General Description:

Ann Carey

A generation ago, nearly 200,000 sisters worked in Catholic schools, hospitals and nursing homes, parishes, and social service agencies - robust institutions that the sisters themselves had largely built.  The Catholic people honored them.  Sisters gave precious witness to the spiritual richness of a vocation to the religious life.

Today, only half as many sisters remain and their numbers are declining.  The network of schools, hospitals, and other institutions they built has been greatly weakened.  Sisters as a whole are regarded as the most dissatisfied group in the Church and the most antagonistic to Church authority.  Many communities face bleak future prospects.  By the end of the century, there will be more sisters in retirement than in active work.

Journalist and author Ann Carey examines the many forces that have contributed to this crisis.  Despite their vigorous image in the 1950s, the sisters were in many ways unprepared for post-conciliar renewal.  Many communities crumbled under the pressures of the 1960s' cultural revolution as radical and poorly-implemented experiments undermined their communal life and weakened their connection to the universal Church.

Carey uses the archival records of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and other prominent groups of sisters to examine the ideological transformation of women's religious life.  She shows how politically astute activist nuns, deeply influenced by gender feminism, shaped the direction of renewal from their leadership positions in national sisters' organizations and large communities.  Carey concludes that their radical agenda - deconstruction of community life, secularization of ministries, antagonism to male Church authority, and neglect of spiritual development - has failed to bring about the needed renewal of women's religious life.

Strong signs of vitality are found elsewhere - in communities that retain a keen sense of their mission and a strong commitment to Catholic spirituality and identity.  Many of these women's communities are experiencing a surge in new vocations.  Their rise suggests that some sisters may be poised for another transformation:  one that learns from the mistakes of the past and brings new vigor to women's religious life.

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