I have mixed feelings towards Nuns Holding Things, the anonymous Twitter account featuring (I quote directly from its bio) “pictures of habit-wearing Catholic Religious Sisters holding things.” I have never featured on the account myself, probably due to my double privation of photogenicity and ability to hold things without breaking them. However, several of my sisters have. Sister Cooey, for instance, seems to feature relatively frequently—perhaps because, being both sacristan and health and safety officer, she has much occasion to hold things in the course of her work. Sister Lucy, meanwhile, once appeared on Nuns Holding Things as a novice grinning wildly and clutching an astonishingly cartoonish-looking toadstool (red cap, white spots, the full works), which prompted a flurry of direct messages from Twitter users warning her under no circumstances to eat it. It was a welcome reminder that there is a lot of affection towards consecrated religious to be found on social media; either that, or her mother has a huge number of sockpuppet accounts.

In any case, there are two main reasons why my feelings towards Nuns Holding Things are mixed.

First, I am a pedant, and many if not most of the women featured on the account are not nuns at all, but apostolic sisters. I appreciate that “nun” is a useful casual shorthand for consecrated religious women of all stripes, as the account’s bio itself makes clear, and there are some occasions where I myself will happily accept being described as a nun. (Examples: my immediate family; my own sisters talking in jest; a primary school we visited last year, where a crowd of five-year-olds clustered duckling-like at the fence of their playground as we walked across the car park, squeaking, “Hello, nuns! Hello, nuns!” at us.) But still, I struggle to cope with the sight of a young woman from a congregation that may as well be called the Active Daughters of Our Lady of the External Apostolate being described as a nun. After all, if we’re going to interpret the word “nun” loosely, why not interpret the word “holding” in the same way? Why not feature images captioned (for instance) A Dominican sister holding the fort while everyone else has gone out for the day, or A Franciscan sister trying to hold the attention of a First Holy Communion class, or A Carmelite nun “holding space” while her sister vents about the state of the library? Really, the possibilities are endless.

The second reason I am ambivalent towards Nuns Holding Things is my more general wariness towards media portrayals of religious life. There is a difference between saying, “look at these women, they are so remarkable in their visible witness, which makes everything they do remarkable,” and saying, “look at these women, they are dressed funny, which makes everything they do funny.” While the distinction is clear in principle, it rarely is in practice. Whether the sisters in question are singing (Sister Act), fighting National Socialism (The Sound of Music), or failing to do anything useful in situations of physical and spiritual danger (The Nun), the habit, in the minds of most viewers, serves simply to slather an extra layer of absurdity and/or creepiness on proceedings. Do we also see this in the case of Nuns Holding Things, however well-intentioned its creator may be? Even I, a consecrated religious who always wears the habit, crack into a smile at the sight of a wimpled Benedictine on a tractor.

Several months ago, in a wild foray into investigative journalism, I contacted the anonymous creator of Nuns Holding Things to request an interview. I wanted to know what had motivated him or her to set up the account, what impression of consecrated religious life he or she wished to convey, and if there had been any noticeable fruit borne from the project. (I also wanted to find out if my suspicion that the account is the whimsical side hustle of an eminent cardinal or dicastery prefect is correct. There is no judgement here; everyone needs a hobby.)

Sadly, I never received a response; perhaps the person saw my unusual name and, not being familiar with obscure mediaeval beati, assumed my email was a prank. But in the period of time where I have been waiting for a reply, and doing what research it is possible to do on an anonymous Twitter account, I have found my initial suspicion towards Nuns Holding Things softening somewhat. 

Having begun scrolling through its back catalog simply to get a better sense of its output, I found myself actively enjoying my discovery of the wide diversity of activities and apostolates in which my fellow consecrated women are engaged throughout the world. And perhaps ironically, the sight of so many nuns—see, even I have capitulated now—doing so many different things served as a gentle reminder that my religious life is not defined by doing at all. Instead, it is defined by being: the state of being consecrated to Christ in and through His mystical body, which transforms the entire life of the consecrated person and all actions (including the action of holding things) it involves. Whatever we may do in our religious life—whether in choir, in the refectory, in the common room or out on our external apostolate—all rests upon the mystery of this spousal union, and grows upwards and outwards from that foundation to the heights of sanctity.

God in Christ has chosen to speak to us through that with which we are most closely, painfully familiar: our own wounded, fragile humanity. One of the reasons why He has set aside—consecrated, in other words—a small section of His adopted children to be radical and strikingly visible witnesses to His love is so that all within the Church can be continually reminded that holiness is not a competitor to our deepest happiness or to the fulfillment of our humanity.

When we make religious profession, God does not ask us to cast aside the human joys of work, leisure, and common life. Instead, He transforms and sanctifies them. Convent life is healthy and vibrant when the whole Church understands that religious consecration is not a destruction of our humanity, but the graced fulfillment of it. The more I think about it, the more I see no reason why pictures of nuns holding things on social media shouldn’t play a role in building that understanding. And if the creator of the account is reading, rest assured that this particular nun is still happy to hold out for an interview.