Sister Doris Rauenhorst couldn’t imagine any other life than religious life. She celebrates her 70th jubilee this year as a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa.
“I love being a sister,” Sister Doris said. “The reason why I wanted to be a religious is because I thought it would be a way to serve God. I was willing to do anything. I didn’t join because I wanted to be a teacher. I joined because I wanted to be a religious. You learn and grow into that life.”
Sister Doris served at St. Albert the Great in Minneapolis on the parish council and as a teacher. She also participated in all works of the parish as a “way of exercising ministry,” she said.
After graduating from then-St. Anthony High School in Minneapolis, Sister Doris joined her order in Sinsinawa, Wisconsin. At the time, the order’s ministry was in education in five Minneapolis elementary schools, one in Faribault and South St. Paul respectively, and many in Wisconsin.
“Lots of sisters left teaching as parishes closed their schools and their convents and became either religious-ed (teachers) in parishes or pastoral ministers or things like that,” Sister Doris said. “A few of us became social workers, two became physicians, doctors, and a couple became lawyers … I was slated to be a high school teacher, and so after my vows, I got my degree from our college, Dominican University in Chicago, and then was sent to teach high school for two years.”
Sister Doris then studied German abroad in Fribourg, Switzerland. She eventually returned to St. Paul to be vicar for religious with Father Urban Wagner. She gave a report on the religious in the archdiocese. It was “a wonderful challenge,” she said, getting to know the 80 religious communities.
“(I) made a lot of contacts, and responded to questions, or to problems that needed to be addressed, or things that needed some support. It was a time when sisters were beginning to ask for lay salaries, and so I chaired a committee of communities of religious who have mother houses in the diocese, and we worked out our proposal to the diocese. It was accepted and sisters would earn a lay salary for their job rather than a stipend.”
In an article for one of the three publications put out by the Dominican Sisters of Sinsinawa, Sister Doris wrote, “We live, as religious, in a time of sometimes rapidly closing and opening doors — in our Congregation, in our Church, in our world. Each of us would describe or experience those closing and opening doors in a slightly different way, but we all are called, I believe (and more insistently, perhaps, than ever before) to search out together and to walk with each other toward the opening doors that are the future we hope for ourselves and for our Congregation.”
In the Twin Cities, Sister Doris believed there was a need for a council of religious to act as an advisory board.
“We founded that, and there continues to be some kind of body like that still in existence,” she said.
Sister Doris also advocated for religious anniversaries to be acknowledged by the archdiocese because the same acknowledgement was given to priests. She proposed this to then-Archbishop John Roach.
“The diocese needs to recognize the years that the sisters have served and acknowledge that, and (Archbishop Roach) said, ‘Well, OK,’ and we had some celebrations of jubilees at the Cathedral (of St. Paul in St. Paul).”
Sister Doris’ brother was a Dominican priest. He eventually left the priesthood to get married. When Sister Doris was discerning religious life, he told her that she needed to be sure that this is what she wanted.
Seventy years later, Sister Doris, in her apartment at The Glenn in Hopkins, said, “It still is what I want to do and what I want to be.”
There have been questions about housing, as well, with many parishes closing their convents to make offices.
“Sometimes we had to scramble to find a place to live,” Sister Doris said. “Sometimes that was difficult. Sometimes it was wonderful. … We didn’t invest in property for our sisters, for the most part.”
Sister Doris lived in a CommonBond high-rise apartment with another sister for seven years. The apartment was in a predominantly Somali immigrant community.
“It was a challenge, but it was great. It was a really good thing for me and my desire to be of service in this world since I wasn’t a professional social worker, or anything like that,” Sister Doris said. “I have lots of good memories of the people that I met in that building.”
Despite challenges and changes with religious life, Sister Doris said she couldn’t imagine life any other way. She continues to serve others at The Glenn — a Catholic-based senior living community in Hopkins open to people all faiths — with prayer and meditation groups.
Though she doesn’t wear her habit, most people in the building know who she is from her nametag, which she insisted still say “Sister Doris Rauenhorst.”
