Another Nun Defects

Sister Jacqueline Grennan, 40, president of Missouri's Webster College, has a nationwide reputation as a nunly innovator. She is the only woman member of the President's educational advisory council, and under her direction Webster has done pioneering research in the development of school curricula. Last week Sister Jacqueline joined the growing number of U.S. nuns (TIME, Jan. 13) who have abandoned the convent. With the approval of St. Louis' Joseph Cardinal Ritter, she is leaving the Sisters of Loretto after 18 years. At their request, however, she will remain president of Webster--which, if Rome permits, will become a secular college owned by a lay board of trustees.

Ex-Sister Jacqueline has been considering defection since 1965, when she was invited to take charge of St. Louis' war on poverty. The program involved the distribution of birth control information, and its officials had to ask Sister Jacqueline if she was free to decide on matters involving contraception. "That question stuck with me," she said. "Under the vow of obedience, I had given someone else the authority to limit or veto my decisions. I came to realize that I could not live as a responsible and productive human being for the rest of my life under the vow."

More startling than Jacqueline Grennan's decision to become a laywoman is her proposal to laicize Webster. Legally, the college is owned by a Missouri corporation, whose board of trustees is the general council of the Loretto Sisters. Pending approval from the Vatican's Congregation of Religious, the Sisters have agreed to turn over the control of Webster to a board of laymen. "It is my personal conviction," said ex-Sister Jacqueline, "that the very nature of higher education is opposed to juridical control by the church."

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