Handbook for Grade School Nuns

The Handbook for Grade School Nuns is a book that discusses a number of key topics for the newly ordained grade-school level instructor (Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies, 107-113). It is unclear whether Mother Ximenes is the owner or author (or both) of the book in question.

The book consists of five primary sections:

Things Catholic Children Should Know
1. The equator is eight thousand miles long.
2. What uranium can do.
3. The story about Louis IX, his mother, and committing mortal sin.
4. There is a priest living in the walls of Saint Sophia's church in Constantinople.
5. The ouiji board story.
Ways to Cultivate the Fear of Dying in Mortal Sin
1. Point out how difficult it is to make a perfect Act of Contrition just before death.
2. The story of a man who hasn't gone to Communion for years.
3. Make your students memorize the Litany for a Happy Death.
Conversion Tactics
1. Lecture on the sorrows of a mixed marriage.
2. Non-Catholic parents might be converted through prayer and good example.
3. Mention Protestants have a funny way of saying the "Our Father."
4. Mention Protestants can get to Heaven but that when they get there they may not know what it's all about.
Ways to Make Money
1. Raffle Your Grandmother out of Purgatory.
2. At Christmas have your students sell sick-call kits door to door.
3. Have drives of all kinds: paper drives, bottle cap drives, jelly jar drives.
4. Point out to students that the sisters will starve if thoughtful mothers do not deluge them with pies, cakes and assorted pastries.
The May Procession
1. May devotions to the Blessed Virgin Mary
  1. Prayers
  2. Human Rosary

Saint Fidgeta and Other Parodies

1 • 2 • 3 • 4 • 5 • 6 • 7 • 8 • 9 • 10 • 11 • 12

11. Mother Ximenes’ Handbook for Grade School Nuns
Handbook • Charity drives • May Procession