Meet Jimmy Kimmel’s Nun
It was once understood that a gentleman never holds up a woman’s looks for ridicule. Even now, when the idea of a gentleman has itself become an anachronism, the #MeToo moment might have been thought to re-enforce the old prohibition.
Turns out there’s an exception for nuns.
Last Tuesday, the host of ABC’s “ Jimmy Kimmel Live!” took advantage of this exception during a segment poking fun at the A-listers showing up for this year’s Met Gala in everything from mock papal headgear to cross-bedazzled evening gowns. The gala’s theme was “Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.” Mr. Kimmel said his boyhood had given him a much different impression of the Catholic sense of fashion. For the laugh line, up popped a photo of a middle-aged nun—he called her “ Sister Mary Frances O’Brien ”—“wearing the latest from JCPenney.”
In reality, Sister Mary Frances O’Brien doesn’t exist. The nun in the photo is Sr. Patricia Pompa. I know because Sr. Pat is principal of Villa Walsh Academy, the Morristown, N.J., high school my daughters attended.
At a time when Christians elsewhere are being beheaded or having their churches torn down, a nun joke doesn’t register high on the outrage meter. But for those who know the real-life woman behind the joke, it stinks of injustice.
It’s true, as Mr. Kimmel’s reference to JCPenney was meant to convey, Sr. Pat’s habit would win no awards for fashion. Then again, it is precisely in this sense she wears it. In its way it is a declaration of higher loyalties and imperatives.
Sr. Pat’s entire life has been about self-sacrifice on behalf of one of these imperatives: the education of girls, which she oversees in a school located a few feet from the convent where she and the sisters live. So when they admit a girl to their school, they see themselves as welcoming her into their home. The Lord says, “I am the good shepherd, I know my sheep and my sheep know me.” At Villa Walsh, Sr. Pat knows every one of her 250 lambs by name.
The Religious Teachers Filippini were founded to educate the daughters of the poor, but the school’s location means a fair number of Villa students come from families of means (“I see the cars you drive,” Sr. Pat sometimes reminds parents during fundraisers). Affluence is no immunity from the trials and tragedies of life: the girl whose parents are in the thick of an ugly divorce, the senior who becomes pregnant, the student with a drug problem, the 14-year-old who just lost her mom to cancer.
In many cases, Sr. Pat is powerless to alter outcomes. But she can love. And love is as much a part of the Villa formula as the high bar it sets for academic excellence. The sisters can’t guarantee their young charges a life free from hurt and unfairness. But they promise them this: No Villa girl will ever hurt alone.
Sr. Pat is not the type to give something like this a second thought. She also knows enough to know Mr. Kimmel intended no malice. Still, she deserves better.
A pity Mr. Kimmel and his audience will settle for a cheap laugh line like “Sr. Mary Frances O’Brien.” Because if they could bring themselves to look just beyond the caricatures to the real-life Sr. Pats and the institutions they run, they would be astonished by the strength, selflessness and accomplishment they would find.
Article is LOCKED by author/seeder
Who is online
89 visitors
Talk about being an overly PC snowflake. This wasn't offensive to any Nun or woman, to cry faux outrage at this is truly beyond the pale.
Bill McGurn's op-ed is also in The Wall Street Journal.
Kimmel was not making fun of the nun he was ridiculing the outrageous shit some wore to the Met Gala...
The conservo-outrage machine churns on sans any laughter, light or humor. So, you are all welcome to it.
Really? Then why did he and/or his staff ridicule that particular nun and go so far as to finding a photo of her?
I see nothing wrong with the picture. She is a generic nun. I bet Kimmel's staff googled, "Nun"...
Are you saying there is something terrible about the image of the nun used? I just do not see it.
She is not disfigured or cross-eyed or particularly fat. She's merely an average looking nun to me.
The point of Kemmel's joke was making fun of the outrageous bullshit idiots wore to the Met Gala.
If you weren't straining so hard to find something to be outraged about yourself you would see it.
This is what I got when I searched images for "Nun" ...
Good try, JBB, but no prize.
I am not the topic of this seed, so knock it off, JBB. Only warning.
.
Per NT rules. this seed will be temporarily locked until I can "moderate" inappropriate comments.