The Catholic Advantage by Bill Donohue

Author:Bill Donohue [Donohue, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-8041-8584-4
Publisher: The Crown Publishing Group
Published: 2015-03-03T05:00:00+00:00

Mother Dolores Hart

IN 2012, SHE BECAME THE only cloistered nun to ever walk the red carpet at the Oscars. She was also the person who gave Elvis Presley his first screen kiss. She attended the Oscars because an HBO film on her life, God Is the Bigger Elvis, was nominated for Best Documentary Short Subject. Miss Dolores, as Elvis called her, was now Mother Dolores; she is known to moviegoers as Dolores Hart.

Dolores Hart has had quite a life. From Hollywood movie star to contemplative nun, she has seen fame and witnessed God’s love. We don’t need to rely only on her words to understand the latter. In the 1990s a male author got permission to visit her monastery, and he recounted his experience. He freely admitted that he could not understand why anyone would choose to live in a monastery, but when he saw how the nuns lived, it had a dramatic effect on him. Before he met Mother Dolores, he spoke with the sister in charge, Mother Placid. They spoke about love. He said that “when Mother Placid spoke to me about love, which she said she felt all around her, I could see that she experienced it in its most austere yet warmest sense.”89 It is precisely this communally expressed love, and the one-on-one love with God, that Mother Dolores prizes above all else.

Dolores was not born into a Catholic family, but she attended Catholic school, chiefly because it was closer than the nearest public school. It didn’t take long before she found herself attracted to Catholic beliefs and traditions, sneaking off to chapel when no one was there. After she made her First Communion, she converted at age eleven. Later in life she spoke about what happened next. “After my conversion, I had my first reflection about vocation: the act of being fully Catholic would be, of course, to become a nun.”90 But she had other ambitions as well. She wanted to be an actress. Off to Hollywood she went.

Dolores thoroughly enjoyed her Hollywood career, but there was something gnawing at her the whole time. She also wanted to be a nun. Torn by the two callings, she spoke to a sister in a monastery, seeking advice. “What is it that you want?” Reverend Mother Benedict asked her. “I told her that was what I was trying to find out. I said, ‘I want my career. I want to get married. I want to have a home. I want most of all to do the will of God.’ ” To which she was told, “[I] can’t tell you what the will of God is. You must decide what you want to do.”91 Dolores returned to Hollywood, resuming her career. But her internal struggle wouldn’t quit.

One day, while filming a movie, she was in her dressing room combing her hair. As she looked in the mirror, something happened that would change her life. “I distinctly heard these words in my head: ‘You know this is not what you want.

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