By Julie Godfrey Miller
Catholic Herald

Student loan debt delays young woman's vocation

DULUTH, Minn. -- About five years ago, Turtle Lake native Brianne Wurtinger, now 20, began her journey to the religious life. She plans to become a Carmelite Sister of the Divine Heart of Jesus. It is an international order headquartered in the Netherlands. She will be entering the Northern Province with its motherhouse in Wauwatosa, Wis.

After getting over many hurdles, she is nearly there. Wurtinger has been accepted as a Carmelite, but her vocation is on hold for a surprising reason -- $20,000 in student loans.

Wurtinger said she can enter as soon as she has paid down her debt. She said she can understand why the order can't take on the debt, but it could take her 10 years to pay it off. She has contacted various Catholic organizations looking for help.

To enable her to earn money to begin paying off the debt, she attended Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College in Superior and in June became a Certified Nursing Assistant. She is now working at an assisted living facility in Duluth.

She was raised a Lutheran, but when she was in high school, Wurtinger said, "Lutheranism didn't seem right to me and I struggled with what they taught."

She began moving toward Catholicism and her vocation when she was 16, and started attending a Catholic church -- Sacred Heart in Almena -- without her parents' knowledge. They found out when some Catholic neighbors saw her at Mass.

She got into some trouble with the family. They didn't like it, but let her continue to go to Mass, Wurtinger said

She wanted to start RCIA right away, but that was where her parents drew the line. They urged caution and told her to wait until she was 18.

Wurtinger said she had been fascinated with nuns when she was a small child. Her Catholic grandmother, who lived in Duluth, had told her stories about her days in Catholic school and of her experience with the sisters who taught her. "When I was about 3 years old -- my gramma has pictures of me, dressing up in a habit. My gramma made me a habit, and I would play school. I would line up all my dolls and stuffed animals. She gave me the picture when I told them I was going to enter."

While she waited for her 18th birthday, her interest in the religious life was rekindled. She saw a copy of Vision, an annual vocations guide with information on many religious orders. Wurtinger said she filled out a response card she found in the magazine, requesting information on 20 different religious orders. Once she received the information, Wurtinger said, none of the 20 seemed to be what she was looking for.

As the topic for her senior project at Turtle Lake High, Wurtinger chose the religious life. Even though it was a public school, the teacher was supportive of her choice of topic and the other students showed a lot of interest.

Wurtinger's mentor for the project was Sr. Kristine Haugen of the Carmelite Hermitage in Amery. Wurtinger said when she became interested in Catholicism she just showed up on Haugen's doorstep. "I knew something Catholic was back there (at the Hermitage), but I didn't know who or what. ... We have been wonderful friends ever since."

When her 18th birthday finally arrived, in December of 2003, Wurtinger entered the RCIA program that had started a few months earlier at Sacred Heart Parish.

"It was a touchy issue in the family, but Mom eventually let me go, reluctantly." Wurtinger said she appreciated the support she eventually got. Her parents, her maternal grandparents and her sister were all there for her confirmation during the 2004 Easter Vigil Mass.

While Wurtinger was in high school, her goal was to go to college, major in music and become a teacher, so Haugen took her to Stillwater, Minn., to meet the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, an order based in Nashville, Tenn. Wurtinger said the Dominicans are teachers and St. Cecilia is the patron saint of musicians.

"I absolutely loved the order. Their habit was beautiful and their simplicity and everything about them was wonderful," Wurtinger said.

The following year she enrolled at Luther College, a Lutheran college in Decorah, Iowa. During her year there, Wurtinger said, she contacted the vocations directors for the Dominicans and for the Carmelite Sisters of the Divine Heart of Jesus.

The Carmelites invited her to come to a vocation retreat. She said, "The first time I walked into the chapel it was like I was walking into the Catholic Church all over again. It was that feeling I had, inside, of being at home." Wurtinger said she could not stop her tears, and was not sure what she was feeling, what the emotions were all about. "I cried the whole weekend."

Wurtinger said that after this retreat she faced a real struggle to figure out what she should do. She later made another trip to see the Carmelites and visited one of their homes in East Chicago, Ind. She was still talking to the Dominicans too, and attended their vocation retreat in 2004.

The following fall, Wurtinger decided she needed to take some time off from school to continue her discernment process.

Haugen knew of a Catholic family that Wurtinger could live with for a while. Wurtinger said that she wanted the experience of living in a Catholic family, to make a good discernment. "I know it probably came across to my mother that our family wasn't good enough, but that's not what it was. It's just a completely different way of looking at your life and what the family is about, and how your religion plays an everyday part in your life." She said she also needed that experience to know if she was called to the religious life or if she was called to the married life.

During that year she made another visit to Nashville to stay a few days to experience what life with the Dominicans was like. "Just to be there yourself and put your all into it is a completely different experience" from attending a vocations retreat with other women.

When she met with the mother superior and was granted application papers to enter the order, Wurtinger said she was on "cloud nine" and told herself that she was going to enter the Dominicans."

Later, however, Wurtinger said, she came down off of that cloud because "something didn't feel right. It didn't fit together."

She decided she should go back to school and "get things figured out." It had also been her mother's request that she go back and give school another try.

In January 2005 she enrolled at the University of Minnesota-Duluth and, Wurtinger said, she pushed aside thoughts of a vocation and concentrated on school.

She became involved in the Newman Center and said it was "wonderful ... to have all those young people around who are vibrant Catholics."

Her roommates were (and still are) also young women from the Newman Center. Wurtinger said she found herself surrounded by Catholics her age, "on fire for their faith and sticking up for what the church teaches."

She began thinking of the religious life again. "I could not ignore it anymore," she said.

In March of 2005 she had a revelation during her evening prayers, when the floodgates of tears opened up. Wurtinger said all she could think of was, "I have to go to Carmel. ... I knew I belonged in (Wauwatosa) with the Carmelite Sisters."

Since she made her decision to join the Carmelites, she has spent some time with them at their house in East Chicago, living their lives with them -- getting up, eating, working -- and helping in their active apostolate. Their mission is caring for neglected and homeless children. As part of her discernment process Wurtinger has also decided to become a registered nurse, rather than a music teacher.

Has her family accepted her decision to become a Carmelite? "Its been a real struggle for them. I know it has been," Wurtinger said. But she also sees that they are coming around. They've been questioning her -- asking her the questions she needs to ask herself -- and are curious about it.

She said the delay in her vocation is humbling and is teaching her patience. "I think it is a test of my trust in God and if this is my true vocation it will happen," Wurtinger said. And it won't happen on her time but on God's. "God gives us what we need and desire but it's ultimately going to be what he wants."

Fr. Andrew Ricci, vocations director for the Diocese of Superior, has had many conversations with Wurtinger.

He said, "When there are people searching for vocations to serve in the church, we do whatever we can to help them." He said he always welcomes Knights of Columbus and women's groups to help people out. The diocese can't do anything directly to help people entering religious orders, because orders are separate from the diocese.

He said, "We've never had this issue confront us before. It's an ironic thing because religious life is in a different place than it was before." In the past people were trained by their religious order, while today many come to religious life with college degrees. And, the cost of education today looks nothing like it did 40 years ago, he said, and added that religious life is not a deferment for student loans.

Ricci said that new seminarians face similar problems. "The diocese does not carry any debt for seminarians," he said. Younger seminarians can have some debt because they will be able to pay it off from their salaries once they are ordained. "With older, second-career men, they can't come with debt. If they do have debt we can't welcome them aboard because they won't have (enough working years left) to pay that debt back."

The Catholic Herald also asked two religious communities in the Diocese of Superior about their experiences with this problem.

In an e-mail response, Sr. Bonnie Alho, vocation director of the Servants of Mary in Ladysmith, wrote, "We would work with the person and set up something if it's student loans. A much bigger problem is credit card debt. I think all orders prefer that they come debt free but that is not always possible."

Susan K. Adam, vocation coordinator for the Holy Cross Sisters in Merrill, also e-mailed a response. She wrote, "I recently heard from a woman who is interested in vowed religious life with the Holy Cross Sisters and she is in a situation where financially she needs to put this off. I have suggested that she consider the Associate relationship with the community. This is an opportunity for her to share the mission and goals of the community outside of vowed membership. This is a great opportunity for her and others to really get to know the community and the charism, as well as assist in the discernment process of one's call. ... It is not a deterrent to begin as an Associate while getting financial obligations met.

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© Superior Catholic Herald, 2005