Dominican nun shares ‘signs of life’ with hearing

Dominican Sister of Peace Shirley Bodisch has seen some incredible things in her 30 years of fellowship with deaf Catholics, but one decades-old memory still moves her.

During Masses in the chapel of Baton Rouge’s Catholic Deaf Center, a deaf worshiper would carefully watch the hearing interpreter translate the spoken liturgy into sign language. After processing the interpreter’s visual cues, the deaf man would relay the Mass’ proceedings to his deaf-and-blind parents by placing the corresponding hand and finger signs onto their palms.

“The mother would be on one side and the father on the other, and the son would be ambidextrous, signing the Mass to both his parents simultaneously,” recalled Sister Shirley, 68. “I would watch him and be totally astonished. What a gift he was to them! The love that went into that!”

Labor of love
Breaking down communication barriers between the deaf and hearing worlds continues to inspire Sister Shirley, an American Sign Language (ASL) instructor with the People Program, the Congregation of St. Joseph-founded program of enrichment courses for students aged 50 and older.

During the six-week summer session, Sister Shirley’s class of six hearing students will focus on learning the ASL gestures related to the home, clothing and travel.

“I’m amazed at how much they learn because it’s very hard. The older you are, the harder it is to pick up a language,” said Sister Shirley, who donned a yellow cap and shirt during a recent class to teach her pupils the sign for that color.

Armed with illustrated handouts, the students – some first-timers and others more advanced – learned the ASL signs for concepts such as “drawer,” “window,” and “kitchen,” folding their new vocabulary into full sentences by the end of the hour-long class. They concluded by completing a word-search puzzle, an activity Sister Shirley uses to sharpen her students’ visual acuity.

“Some of them struggle and others just sail on,” Sister Shirley said. “We go slowly so that everyone has a chance to be able to improve their skills.”

An unexpected calling
A native of Boston who moved to Gulfport at age 12 and entered the convent at 18, Sister Shirley spent the first 20 years of her ministry teaching religion and social studies to hearing students at elementary schools in Louisiana and Mississippi, and at St. Mary’s Dominican High. A ministerial change of direction came “clean out of the blue” in 1982: Father Miles Kearney, pastor of St. Francis de Sales Parish for the Deaf in Baton Rouge, asked Sister Shirley to come on as his associate. At the time, she had no experience with the deaf or ASL.

“I said, ‘God, if I can learn this language well, then that will be a sign from you for me to go ahead into this ministry; but if it’s a struggle for me to learn it, it will be a sign that you don’t want me to go,’” said Sister Shirley, who immediately “fell in love with the language” during classes at St. Mary’s Dominican and Delgado Community colleges.

“I found it very easy to learn,” she recalls.

Eager teachers
Early on in her new role, the deaf would pull Sister Shirley into their meetings to immerse her in ASL, patiently correcting her when she made mistakes.

“(The deaf) were my best teachers,” Sister Shirley said. “My vocabulary expanded by watching them and asking them questions. It took me about four years of interacting with them on a daily basis (to become fluent).”

When Father Kearney was reassigned, Sister Shirley was appointed by Baton Rouge Bishop Stanley J. Ott to direct the center, which included a school of religion for Catholic students attending the nearby state school for the deaf. Sister Shirley built up her parish base by teaching the deaf to serve as Mass lectors, extraordinary ministers of holy Communion and altar servers, by decorating the chapel to reflect the changing liturgical seasons, and by holding socials after the “bilingual” signed and spoken Masses.

“It was so successful that eventually hearing people from nearby communities started to come,” Sister Shirley recalled. “They enjoyed, I think, the smallness of the parish, as well as the participation that went on, and they began to learn some of the signs for themselves.”

Returning to New Orleans in 1990, Sister Shirley kept up her signing skills during a seven-year stint as vocation director for the Dominican congregation. On weekends she facilitated Bible studies at deaf centers in Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, Gulfport and at St. Gerard’s Catholic Deaf Center in New Orleans, founded in 1971 as the state’s first parish for the deaf and a continuing apostolate of St. Francis Xavier Seelos Parish in Bywater.

“I-10 was my office,” chuckled Sister Shirley, adding that while a subsequent nine-year position on the Dominicans’ leadership council took her away from regular work with the deaf, the People Program expressed interest in her special skills in 2010.

“A lot of hearing people think signs stand for English words, but they don’t,” said Sister Shirley, addressing her current class of students at the People Program’s main campus on Lakeshore Avenue. “People who were born deaf, or who went deaf at a very early age, do not think in English because they’ve never heard English words,” she said.

For example, the sign for “home” is made by touching the side of the mouth and then touching the top part of the cheek – to convey the concept of “home” as the place where one eats (mouth) and sleeps (cheek).

The altogether different concept of “house” is signed by tracing the outline of a physical roof and walls.

“Deaf people live the same way as hearing people do,” Sister Shirley said, “but in a world where they don’t hear what’s going on.”

To learn more about the People Program, call 284-7678 or visit www.peopleprogram.org.

Beth Donze can be reached at [email protected].