The setting of this nameless college is somewhere in eastern Montana... [St. Fidgeta & Other Parodies, 72-6]. It awards an annual Patriotism Award.
Faculty/Staff
Why eastern Montana? Both Myers and Bowen concede that it's even more remote and out of the way from civilization than rural Minnesota where Bellairs taught at the College of St. Teresa's. That said, we wonder as a whole how much of this piece was inspired by John's teaching experience in Winona. We also wonder how far from the truth this piece is from how other Catholic universities were run. We also wonder if we wonder too much.
Bowen says he thinks this entire chapter was inspired by Bellairs's teaching experience. "I never taught at a Catholic institution of higher learning myself, or attended one other than Notre Dame, but I suspect that the provincialism John satirized was common enough. It also seemed to be true more for women's colleges than for men's that they were often run by one powerful nun with a dominant personality and dictatorial powers."
Myers agrees, nothing he sees it more of a satire on overprotective Catholic women's colleges of the era than Catholic universities in general. "Anyway, it reflects an era now long past and fundamentally changed."
As for Bellairs's attitudes toward the college and its administration, former instructor and colleague William Goodreau recalls that Bellairs loved the church but could not stand hypocrisy: "He once burst out in his characteristic way that 'the College of St. Teresa's is the only place I know where Christian hate is practiced to perfection.'"
Another fellow instructor, Norbert Geier, fondly remembers Bellairs's sense of humor in finding the irony that escaped most people. "I vaguely remember his relating to me the time that he observed one of the 'housekeeping nuns' reading the headlines of the daily newspaper that was conspicuously posted in the main building of the college. The news had something to with the Communists putting down an uprising somewhere. At any rate, the sister turned to John and said with evident relish, 'Do you know what they do with their opponents? They tear out their guts!' John got a kick out of that."
"At Notre Dame, the presidents had a lot of power too," continues Bowen, "as did most university presidents in and out of religious orders, but a university, being a relatively large community, always has multiple power centers and even if they are not equal there is some balance. I don't know how it was in small men's colleges, but I suspect that even here the people in charge had more contact with the world outside and were less likely to run the place as if it was a convent. The women's orders were beginning to send some of their brighter young members to leading universities for graduate education. This was still a new thing and their generation wouldn't be in charge of the orders and the colleges for some years yet - if they stayed around at all, that is. Women's liberation set a lot of nuns free from choices they had made when they were little more than girls. Nuns of the 1960's had been educated along strict 'pray and obey' lines, and those who had strong enough personalities to rise to positions of authority were therefore unlikely to be inhibited by the understanding that a college and a convent are two very different kinds of organizations, and require different kinds of governance."
(also see Catholic Grade School; Catholic Grade School Collections; Prayer for Fair Weather)
