In a column that reads like a letter to the editor, Sun-Times woman Teresa Puente makes some very big assumptions about nuns’ image in the world about us:

The two nuns in their 70s seem like unlikely activists. But Sisters JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy gather at 7:15 a.m. each Friday outside the Broadview detention center, a small brick building in the west suburb where undocumented immigrants are processed before they are deported.

Did Puente read the latest Salt, a quarterly from the BVM‘s (Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary), which is all about water as a diminishing resource – ”The Gift of Water: Precious, Endangered”? – and exudes the joy of activism?

As water scarcity increases, it has been said that the next wars will be Water Wars." The oceans comprise 97 percent of Earth's water, and of course, this water is too salty to drink or use in agriculture. One percent of Earth's water is locked up in glaciers and icecaps. One percent is locked up in geological formations deep below Earth's surface.

Etc. It’s with a story by Gwen Farry, BVM (Leonita), who is on the staff of the 8th Day Center for Justice and a board member of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility.

With another article goes this:

In 2006, former Vice-President Albert Gore gifted and challenged us with the film and the book: An Inconvenient Truth. His passion and years of work brought him to the inconvenient truth about the jeopardy in which we humans have placed our earth.

Now that’s genuflection.

Has she seen the national site of the Sisters of Mercy, Chicago’s most prominent community of nuns, where the latest press release begins:

(Silver Spring, MD) - The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas are engaging in a nationwide effort to encourage their 4,200 sisters, 3,000 associates, 600 Mercy Volunteer Corps alumni and hundreds of co-workers to lobby against Congress' proposed Secure America through Verification and Enforcement Act (SAVE Act, HR 4088).

And has she googled “activist nuns”? If she did, she would find 700 or so pages of results in English, including these items:

• Activist nuns take aim at military companies – International…
  A hardy band of Catholic nuns has remained true to the cause of peace.

• ”activist Nuns” From Tennessee [cache only]: Sister Anne Hablas is a fragile looking lady, over 70 years of age. She is alert, quick and knowledgeable on wide range of domestic and international issues. She has a Master’s degree in history. She is a nun; a nun who doesn’t hesitate to challenge the authorities even after the beginning of the witch hunting against the political activists in the US after the September 11th.

• Nuns’ Trial Starts Today, by Jennifer Stanley: Even after spending six months in jail, they are optimistic, focused and confident. The three nuns are calm as they prepare to fend off charges that could send them to jail for the next three decades. Sisters Carol Gilbert, Jackie Hudson and Ardeth Platte don’t deny they entered a Minuteman III missile site off Colo. 14 and Weld County Road 113 – about 10 miles west of New Raymer – on Oct. 6, 2002. But they say they had a duty to bring attention to first-strike weapons prohibited by international treaties.

Had enough? These are Nuns of the Headline and therefore not the norm, yes, and those discussed by Puente seem bent only on visiting the prisoner – performing a spiritual work of mercy. But isn’t it a bit much to assume that readers buy into the spiritual-ministry nun image as dominant, or even prevalent, when many, including even if not especially those of 70 or older are behaving more like polite troublemakers?