Catholic Girl

"They can't touch me now, I got every sacrament behind me, I got baptism, I got communion, I got penance, I got extreme unction, I've got confirmation."

So sang Jim Carroll on the title track of his 1980 self-purging, Catholic Boy. For Jeanine Deckers, the sacraments came in exactly that order.

In December of 1963, Deckers reached number 1 on the Billboard charts under the name "Soeur Sourire, the Singing Nun" with a French language ditty called "Dominique." It was a monumental feat for a foreign language folk song. To most of the non-French-speaking world it sounded like a cute piece of fluff – probably about a darling little boy named Dominic. In reality it was a celebration of St. Dominic and his fight against the Albigensians, a 12th Century religious sect in southern France who believed that adultery, fornication, and suicide were praiseworthy, and that there is no heaven, no hell, no moral code.

Fluff was big in 1963. How else could you explain the popularity of a group like Peter, Paul & Mary, who could strangle the clarion call sensibilities right out of Woody Guthrie’s "This Land Is Your Land." "Dominique" had the distinction of keeping "Louie Louie" out of the number 1 slot in the charts. Not that there wasn’t some rebellion going on. But "Let’s give it to ‘em right now" was a few years away from capturing the white American mindset in any meaningful way.

In a true bit of irony, while the FBI were investigating "Louie Louie" for alleged lyrics pertaining to fucking, Deckers shot to number one vocalizing the French equivalent. "Dominique" is a virtually unknown song in France because "nique" is the French obscenity for intercourse. There was no way French radio was going to play a song where "fuck" was repeated over and over and over again. Sister Smile (Soeur Sourire), singing in her native tongue, could not have been oblivious to that fact. Not unless she lived in a convent. Which, of course, she did.

Still, for Deckers, "Dominique" must have been anything but fluff. It was more like an outpouring of inner turmoil. Deckers had sexuality matters of a different nature stirring inside her. While St. Dominic may have beaten the Albigensians into submission with his rosary, no amount of praying seemed to quiet the desires within her - desires which the Catholic Church deemed sinful.

In 1964 a film about the Singing Nun starring Debbie Reynolds was produced. It was a la-la film befitting the times. Deckers referred to it as fiction. She left the convent in 1967, criticizing the Catholic Church for its conservative doctrine. She became an outspoken proponent of birth control, opened a school for autistic children in Belgium, and lived out her last ten years with a female companion, Annie Pescher. In 1985 she and Pescher committed suicide and were buried together. St. Dominic didn’t win this time. Reportedly still a very religious person, Decker got her confirmation after extreme unction. Is Catholic doctrine correct? Sister Smile knows. But she ain’t talkin’.