‘Make your day a prayerful day,’ says Sr. Mary Barbieur
By Nancy Barthel | For On Mission
OSHKOSH — A New Genesis Sr. Mary Barbieur is a great storyteller. With 70 years as a sister, she has a lot of material to work with.
Her outgoing personality shined as she spoke of the interwoven tapestry of people who helped create her unexpected life story during a visit with On Mission at the Oshkosh condo she shares with A New Genesis Sr. Mary Jo Selinsky.
Many of the stories lead back to the decision Sr. Mary made a couple months after graduating from Lincoln High School in Manitowoc in 1952, that, yes, the religious life is what she wanted.
She tells you with a bit of an impish grin, “I was not an angel growing up.” The youngest of five, Sr. Mary attended St. Paul Catholic School in Manitowoc and, readily admitted, “I gave the sisters a hard time.”
Born June 24, 1934, her father was elected president of the shipbuilders union and later became a negotiator for the shipyards.
“He had a lot of wisdom,” Sr. Mary said. “When I talked about going to the convent my senior year, his response was, ‘Do you think you can give up everything you do?’ because I was so active. Through him I began to think and discern, is this what I wanted to do?”
Sr. Mary was a first-rate fastpitch softball player and, during that important summer of 1952, she played in a recreational league. Her all-girls team called themselves “The Renegades,” and she was well-known for her tenacious spirit on the field.
Sr. Mary’s original post-graduation game plan was to attend the La Crosse State Teachers College and become a phy ed teacher.
But something shifted during her senior year.
School leaders from Manitowoc and Macon, Ga., decided to offer an exchange program between Lincoln High School in Manitowoc and the all-girls’ and all-boys’ high schools in Macon.
A total of 60 students from Manitowoc traveled to Macon for the two-week experience, leaving on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, 1952 — the 60 Macon students came a month earlier so they could experience snow.
She would learn during the experience that all Black students in Macon were segregated in their own high school.
“That exchange was very important in my life,” said Sr. Mary.
What social justice lesson did she learn? “Of how we treat Black people in our country, the injustices we’ve laid upon them because of the color of their skin,” she said.
That summer she also found herself spending more time at church. “I was going to everything they were offering at night,” she recalled.
In addition, Sr. Mary said, “I was clerking at the corner grocery store and beer depot in the neighborhood, which was a great job for me because I knew almost everyone who came in.”
But each Saturday she also went to confession. The priest “would wait until I got there on a Saturday afternoon after work,” she said.
On Aug. 22, 1954, Sr. Mary entered the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity Convent in Manitowoc.
“On and off through my grade school, we’d go past the motherhouse on the outside of the city. I’d say, ‘I think I want to go there when I grow up,’” said Sr. Mary.
She became an educator, earning her bachelor’s degree from Holy Family College in Manitowoc and her master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Superior.
In 1983, she and other religious women formed A New Genesis Community, which celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2023.
“A New Genesis Community (ANG) is a Public Association of the Faithful within the Catholic Church founded in the spirit of Vatican II,” the community explains on its website angcommunity.org. “Members of A New Genesis Community are married, single and vowed religious who attempt to live in openness to the Spirit.”
“We are self supporting and nonresidential,” and members serve where they are called, said Sr. Mary.
Reflecting on her 70th anniversary for the diocese’s sisters’ jubilee celebration, she wrote: “A memorable experience that reaffirmed my religious vocation was the prayer and discernment involved in leaving my original religious community and helping to form another religious group in the Green Bay Diocese. My advice to someone considering a religious vocation is to pray and follow your heart.”
All of Sr. Mary’s active years in ministry have been in education, many of them as a principal. In 1988, she was honored by the Diocese of Green Bay as the “Principal of the Year.”
She smiled as she remembered an eighth-grade student telling her, “Sister can I say something? I bet as a kid, you were a real pistol because you know what we do and how we do it.”
Days today are full for Sr. Mary, who advises, “Make your day a prayerful day.”
She and Sr. Mary Jo sponsor two girls in Guatemala, and have also traveled there.
A longtime passion for the two sisters has been traveling, in particular, visiting America’s National Parks, often camping to save money.
Like her father, Sr. Mary has words of wisdom to share for those considering a vocation to religious life. “You have to be true to yourself… and that’s not always that easy.”
To read about the other religious sisters celebrating milestone jubilees in 2024, visit https://onmiss.io/sisterjubilees2024.
