Waiting for the Blue Line train at Oak Park station the other day, I crossed paths with a vigorous-looking young man clad in sandals, a brown, hooded, ankle-length robe, and a simple belt fashioned of rope. Take away his wire-framed glasses and shave a helipad onto his melon and he would have been the very picture of a medieval Catholic monk.
“I can wear whatever I like,” he said. “But I was wearing sandals year-round long before I joined the Franciscans. I wear the habit most of the time, but I’m a runner—I’m running the Chicago Marathon with my brother Scott—and I don’t wear it when I run.” (Wearing bib number 5542, Welle completed the race in 4:04:05, which he told me by e-mail was his slowest time in the seven marathons he’s run.)
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A native of Albany, Minnesota, Welle has lived in Chicago for the past four years while completing his seminary training and was ordained last January. His assignment to Saint Mary of Celle is the equivalent of postgraduate training: “Our provincial minister wanted me to go there so I could learn about parish life,” he said.
“It’s wool, but it’s very thin,” Welle said. “It looks heavier and hotter than it is. I told them, ‘I want the thinnest, coolest material you can come up with that will not be see-through.’ Because if you’re out walking on a day like this, there are times of day when you can see the silhouette. With this one you can’t—it’s just thick enough.”
Speaking of construing the religious Other, how did people generally react to him in his habit?
“I laughed and said, ‘No, our anachronisms are tired and stale. They’re eight centuries old, there’s nothing creative about it.’
“The reasons for the decline in religious life for both men and women are very complex,” he said. “Some people are very quick to boil it down to something like that, though I’m reluctant to do so. The main reason that so many religious women were so quick to abandon the habit is that before the rules about it were relaxed, they tended to be much stricter about when the habit should be worn—they really had to wear it 24/7. And also their clothing tended to be a lot tougher to wear—you had those massive wimples. The rules for men tended to be a lot more flexible—if you were out working in the fields, you didn’t necessarily wear your habit, or if you were a jogger. Whereas the women were on their hands and knees scrubbing floors in the full regalia, so when the opportunity came to chuck it, they generally chucked it completely, which is understandable considering what they had been through.”
