Remembering Sister Carol Rennie
This month, we remember Sister Carol Rennie, who passed away three years ago on May 26, 2023. Her funeral Mass was held June 3, 2023 at the Monastery, celebrated by Father Paul Feela, one of her students at the St. Paul Seminary. Excerpts from his eulogy follow, as he remembered the life of his cherished teacher.
Sister Carol Rennie was born on June 27, 1936, in St. Joseph, MN. She was baptized and confirmed at St. Joseph’s Church in St. Joseph, MN. She graduated from Cathedral High School in St. Cloud, MN in 1954. She entered the novitiate at St. Benedict’s Monastery, St. Joseph, MN, on June 15, 1955, and received the name Sister Damian. She made her First Vows on July 11, 1956, and Final Vows on July 11, 1959. Sister Carol later transferred to St. Paul’s Monastery.
Sister Carol graduated from St. Benedict’s College in St. Joseph, MN in 1965 and received a Master’s degree in Religious Education from the University of Notre Dame in 1970. She loved teaching and was passionate about teacher and student formation. She taught at the Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary from 1974-1978. She taught religion for the National Teachers Education Project from 1978-1987, and then served for many years as Associate Dean of Students of the School of Divinity, St. Paul Seminary, at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN from 1987-2004 and also at St. John’s University and School of Theology for about ten years, beginning in 1996. She deeply valued the call of the laity and affirming others in their gifts.
Sister Carol Rennie served as Prioress of St. Paul’s Monastery from 2004-2009, a time when the community was making big plans, forecasting the reality of a future when the monastic community would diminish in size and resources. Sister Carol was a true visionary in imagining this future, and used her artful leadership skills to arrange the sale of the former monastery building to Tubman to provide crisis housing for women and children, many victims of domestic abuse. She also helped to administer the sale of the adjacent land to CommonBond, to provide low-income housing for seniors and families.
Collaboration as a Hallmark of Benedictines
Sister Carol wrote in the Monastery’s publication, Passages, in 2004:
Collaboration has always been a hallmark of Benedictines. Leadership will not depend solely on me as prioress, but on every single sister and oblate. They will be called upon to share their unique wisdom for the common good of this community, the church, the world. And we will depend on all of you, our friends, to support us and keep us faithful to being a Benedictine presence in all of our endeavors.
Before her election as Prioress, Sister Carol served as Director of the Benedictine Center and Director of the Oblate program, bringing many Oblates into the monastic community. She also ministered as a beloved Spiritual Director on the Benedictine Center staff for more than two decades. The Benedictine welcome she extended to all who came through the Monastery doors was hospitality par excellence. There was no one who greeted all guests as Christ better than Sister Carol, with her quiet understanding and intuitive way of knowing what you really needed.
Sister Carol was a force for goodness, always leading by example. She was consistently compassionate and kind, truly the hands and feet of Jesus. Once, some years ago, a Monastery colleague was in tears in the dining room, bereft at the death of a family member. “She looks like she could use a friend right now,” Sister Carol said to me. “Mary, will you go and sit with her?”
Sister Carol is remembered by the community, Sisters and Oblates as a shining star by whom you could orient yourself when lost, uncertain, alone.
St. Paul Seminary
Sister Carol was an academic heavy-hitter with a Master’s degree in Religious Education from the University of Notre Dame. She was an adjunct professor at Saint John’s University, Collegeville, as well as the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul. She became Director of Student Life and the Teaching Parish program at the Saint Paul Seminary, instructing priests of our Archdiocese, making a lasting impression on their spiritual lives and ministry. Father Paul Feela recalled in his eulogy:
Sister Carol possessed a confidence in the capacity of all people to grow and develop, to cultivate habits of the mind and behaviors that could be life-giving and contribute to the good of all. This transformation of life lies at the heart of the Benedictine monastic tradition.
Thresholds
“You are at the threshold,” she said to me, 25 years ago in a spiritual direction session. It was a memorable comment, and quite accurate. As a newly confirmed Catholic, God continued to give me the wisdom and strength to navigate the vocation of marriage, motherhood and work. I believe Sister Carol meant that I was at the threshold of a contemplative life, which has only deepened over time, as a practicing Catholic and especially after joining the Monastery staff in 2017 and becoming an Oblate in 2021.
Father Feela continued: In whatever ministerial role Carol found herself in, she also sought to grow spiritually herself, to live into her values, to see Christ in everyone and everything, and to drink deeply from this well we call ‘life.’
People of faith learn to cultivate a high tolerance for contradiction and ambiguity, and Carol slowly came to recognize that it’s only our passing self that needs certitude or perfect order all the time.
In greater pursuit of the interior life, Carol took to writing haiku in her later years and, as Victor Klimoski, Carol’s good friend and former director of the Benedictine Center observed, “this practice was able to bring together the various strands of her inner life as a religious and as a disciple of Christ.” An example of one haiku:
The earth is God’s soul
Where water shares its secret
Womb, baptism, tears.
I will always be grateful to Sister Carol Rennie for her spiritual guidance, for listening with the ear of her heart, and the impression she made on my life. I will never forget her quiet presence, her unwavering kindness to all, her deep faith.
