Why Does Everyone Think Nuns are Mean?

[jovan66102]

Granted, it was almost 150 years ago, and there were ethnic rivalries involved, but when my Grandfather was in school, the only German child in an Irish school, taught by Irish nuns, if an Irish child vomited, he had to clean it up. Mean? I'd say so. As a result, he left school and the Church at the age of seven (oh, his parents dragged him to Mass, but in his heart he had left) and raised his children as prots!

[Optatus Cleary]

Granted, it was almost 150 years ago, and there were ethnic rivalries involved, but when my Grandfather was in school, the only German child in an Irish school, taught by Irish nuns, if an Irish child vomited, he had to clean it up. Mean? I'd say so. As a result, he left school and the Church at the age of seven (oh, his parents dragged him to Mass, but in his heart he had left) and raised his children as prots!

Interestingly, my (Very Irish-American) mom says that Irish nuns were meaner than the others.

[jovan66102]

I think it may have to do with the semi-Calvinist, Jansenist heresy. When the French Revolution occurred and the Church was suppressed, the Penal Laws in Ireland were being lifted. As a result, many of the the Jansenist Clergy, Orders and Institutes fled to Ireland, thus infecting the Irish Church with a rigid, Jansenistic doctrine. Those Priests and Nuns became the teachers and mentors of the generation who fled Ireland during the Great Famine, thus infecting the Irish Church, both on the Ould Sod and in North America, with a rigid, Jansenistic doctrine

[Poche]

I do not remember the nuns being mean either. I remember them being  strict but understanding.  I also do  not remember ever seeing them with a ruler unless it was math class and we were working on measurements.

That is true of most nuns. However I remember one nun in particular who was so mean I think she should have gone to jail.