Sister Mary Sean Hodges

Are you familiar with Vatican II Council?
No.

It was an enormous movement in the church. When there is a Vatican Council, which is when all the major bishops and cardinals in the whole world meet together in Rome over a given topic, it takes years and years to have the effect of the council spread throughout the world. The Second Vatican Council started in 1962, called by Pope John  XXIII. His whole view was to open up the doors and the windows to the church. And immediately, there were a lot of changes in the church for what he was wanting to do.

Just to go back a moment to why this needed to be done, the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s and 1600s stopped a lot of growth in the religion, because there was such a divide between the Catholic and Protestant churches. In order to keep the two separate, both made their own rules and didn't want it to get confusing. And so, the rules didn't change. For example, the religious garb of the church were these long habits, a very formal long habit that the Catholic Church laid in stone from the 1600s to 1962. I was in the long habit for probably ten years before our dress was updated to make it appropriate for the times.

For another example, my sister married in 1962 and I was in Northern California at the time. So, I got to fly down and stay at our convent, which was San Gabriel, and she could come see me after the wedding. I couldn't attend the wedding because that was secular. She and her husband came after it was all over. I thought it was ridiculous. Why would I travel down there to be in the convent while she's getting married, and then I can come see her for ten minutes after?

There was no change whatsoever in that time?
There wasn't. And so the Pope said we have to adapt our church to the modern world. That was what the purpose of the council, to update the church to today's world.  

We shifted from the idea that the world is a pagan place, to the idea that the world is a sacred place. Since the world is a sacred place where we live, then we can find our holiness, our redemption, within the context of the world. Whereas before Vatican II, all that was secular and therefore not holy. Incredible, huh?

So, Vatican II Council ended in 1965 and some of these changes came out right away. We shortened our habits within five years. Sisters did not have to live necessarily in a convent, but could live in an apartment, could live in homes, could travel by themselves, could teach in other places than just Catholic schools. That some of the immediate impact.

It’s been more than 50 years since Vatican II, and the impact has been slow in growing. There are many who hold onto the tradition of the Church and do not want any changes from Vatican II. And then there are those who really see the value of Vatican II and totally adopt it.

Did you ever question your decision to go into the church?
I am sure I did. Was it anything that was monumental enough to say, “Hey, I'm considering going home?” No. We lost a lot of sisters in the late ‘60s, early '70s. Thirteen sisters who were strong leaders in our congregation left to form their own group, because they didn't feel we were moving fast enough with Vatican II.

You didn't want to go with them?
No, I didn't. I still have disagreements with some of the rules of our congregation, but not enough to say I don't want to do this. Basically, I love what we do.

What does it mean to be a sister?
That I belong to a community. There are many, many different religious congregations and communities, and each one was founded for a specific purpose—this is called its “charism.” Dominicans are preachers. Order of Preachers, or OP, is our name. We were founded to spread the Gospel of Truth to the world. Our particular congregation was founded in 1876 to teach migrant children and persons on the margins, the poor, the vulnerable. All congregations started in New York, which was the hub of religion. And then bishops from other dioceses throughout the United States asked for congregations to send sisters. So, the bishop of San Francisco asked if we would come out to San Francisco and work with the German immigrant people.

Now you work with PREP, the Partnership for Re-entry Program. How did you get involved with that?
In the '80s, sisters began to do different ministries. I taught in our congregation’s schools for 39 years. When I got to be 60, I thought I’d still want to be active in the ministry and I’d still want to work. And I had better change what I was doing then, because otherwise I would be too old to want to do something new. So, when I was 60, I stopped teaching and I took a year off school to look at what else I could do. I decided to do prison work; I was just continually drawn to it.

I think a strong influence was my younger brother, who's an alcoholic. He tried many alcohol treatment programs, and became homeless in the process of all of that. I kept thinking, “Okay, how can my brother want this so much and yet still go back to alcohol?” I realized the problem was that nothing changed in his cycle. He would go into a program, go home, and go back into the program. He didn't know how to get into a different situation.

When my father was passing, we needed somebody to take care of him. We said, “Paul, will you live with dad? None of us can.” And so Paul moved from LA to the San Luis Obispo area to live with my dad. And it was enough to change my brother's life.

That's amazing.
Yeah, it was. He didn't even go back into any kind of program, but he began going to AA meetings. His responsibility became to take care of my father. He’s been sober for 20 years.

That inspired you to do prison work?
When I took my sabbatical, I first went to New York. A sister there knew somebody in the prison ministry. So, I went to visit her and I was intrigued by the work. After that, I went to Arizona and I volunteered for Catholic charities. A sister there was doing prison ministry, so I asked if I could go with her to the prison to visit inmates. And I just liked it.

At the time, I was a big runner. So, I came from Arizona to do the LA marathon. And I went to see a sister who had established what's called “detention ministry.” I told her I wanted to work with people who come out of prison. They needed somebody with the skills to put a program together. So, I got hired immediately.

The idea of “restorative justice” became a known term then. “Detention” is so negative, because it means to hold a person back. “Restorative justice” means to hold a person responsible for their actions, but make it a healing relationship. If I hurt you, I need to be accountable for it, which means I may go to prison. But it also may mean we work together to heal the brokenness. What do I have to do to make up for the crime? That's the idea of restorative justice. Many of the offices throughout the United States have changed their name from “detention ministries” to “restorative justice ministries.”

How does the program work?
It’s not so much like therapy, or even like spiritual direction, as much as it is rehabilitation. I work with the “lifers” who are in prison for serious crime. I realized that hardly anyone is in prison without having been a victim when they were a child. There's a saying that I use a lot: “Pain that is not transformed is transmitted.” For example, if I'm your parent and I just continually batter you, always yelling at you and physically beating you, then you're going to grow up that way. You're going to grow up believing you're no good, because that's what you've learned from me as a parent.

I spend a lot of time working with inmates in groups. By talking to them, I help them to understand what happened to them as children, which led them into crime.