Very rarely does one see a religious sister, or as common language calls her, a nun, in a religious habit. Older people have a nostalgic memory of the varied and imaginative habits worn by the religious congregations and each graduate of a Catholic school was sure that the sisters who taught him or her had the most sensible and all the others were "strange". More than a half century ago Pope Pius XII asked religious to modernize and modify their religious dress. Many were shocked because they considered the design of their habit as sacred as their unique spirituality. Times have changed. Many habits have become like modern dress and many have become modern dress without any particular religious sign.Looking over some old family pictures I found a photo of my Grandfather, Joseph Schweizer with his mother in Germany. Her clothing was very familiar. It was very similar to what I wore when I first made my vows in the fifties. Not wanting to post my own photo I choose to place our Foundress, Mother Franziska Lechner who founded the Congregation of the Daughters of Divine Charity in 1868 Vienna--just about the time that this little boy posed with his mother. We can see that the habit which became stylized over a century, was really the dress of the ordinary woman of the nineteenth century.
