Not being Catholic and not having attended Catholic schools, I was always amused by the "mean Nuns" stories from my Catholic friends. But later in my life I worked for a large Catholic health care organization, and during my earlier years with the company (mid to late 1990's) there were many of the sponsoring Sisters actively working in the organization. If there were any mean ones I never ran into any of them. The Sisters that I worked with were wonderful, generous, caring and ego-less people that never lost sight of the ministry that their predecessors began in the late 1800's. These Sisters tried their best to instill in the lay workers like myself the values represented by Catholic health care and the Mission of the sponsoring order. I felt it an honor to be trusted, as a senior executive in the organization, to continue their ministry of caring and healing.
Unfortunately, as the Sisters aged out of the work force, their presence became less and less visible, and by the time I had retired in 2013, the same company had grown through several mergers into a mega-health care corporation with little beyond lip service to the founding Catholic mission.
Bottom line, you'll never get me to believe anything but the best about these selfless and devoted servants of God.