people in boats and helicopters while proclaiming that God will save him, only to drown and find out that it was God who tried to save him by sending those people.  God isn't dropping balls, He's calling all of us to be His hands and feet in this world.  Sr. Rosemary hears that call and, unlike most of us, responds to it and great things happen.  Thanks for using your forum to highlight Sr. Rosemary and Misericordia.  It's an amazing place and Sr. Rosemary is a very special woman.

     Not only the same point my wife was trying to make, but using the same joke to deliver it. One thing I've learned is that when two very different people, from very different realms, say exactly the same thing about a piece of writing, well, you should pay attention, because they're probably correct.

     Of course this is all interpretation. I don't think there is an overarching intelligence that is either neglecting our fates or expecting us to step in and do nice stuff. If there is a yawning need in this world, from a practical point of view, it hardly matters if the need is due to cosmic indifference, or divine non-existence, or because an antic Heavenly Father is testing us to see if we'll jump through these hoops and do good. That's a theological matter. But what I took to heart, and what was important, to me, was that I was layering my own viewpoint upon Sister Rosemary, who no doubt by "Who's God but us?" meant that we are the agency of God, not that we are here to cover up His omissions which, being God, are fairly scarce. It seemed something worth noting.

""Who's God but us?"

Sister Rosemary Connelly and Terry Morrissey, the self-proclaimed
"Mayor of Misericordia."

Fate keeps delivering me into the hands of Sister Rosemary Connelly. I was trying to track down Mary Dempsey, the former Chicago Public Library commissioner, who happened to be volunteering that afternoon at Misericordia. So I phoned there, trying to find her, ended up on the line with Sister Rosemary and accepting her invitation to lunch. That's set off a chain of circumstance—almost against my will— that placed her and Misericordia atop the Esquire profile I wrote about Rahm Emanuel that will be out in a few days. In this case, I went to a Misericordia luncheon Tuesday, again, not because of Sister Rosemary, but to hear Amy Rule, the mayor's wife, speak, under the naive notion she might actually say something. She didn't. But Sister Rosemary sure did. 

     People love Sister Rosemary Connelly for a variety of reasons. For founding Misericordia, the city’s pre-eminent home for those with Down syndrome and other cognitive disabilities. For being its fierce advocate, fundraiser, cheerleader. For the act of singular bravery that helped create the whole thing 45 years ago.

     Her original mission was to care for disabled foundlings who were dumped by their distraught mothers on the doorsteps of Catholic churches. Then, when they turned 6, she was to hand them over to state care.

     When Sister Rosemary saw the kind of state-run hellholes she was expected to deliver her charges into, she refused. She disobeyed. She demanded the archdiocese do something, and it shrugged and gave her the newly shuttered Angel Guardian Orphanage, which became the 31-acre Misericordia home. After nearly 40 years of her stewardship, the place has the feel of a high-end golf resort without golf, or a Wisconsin resort hotel. Imagine The American Club in Kohler if every guest had a disability.

     But that isn’t why I like her.

    I like her because she isn’t afraid to talk. Sister Rosemary will tell you what’s on her mind.

     And no, not the phrase she repeats with such delight, quoting our mayor,"Sister, you scare me ..." then a word with more sting spelled in a newspaper than spelled aloud, so let's just say it's eight letters long, begins, "S-H-I" and ends "L-E-S-S."
     Not that line. But other things she says. If the state isn't paying its bill on time, as it often doesn't, she tells you. If one-size-fits-all activists clamor against Misericordia because it doesn't mesh with their fantasy that every disabled person would be happier living alone in an apartment, she says so.
     She said something Tuesday before 400 people at a fundraising lunch that I've never heard spoken before, never mind by a nun.
     And no, it wasn't individuals have "not just a right to life, but to a life worth living," a tossed-off line of hers with enough power to make the whole Right to Life movement a lot more palatable to a lot more people, though of course that would shift their focus from shaming women to helping children, and they don't seem eager to consider it.
     It wasn't that.
     Sister Rosemary was telling a story about a mother who called her in despair. "She was crying," Connelly recalled. "She said, 'I'm a single mother. I have a 15-year-old boy who can do nothing for himself, and he's too heavy for me to lift. The only place I'll ever bring him to is Misericordia.' And I said, 'I'm so, so sorry, we haven't any room.' "
     Misericordia has a 600-person waiting list. The mother said, "Please, just see him."
     "And I said, 'Oh, I don't want to see him,' " Connelly said. "He becomes real then. It becomes dangerous." A tough cookie, she is, when need be. But of course she saw him.
     "It was heartbreaking," she told the crowd. "She could no longer lift him. She was worrying about his future. She didn't know what she was going to do. And I very piously told her that he was God's child, even before hers, and she had to trust."
      The standard, sorry-not-my-table shrug so many give to those in need. But it didn't sit well with Connelly, even as she said it. "And I saw her wheel this boy down the hall, going back to a very depressing situation, and I said to myself: 'Who's God but us? If we don't do it, it's not going to happen.' "
     "Who's God but us?" Who's God but us! Pardon me, sister, but daaaamn! Do you know how many people invoke God to justify their indifference? Their harshness? Their evil acts? Their dismissal of the very people they should most open their hearts to? And here's Sister Rosemary, trying out the platitudes, finding them hollow and basically looking up at God, giving him the stink-eye and saying, "OK then, Mr. Lord of the Universe, if you're going to fail this boy, I guess we'll have to do your job for you."
     Not that she just waved the boy to the front of the line. That wouldn't be fair either.
     "It took two years to raise the money and build the house," she said, "but that boy has been here 15 years now."
     Who's God but us?! That's edgy stuff, Sister, practically sacrilege. And a recipe for making faith more palatable to those who wonder what it's all for. For inspiring you to do what you should do anyway. Less worshipping the ineffable and more trying to pick up a few of the balls that Mr. Big keeps dropping. It isn't just a Catholic obligation. The Jews have a term for it: tikkun olam. Repair the world. It just helps to have someone like Sister Rosemary remind you.
     Footnote: After Sister Rosemary finished, Amy Rule, the mayor's wife, also spoke, her first public utterance as Chicago's first lady.

Misericordia: One size doesn't fit all

Sister Rosemary Connelly

     "Above all gentlemen," Talleyrand once said, "no zeal."  He didn't mean no zeal for good causes, or no zeal to help others, but rather no Procrustean determination to treat different situations the same way, or to cling to rigid dogma and ignore particulars. I've been writing about Misericordia for years, ever since I was the paper's charities, foundations and private social services reporter. If it had a dark side, I would know about it. Being politically-connected, I suppose, to the degree that having powerful friends is a sin. 
      So I'm continually shocked to find that this compassionate and competent  home for hundreds of people with disabilities is scorned by some because it's a large institution, period, end of story, since the current trend in housing people with physical and mental challenges is to have smaller residences. It isn't right, to blame Misericordia for the faults of others, or for the faults of large institutions in the past, while ignoring what is good about the place. There is a scandal involving Misericordia, I like to say, and the scandal is there's only one. 
      Or maybe I'm just swayed by the persuasive charm of Sister Rosemary. For the first time in the nearly five months since I've begun this blog, I balked at telling someone its name. I started to, at lunch. Had my mouth open to say the words. But I looked at her and just couldn't do it. Could you? 

      Sister Rosemary Connelly is worried.

      “There are advocates out there, some paid by the government, who really feel that anything big is bad, and there’s no exceptions,” she tells me.

      We’re having lunch at the Greenhouse Inn, one of the more extraordinary restaurants in Chicago, staffed almost entirely by residents of Misericordia, a Catholic home for people with developmental disabilities, particularly Down Syndrome.

      The issue is an old one. Abuses at large institutions warehousing the disabled were a scandal, particularly in Illinois, and in some places still are. The state is pushing to move people out of institutions into small, independent living residences.

     Sister Rosemary feels unfairly maligned.
     "If you're big, you're bad," she says, summarizing critics' thinking. "They're very angry at us because we weaken their story, because we're good. They really would love to get rid of Misericordia."
     She has been in the this business since 1969. She has seen how someone can be active one year and helpless the next.
     "What are we going to do when these people become so disabled? Where are they going to go?" she said. "Dump them in inappropriate nursing homes, and that will be one of the scandals of our time. But right now there's only one way to serve the people, according to a few of these advocates."
     At first I think Sister Rosemary is exaggerating. People without disabilities choose a spectrum of living arrangements - dorm, commune, hut on a remote island - why should it be any different for those facing handicaps? Saying people must live independently is as rigid, and potentially dangerous, as saying they must live in an institutions. "Each according to his own need," as the communists say.
     Surely, she's too focused on her respected institution, which has its own independent houses on campus and is building more. Who, exactly, I ask, are you worried about?
     "Certain very powerful groups, like Arc, they have no room for Misericordia," she says. "And they heavily influence bureaucrats in the federal and state government."
      For all its wealthy patrons, Misericordia relies on government funding, which can be tardy. "2012 was a terrible year for [the state] paying their bills," says Sister Rosemary. "They owed us $27 million."
     The money's flowing again, but this worry remains. I phone the Arc of Illinois, an advocacy group. Executive Director Tony Paulauski doesn't want to speak of Misericordia. "I don't think it's newsworthy," he says. "What's newsworthy is rebalancing. This is a nonissue."
     Gosh Tony, thanks, but how about you don't tell me my business and I won't tell you yours? I have an 82-year-old nun who is worried that when she isn't here, pulling strings, people like you will tear down what she has spent her life building. Humor me.
     "It's a nursing-home model, Neil," he says. "We have better models now. I'm spending all my time on the state closing antiquated state institutions. That's the real story."
     So she's right to worry? "I don't want to tick her off," he says. "I don't want to tick her legislators off. I don't want to detract from what's really important."
     Shutting down big institutions like Misericordia and moving their residents out?
     "Yeah," he said. "What we want to see is people controlling their own homes, choosing what they want to eat for dinner, doing what you and I take for granted."
     I'm all for that too. But when you tour Misericordia, and see people who are locked into their bodies, eyes clamped shut, hands curled and frozen, the idea that they have to be removed from this setting and placed somewhere else to serve some greater activist ideology is what we laymen call "nuts."
     "It's all an overreaction to the past," says Sister Rosemary. "Where big was bad. Today big can be bad, it can be good. Small can be bad. The question is, how much supervision is going into these houses."
     She still remembers what happened last time there was a drive against institutions.
     "A man came in from Boston and said orphanages are bad, close them all, stop the funding," she says. "When I see middle-age people on the street, I wonder, are those the success stories of the 1970s? That they placed them in inadequate places, but they got them out of orphanages?"
     Misericordia isn't going anywhere, for now - with 600 residents, it has a 500-person waiting list. The families of those residents, and those who hope to be residents, obviously see its value. It's a shame that those who should know better refuse to see it as well. I'd like to tell you that you're wrong to worry, Sister. But you're not wrong.