Several obituaries mention that Patricia Neal will be buried at the Benedictine Monastery of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut, where Rev. Mother Dolores Hart is prioress. Mother Dolores was a big Hollywood star at the time Patricia Neal was in Hollywood. She had starred as Elvis Presley’s leading lady in the 1957 movie Loving You and co-starred with him again a year later in another film called King Creole. Two years after playing the role of Saint Clare in the 1961 film Saint Francis of Assisi Dolores Hart left Hollywood to join the strictly cloistered Benedictine monastery where she still resides. It wasn’t this role, however, that played the major influence on the actress’ decision to become a nun. It was her role in the film Lisa. She tells the story here. Dolores was not raised Catholic. Her parents were Catholics in name only; they divorced when she was only three. Through the charity of other relatives and friends she enrolled in Catholic grammar school in Chicago and, at the age of ten, she converted to the Faith. Again Mother Dolores tells why she became a Catholic in this linked article above.
In my news post for August 9, I linked the reader to an obituary summarizing the life of Patricia Neal in which was recounted the episode when Mary Cooper, the daughter of Gary Cooper (who, by the way, converted before death to the Catholic Faith), spit in the face of Patricia Neal for having an affair with her father and aborting their child. That made an impression. Neal later asked for forgiveness from Mary Cooper and the two ended up becoming close friends. Cooper advised Neal, who was not a Catholic, to spend some time at Regina Laudis monastery and seek counsel from the ex-actress Sister Dolores Hart, which she did. Apparently, with Neal living not to far away on Martha’s Vineyard, the ex-Hollywood stars kept in close contact over the years. For years, Neill, when pressed by Sister Dolores to enter the Church, would just reply “Not yet!” Finally, at the eleventh hour, four months before she died, Patricia Neill was received into the Church. Mother Dolores was on her way to Martha’s Vineyard to see her sick friend when the news came that she had already died.
While mourning for forty years over her abortion, Patricia Neal kept herself very active in supporting the pro-life cause. That, too, was partly due to Mary Cooper, who once said to Neal after their reconciliation: “You know, I know you had the affair with my father and I have long ago forgiven that. But one thing I find it hard to accept is that as an only child, I so wish that you’d had my brother or my sister. Because in so many ways, I wish so much that you had chosen life.” Neal also established The Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center that concentrates on helping people recover from strokes and spinal cord and brain injuries. Two years after receiving an Academy Award, when she was only thirty-nine, she suffered a massive stroke herself. Her hard fought recovery to regain her speech and ability to walk is a monument in the annals of stroke rehabilitation. The Center is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, where she grew up.
In her cloister, Mother Dolores, on the other hand, prays, and she sings the Divine Office eight times a day in choir — in Latin — or at least the nuns were doing so in 1971 when I took my mother to the Latin Mass early one morning at their Benedictine convent, a two hour ride from our home in New Jersey. In an interview with Barbara Middleton of Father Hardin’s “Holy Trinity Apostolate,” Mother Dolores spoke about their convent’s dedication to Gregorian chant: “Well, Gregorian Chant is our first language. Lady Abbess brought the chant from Jouarre, the women’s Abbey where she entered in 1936. Dr. Theodore Marier taught us the chant since the 1960’s. He was an ace. He knew chant from the greatest masters of its time. He taught us for 40 years from the originals. Not just any way that it could be sung, but the authentic originals from the earliest centuries. You can find these recorded from the earliest journals of the masters. Regina Laudis wants to be in line with History.”
Mother Dolores left the cloister for the first time in 2006 when she visited Hollywood to raise awareness for peripheral idiopathic neuropathy disorder, a neurological disorder from which she herself suffers. She also testified at that same time before a Washington congressional hearing on the need for funding research on the painful and crippling disease.
She left the cloister one other time in October, 2008, upon the request of Rev. John Hardon, S.J. for a “Breakfast with Mother Dolores Hart” fundraiser to benefit his “Holy Trinity Apostolate.” After the breakfast, the seventy year-old “Clara” (this is the name Pope John XXIII insisted on calling her when she had an audience with him during the filming of the Saint Francis movie) rose in her full habit and told her story to a ballroom full of fascinated strangers and old friends. She titled her talk: “He Led Me Out into an Open Space; He Saved Me Because He Loved Me.” Among the friends in attendance were Patricia Neal and Mary Cooper.
I am sure Mother Dolores was singing the praises of Saint Clare this morning at Matins. Today is her feast day on the new calendar.
