Religious
Life
Benedictine values assist judge in her work
When Jean DiMotto was elected Milwaukee County Circuit Judge, she
realized that her childhood dream of becoming a priest was being fulfilled.
“I view my judgeship as my vocation. My ordination was my investiture. My
courtroom is my church. I wear a vestment -- my robe,” she told
NCR.
When DiMotto enters the courtroom from her chambers -- the
sacristy behind the courtroom -- and ascends to the bench, people stand as they
do when the priest processes to the altar. She views the court’s public
gallery much as she does the pews of a church.
Attorneys are allowed to enter the inner sanctum of the courtroom,
which is in front of a railing not unlike the Communion rail of old. Her staff
serves as acolytes, assisting her as she performs the rituals of her role.
These are but the externals of her job. Her real work comes in the
greeting she gives to all -- even in Spanish to Latino defendants. She ends the
sentencing rite by wishing each person good luck. When felons “sincerely
ask me for forgiveness, I give it,” she said.
In recent years DiMotto has begun to see that the values she
brings to her judgeship are named in Benedictine spirituality: mindfulness,
listening, hospitality and attention to each person. DiMotto may have to deal
with 70 to 100 cases a day. In most of these she is performing two judicial
rituals -- hearing a guilty plea and sentencing.
In the course of four or five minutes she asks a series of some 20
questions to satisfy herself that the defendants fully understand what they are
doing and that they are in fact guilty of the crime to which they are
voluntarily pleading. She may take another two or three minutes to hear from
the prosecuting and defense attorneys and to allow the defendant to speak
before imposing sentence.
“When I first took the bench five years ago, I viewed my
process in these rituals as being laser focused and absorbing information like
a sponge,” DiMotto said. “But these are mundane metaphors” for
what she now understands to be the Benedictine values of mindfulness and
listening. As an oblate of the Sisters of St. Benedict of Madison, she and 98
other oblates are part of an intentional ecumenical community, whose members
have found practical spirituality in living the Rule of Benedict.
Spiritual seekers of many denominations come to the monastery from
surrounding states and from as far away as Virginia, Florida and Texas. During
a year of candidacy, they are expected to come to Madison every other month for
retreats and spiritual formation and to get input from experienced oblates.
The oblate program began in 1997 and is under the guidance of Jody
Crowley Beers, director of spirituality. Oblates try to “nurture the
monk” in each person by integrating Benedictine spirituality into their
prayer, work, leisure and study.
The program has grown by word of mouth, said Crowley Beers, a
Catholic. Members range from their late 20s to age 87. About 15 percent of
oblates are men -- “all men who aren’t afraid of women,” said
Crowley Beers’ husband, the Rev. Bill Beers, an Episcopal priest and
hospital chaplain.
“So much of the rule is trying to under-stand humility,”
said Beers, who de-scribed himself as argumentative. The chaplain, who grew up
in the 1960s, said he questioned everyone and everything. “Here everything
is questioned because it is sacred.”
Oblate Claudia Greco said she now orders her day around morning,
noon and evening prayer, “not the other way around.” The simplicity
of monastery life and “the way the sisters model the rule,” led Greco
to move into a smaller space with her children. She has also changed how she
greets people. “I really want to be present to them.”
A Madison therapist who specializes in counseling addicts, Greco
has brought clients to the monastery for the five-day TIME (Together in
Monastic Experience) retreat, during which they tend the garden and orchards,
as well as their spiritual life.
Katie Kretschman occasionally accompanied her mother, Carole
Kretschman, to the monastery. On one visit she heard Benedictine Sr. Joan
Chittister of Erie, Pa. A year later Katie became one of the youngest oblates.
A musician, she has soloed on her trombone at the monastery.
The physical surroundings and simple furnishings of the monastery
are what first attracted Carole Kretschman, a mother of four. Kretschman said
she’d long “thought of the church as something you did or a place you
went; I did not see it as something to fulfill my needs.” But during a
trip to the Netherlands to visit Katie, “I saw the richness of the culture
and history of the Dutch church … When the oblate program arrived, I was
ready to take my life to a higher level.”
That higher level was apparent to DiMotto when she first visited
10 years ago. “I felt something almost palpable. It immediately opened me
to the Spirit.” After years of spiritual journeying, DiMotto said she went
up to her room and wept. She said that Benedictine Sr. Joanne Kollasch,
director of monastic formation, once told her: “We had our eyes on you the
moment you walked in the door.”
Kollasch said: “Some people possess an awareness of an inner
life to a heightened degree; others take years to uncover it.” The
challenge is in knowing “when to blow on that ember and when to leave the
person in a quiet space for it to develop.”
-- Patricia Lefevere
National Catholic Reporter, February 21,
2003
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