Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities

by Ann Carey

Book Overview

Journalist Ann Carey examines the many forces that have contributed to the decline of women's religious communities in the United States, concluding that the radical agenda of activist nuns has done... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0879736550
• ISBN13: 9780879736552
• Release Date: January 1997
• Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor
• Length: 367 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

sobering statistics

Ann Carey deserves much credit for this carefully researched work on the crisis in female religious life in the USA. The statistics presented are sobering. The dramatic decline of teaching sisters from 104,000 in 1965 to fewer than 13,000 in 1995 is a major turn of events in US Catholic history. With the skill of a seasoned journalist, Ann Carey explores the reasons behind this 88% drop in just 30 years. While Vatican II called for an appropriate renewal of religious life, many religious congregations embraced forms of experimentation that were sincere but ill-conceived. Some went even farther and began to manifest open resistance to ecclesiatic authority. For those who are trying to understand the sources of conflict in the post-Vatican II Church, this book is highly recommended.

What Happened to the Good Sisters

After I read Carey's work, I finally understood why the majority of nun's communities were marching toward extinction. Whenever there is an article in a periodical about the decline in vocations, religious are quick to claim that their numbers are declining because "society has changed and there are more opportunities for women" or "young people are more materialistic and do not want to make sacrifices." At no time does one hear them admit that the reason they no longer attract new members is because they have lost their communal and distinctive identities and life style. Surprisingly, there are orders of nuns in 2003 who have retained the essentials of religious life (communal prayer, religious garb, community life and a corporate apostolate) and they are thriving. These are the women who will lead the people of God into the next century.

Painful Truths

This is by far the finest and best-documented study of the collapse of the Catholic orders of religious women in the postconciliar period. The author provides immense documentation (much taken from original archival sources) to illustrate how these orders collapsed when they pursued a path of renewal that clearly contradicted the documents of Vatican II and the postconciliar directions indicated by the Vatican. It may seem superficial, but the decision to abandon the habit, communal prayer, corporate apostolate, and the convent has spelled death for many of these orders. And the bitter New Age theology (often tinged by anti-Catholicism) adopted by some of these groups only indicates the spiritual depth of this suicide.The story is painful to read, but Carey documents how one once-vigorous order after another chose the path of self-destruction. And the treatment of nuns who wanted to follow the authentic path of renewal remains a scandal.The book is weaker when it tries to get at the causes of the decadence of religious orders. I'm not so sure that the "elites" of LCWR were really that much different from the average nun back in the school or the hospital. I also don't think that the key Church documents on reform of religious life were somehow hidden from nuns. Most of these documents were published in the local diocesan paper or could be easily picked up (at modest cost) from a Catholic bookstore. Many nuns simply chose to move in a different direction---and they and the church are immensely poorer for it.

Exhausting

This book was very heavy in more ways than one and left me totally exhausted. And despite all the problems women are continuing to enter convents today. Ten stories told in the first person of why women today (Yr 2000) are still making this choice can me read in 'New Habits' ISBN 0340 72238x and available here. I much preferred this as it is by and about real women. All the theological debate falls away when a woman says - 'I know it sounds crazy but I want a life of prayer...' Spare me the issues and give me the real people any day!

Thorough history of the decay of womens' religious orders.

Ann Carey has expended a great deal of effort in writing a book that is a fair history of the "unraveling of women's religious communities" in the United States. Her attempts at fairness leads her to use "change oriented" in place of 'liberal" and "traditonal" in place of "conservative". (p. 9). Further, Ann Carey does not describe as a catastrophe (as I would!) the "88% drop in just 30 years" of the number of teaching sisters in Catholic Schools, nor does she attribute it to a change in vocation from "selflessnes: to selfishness", but she does quote, "Many sisters flet that their time would be better spent working with adults or children who were not enrolled in Catholic schools". (p. 33) The women's religious institutes "...lost their corporate identity" when they opted for "...occupational diversity". (p. 167) In another example of understatement, Ms Carey wonders if these institutes could be taxed on their profits. Selling of convents bought by the donations of the laity, competing with the laity in the work forces, not wearing habits despite the express wishes of the Pope and a collection of other incidents are recorded. Finally, Ms. Carey writes a prescription for dealing with Religious who are "procceding down the path of self-destruciton": "... the best way to deal with these sisters is simply to allow them and their institutes to die out quietly..." p. 324. I purchsed this book... for use in my MA Thesis in History, and Ms. Carey has filled a large hole in recent history, which is so often writen about the bishops, presidents and large scale events, rather than how these events affect the daily routine of the sisters and of the laity. In rejecting their vows, in not wearing their habits, in competing in the work force and in the political arena, the "new nuns" have become just like the rest of the lay people. The "new nuns" are off their pedestals and are no better, and perhaps worse, than the remainder of the laity. Ann Carey's book, "Sisters in Criisis", goes a long way towards explaining what happened and how it happened. I would recommend it to both the general reader and to the Historian. John Peter Rooney, Plymouth, Massachusetts (For the record,I have had sixteen years of Catholic education, from grammar school through the only Catholic Engineering college in NYC.)