Women of Accomplishment

She’s 77 years old and has eschewed a life of comfortable retirement in favor of one dedicated to uninterrupted service for people in the poorest country of the western Hemisphere, Haiti.

Her name is Sister Mary Finnick. She is a member of the order of the Grey Nuns of Yardley Pennsylvania and runs Matthew 25 House, a rehabilitation center turned hospital in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, one of the few such facilities which survived the earthquake that destroyed large swaths of Haitian cities and towns.

It was a photo highlighting her effervescent smile, as she was flanked by two Haitian children with the same happy expression that caught my attention. In our own very different culture, it’s hard to believe that people living amidst such extreme destitution can still retain the ability to internalize an I-will-survive attitude towards life despite continual setbacks – but such is the ethos of the Haitian people.

Sister Finnick is typical of modern nuns who, although greatly diminished in numbers, are still out in the world extending their work of service to others. The only outward hint – not counting the twinkle in her eyes -- that Finnick is a nun is the small crucifix protruding from a chain tucked under the collar of her yellow knit shirt.

There are six autonomous congregations of the Grey Nuns. The first was founded in the early 18th century by Marguerite d’Youville for the expressed purpose of serving society’s marginalized. Born in Quebec, Canada, Marguerite was formally recognized as a saint in 1990 by the Roman Catholic Church, the only Canadian to hold that distinction.

I can easily relate to these extraordinary women of accomplishment. It was teachers such as Sister Finnick – a professor before her current assignment – from the order of the Grey Nuns of the Cross who saw me through the first eight grades at Ste. Jeanne d’Arc, a bi-lingual grammar school in Lowell, Mass – Finnick’s home town, and one of the New England cities named in Bob Braun’s article which inspired this post.

Running a Healthcare System

If some of the large hospital systems in New Jersey were managed like some of the large Wall Street firms, supersized commercial banks, and government agencies that contributed to derailing the economy, we’d all be in an even worse pickle.

This was brought vividly to mind up close and personal this week. When Priscille was admitted for surgery, I saw professional healthcare providers at work – all the way from a highly-trained surgical team, to nurses, to nutrition specialists, to personal care assistants, right down to the diligent people who sweep the floors and empty the waste baskets, etc., etc., and many others that I don’t even know about.

It may seem that there is no comparison between the operations of the U.S. financial system and the U.S. healthcare system, but there is a significant resemblance – not in what they do, but in how they do it. In the former, it seems that far too many people just didn’t give a damn.

And that’s all the difference in the world because, for over a week now, I’ve observed part of a healthcare system in Passaic County where people who take care of other people really do give a damn.

It’s not mere coincidence that St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center in Paterson runs an efficiently tight ship. That hospital operates under the direction of the Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth, a religious order.

Now, don’t misunderstand: I’m not saying that a hospital has to be run by nuns to be efficient. But I’ll wager any day that if the boys running the U.S financial system and the people who abused it had operated under a code of conduct at par with a religious order of nuns, we wouldn’t have been listening to President Obama last night telling us how he proposes to pull us out of the economic mess this nation is in.

Thanks for checking in, and take care of yourselves. You deserve it.