What do you think?
Rate this book
Sisters in Crisis: Revisited
Fifty years ago, nearly 200,000 religious sisters worked in Catholic schools, hospitals and other institutions throughout the United States. American Catholics honored these women of faith who founded and built these flourishing works of mercy.
Then came the ideological shifts and moral upheavals of the 1960s, and ever since, most women's orders in the United States have been in a state of crisis. Now the sisters are aging, with fewer and fewer younger women to take their place. Perhaps related to this demographic shift is the continuing doctrinal confusion that has come under the scrutiny of the Vatican.
Using the archival records of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and other prominent groups of sisters, journalist and author Ann Carey shows how feminist activists unraveled American women's religious communities from their leadership positions in national organizations and large congregations. She also explains the recent and necessary interventions by the Vatican.
After examining the many forces that have contributed to the crisis, Carey reports on a promising sign of renewal in American religious life: the growing number of young women attracted to older communities that have retained their identity and newly formed, yet traditional, congregations.
Then came the ideological shifts and moral upheavals of the 1960s, and ever since, most women's orders in the United States have been in a state of crisis. Now the sisters are aging, with fewer and fewer younger women to take their place. Perhaps related to this demographic shift is the continuing doctrinal confusion that has come under the scrutiny of the Vatican.
Using the archival records of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and other prominent groups of sisters, journalist and author Ann Carey shows how feminist activists unraveled American women's religious communities from their leadership positions in national organizations and large congregations. She also explains the recent and necessary interventions by the Vatican.
After examining the many forces that have contributed to the crisis, Carey reports on a promising sign of renewal in American religious life: the growing number of young women attracted to older communities that have retained their identity and newly formed, yet traditional, congregations.
501 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 25, 2013
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 4, 2013
Having admired the reporting and coverage provided by Ann Carey regarding women in religious life in the United States I had been interested in reading her book “Sisters in Crisis.” Considering this book was first published in 1997 I had wished for an updated version especially considering recent history. So I was delighted to see Sisters in Crisis Revisited: From Unraveling to Reform and Renewal which exactly fulfilled my desire.
There was a lot of information I wanted to see regarding the history of women religious in the United States from mostly the sixties forward. Exactly how did we come to the current situation and exactly who were the people that had a fundamental influence on this is something I am very interested in. As a convert I am always seeking to fill in my lack of knowledge regarding the Church in the United States.
A book of this type can become easily polemical and just come down to “religious habits good”, “pant suits bad” along with various stereotypes. From the author:
"Finally, I am uncomfortable with using the terms liberal and conservative for religious orders because of the political connotations of the terms and also because they carry negatie images for many people. Therefore, I follow the example of sociologist Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh by using the term change-oriented to describe sisters of religious institutes inclined to seek a new definition of religious life by expanding the boundaries usually associated with the religious state. I use the term traditional to describe sisters or institues that adhere to the traditional understanding of religious life as contained in Vatican II documents and other Church teachings. Neither term should be construed as inherently negative."
I thinks this was a good decision as I have also dropped using terms like liberal, conservative, progressive etc when describing Catholics as much as possible. Even if I might quibble with the term change-oriented, I find it useful here.
In 2009 when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced a formal doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR and then later the Doctrinal Assessment itself I remember the news being reported as if this was something totally out of left-field and such a surprise. This books shows that if anything it was decades later then it could have been. Still the CDF acts slowly and deliberately and there are many good reasons for this.
This is quite a comprehensive history detailing both all of the personalities involved and the sequences of events. Over and over again I was impressed just how much research was involved. Even more I was impressed by the writing style that lays out all the information without becoming just a dry regurgitation of facts. Mostly the author just lets the facts of the actual history tell the story with minimal editorial content. Ann Carey’s own comments and opinions are short and to the point and nicely punctuate the history. Basically they are snark-free, although you can note the authors astonishment at times regarding the history she is putting forth.
There was just so much I learned from this book that really helped me fill in the gaps. As much as I enjoyed it the book does not exactly make for joyful reading. The author describes how much of this came about as a “perfect storm” that took place among the cultural storm of the sixties and the false narrative of how Vatican II was going to change everything. The fact that religious life really needed a renewal is something easy to forget. There were many aspects of religious life that needed updating or a second look at. The education of women in religious life had been deficient and was only just starting to be addressed. The high numbers of those in religious life in the early sixties partly hid the fact that the healthiness of these religious orders was not all that it should have been.
Really it seems that not only did the baby get thrown out with the bathwater, but that the bath was thrown out also. The term change-oriented is accurate in that it seems change-for-change sake was the order of the day. The Vatican’s call for updating and experimentation was mostly met with a giddy-excitement of the possibilities for new ways of living religious life. What later became knows as “The spirit of Vatican II” seems to be quite evident in this early thinking. Unfortunately it seems the majority of women religious did not actually get to see the documents of Vatican II or were treated with some early translations that were not as accurate as they could have been. Word at the time that Canon Law was also going to be rewritten caused even more turmoil and the false expectation of the changes to be made and the false assumption regarding the applicability of the current Canon Law and other Church documents.
There were so many parts of this history that were very frustrating to read. It was not that tens of thousands of those in religious life decided that everything was now in flux and acceptable. Mostly it seems to me that there were a dedicated core of women who came to believe in a totally different view regarding how religious life is to be lived that often had much more of a political identity and a push towards some specific social justice issues. Over and over you see the names of many of these individuals repeated as part of different groups and efforts. Ann Carey describe how some of this happened as a coup and that seems rather accurate. The transition of the US Conference of Major Superiors of Women’s Institutes (CMSR) to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is rather an amazing story.
What surprised me was just how much dissent, equivocations, and disdain for the so-called institutional Church there was at the start of these events. Documents and guidance from the Church were often met by a very negative response. Any intervention from bishops and the Vatican was sometimes described as violence. If they were not consulted they considered it violent even as they took actions without consulting others in their orders. Some of the behavior I have noticed from the LCWR is quite evident in its history. For example dialogue meaning we are willing to enter into dialogue with you as a delay tactic or until you just give in. How the LCWR came about and its very name is an example of this. This book provides tons of documentary evidence regarding the adversarial relationship these leaders showed to the Church and the tactics used that seemed more akin to dirty politics than to religious life. One piece of information I found in the book I thought to be an excellent example of what went wrong. A building was constructed for retired and infirmed nuns that included a beauty shop but no chapel.
Again it should be emphasized that so often those who became leaders in this change-oriented movement were not necessarily representative of those they were suppose to represent. This is also evident by the fact that the Vatican approved the CMSWR (Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious) a group of traditional-minded women in religious life that broke away from the LCWR. At the time the Vatican had never approved two different organizations representing women religious in the same country.
I really could go on and on with this review since there was just so much information that fascinates me and so many episodes of this history that grabbed my attention. Again I was impressed with how Ann Carey wrote on this topic steering clear of demonizing people and being quite balanced in the telling of this history.
While this book totally satisfied me in regards to a specific history of women religious associated with the LCWR, women’s ordination movements, and other associated groups there are other aspects I would like to learn more about. For example I would love this author or another one to chronicle a history for example of women religious associated with the CMSWR. Mother Angelica’s story has been told already in book form, but I bet there are tons of other interesting stories involving other women’s religious institutes and the paths they took that took a divergent path from the LCWR. Mother Dolores Hart in her book [The Ear of the Heart][heart] also chronicles to some extent adaptations after Vatican II at Regina Laudis which were much more aligned with the intent of what Vatican II called for.
There are references to men in religious life along with priests, especially those who inspired or were sympathetic with the change-oriented orders. There is probably a closely paralleled history regarding them along with some major differences. Plus the other context I would like to see are the currents worldwide in religious life in how they compared and diverged from what happened here.
There was a lot of information I wanted to see regarding the history of women religious in the United States from mostly the sixties forward. Exactly how did we come to the current situation and exactly who were the people that had a fundamental influence on this is something I am very interested in. As a convert I am always seeking to fill in my lack of knowledge regarding the Church in the United States.
A book of this type can become easily polemical and just come down to “religious habits good”, “pant suits bad” along with various stereotypes. From the author:
"Finally, I am uncomfortable with using the terms liberal and conservative for religious orders because of the political connotations of the terms and also because they carry negatie images for many people. Therefore, I follow the example of sociologist Helen Rose Fuchs Ebaugh by using the term change-oriented to describe sisters of religious institutes inclined to seek a new definition of religious life by expanding the boundaries usually associated with the religious state. I use the term traditional to describe sisters or institues that adhere to the traditional understanding of religious life as contained in Vatican II documents and other Church teachings. Neither term should be construed as inherently negative."
I thinks this was a good decision as I have also dropped using terms like liberal, conservative, progressive etc when describing Catholics as much as possible. Even if I might quibble with the term change-oriented, I find it useful here.
In 2009 when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announced a formal doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR and then later the Doctrinal Assessment itself I remember the news being reported as if this was something totally out of left-field and such a surprise. This books shows that if anything it was decades later then it could have been. Still the CDF acts slowly and deliberately and there are many good reasons for this.
This is quite a comprehensive history detailing both all of the personalities involved and the sequences of events. Over and over again I was impressed just how much research was involved. Even more I was impressed by the writing style that lays out all the information without becoming just a dry regurgitation of facts. Mostly the author just lets the facts of the actual history tell the story with minimal editorial content. Ann Carey’s own comments and opinions are short and to the point and nicely punctuate the history. Basically they are snark-free, although you can note the authors astonishment at times regarding the history she is putting forth.
There was just so much I learned from this book that really helped me fill in the gaps. As much as I enjoyed it the book does not exactly make for joyful reading. The author describes how much of this came about as a “perfect storm” that took place among the cultural storm of the sixties and the false narrative of how Vatican II was going to change everything. The fact that religious life really needed a renewal is something easy to forget. There were many aspects of religious life that needed updating or a second look at. The education of women in religious life had been deficient and was only just starting to be addressed. The high numbers of those in religious life in the early sixties partly hid the fact that the healthiness of these religious orders was not all that it should have been.
Really it seems that not only did the baby get thrown out with the bathwater, but that the bath was thrown out also. The term change-oriented is accurate in that it seems change-for-change sake was the order of the day. The Vatican’s call for updating and experimentation was mostly met with a giddy-excitement of the possibilities for new ways of living religious life. What later became knows as “The spirit of Vatican II” seems to be quite evident in this early thinking. Unfortunately it seems the majority of women religious did not actually get to see the documents of Vatican II or were treated with some early translations that were not as accurate as they could have been. Word at the time that Canon Law was also going to be rewritten caused even more turmoil and the false expectation of the changes to be made and the false assumption regarding the applicability of the current Canon Law and other Church documents.
There were so many parts of this history that were very frustrating to read. It was not that tens of thousands of those in religious life decided that everything was now in flux and acceptable. Mostly it seems to me that there were a dedicated core of women who came to believe in a totally different view regarding how religious life is to be lived that often had much more of a political identity and a push towards some specific social justice issues. Over and over you see the names of many of these individuals repeated as part of different groups and efforts. Ann Carey describe how some of this happened as a coup and that seems rather accurate. The transition of the US Conference of Major Superiors of Women’s Institutes (CMSR) to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is rather an amazing story.
What surprised me was just how much dissent, equivocations, and disdain for the so-called institutional Church there was at the start of these events. Documents and guidance from the Church were often met by a very negative response. Any intervention from bishops and the Vatican was sometimes described as violence. If they were not consulted they considered it violent even as they took actions without consulting others in their orders. Some of the behavior I have noticed from the LCWR is quite evident in its history. For example dialogue meaning we are willing to enter into dialogue with you as a delay tactic or until you just give in. How the LCWR came about and its very name is an example of this. This book provides tons of documentary evidence regarding the adversarial relationship these leaders showed to the Church and the tactics used that seemed more akin to dirty politics than to religious life. One piece of information I found in the book I thought to be an excellent example of what went wrong. A building was constructed for retired and infirmed nuns that included a beauty shop but no chapel.
Again it should be emphasized that so often those who became leaders in this change-oriented movement were not necessarily representative of those they were suppose to represent. This is also evident by the fact that the Vatican approved the CMSWR (Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious) a group of traditional-minded women in religious life that broke away from the LCWR. At the time the Vatican had never approved two different organizations representing women religious in the same country.
I really could go on and on with this review since there was just so much information that fascinates me and so many episodes of this history that grabbed my attention. Again I was impressed with how Ann Carey wrote on this topic steering clear of demonizing people and being quite balanced in the telling of this history.
While this book totally satisfied me in regards to a specific history of women religious associated with the LCWR, women’s ordination movements, and other associated groups there are other aspects I would like to learn more about. For example I would love this author or another one to chronicle a history for example of women religious associated with the CMSWR. Mother Angelica’s story has been told already in book form, but I bet there are tons of other interesting stories involving other women’s religious institutes and the paths they took that took a divergent path from the LCWR. Mother Dolores Hart in her book [The Ear of the Heart][heart] also chronicles to some extent adaptations after Vatican II at Regina Laudis which were much more aligned with the intent of what Vatican II called for.
There are references to men in religious life along with priests, especially those who inspired or were sympathetic with the change-oriented orders. There is probably a closely paralleled history regarding them along with some major differences. Plus the other context I would like to see are the currents worldwide in religious life in how they compared and diverged from what happened here.
May 4, 2026
really cool to read this to learn more about the religious life my grandma experienced in the '60s.
March 5, 2018
Loretto, Kentucky, is famous for the Maker’s Mark Distillery. Recent years have seen significant developments: improvement of the facilities, development of two new Bourbon offerings (Maker’s 46 and Maker’s Cask Strength), and expanded tours. If you seek a bourbon pilgrimage, this place must be tops on your list of shrines.
Alas, the town has another, more venerable institution that is on its way to extinction. The town of Loretto was named for being the site of the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Loretto, once one of the largest of the Roman Catholic orders of teaching sisters in the United States. I was taught in a school staffed by these sisters in the 1950s. The school, St. Peter’s, in Rockford, Illinois, had but one lay teacher, Miss Beetle, who taught third grade. The rest of the faculty were Loretto sisters, who wore the “M veil”, a heavily starched headpiece with a crease mid-forehead, so that it resembled the first letter in the Blessed Virgin’s name. The teachers lived together in a convent adjacent to the school on North Church Street. The church is now a cathedral, the school is now a cathedral school, but the sisters are no longer there. The order is a casualty of a sad concurrence of events: radicalization of culture in the 1960’s, emergence of radical feminism, appalling incompetence of Catholic bishops in communicating changes called for by Vatican II, and a campaign of deliberate misinformation on the part of radicalized sisters. Most notable among the radicals was the late Loretto Sister Mary Luke Tobin. Most radicalized among the orders was the Sisters of Loretto. The radicals called for religious to live a personalized truth derived from individual experience. The result of the radicalization has been the demise of orders like Loretto. The last Loretto sister joined in 1970. My wife and I visited the Motherhouse not long ago. We stayed in a guesthouse on the grounds. There are no Angelus bells. We were not invited to Mass or to daily offices or to the chapel. We ate with the sisters at their common dining room, but their were no prayers beginning or following the meals. We heard, from one of the more gregarious sisters, an angry tirade about the absence of women priests, but in our days there we never heard the word “Jesus” or the word “Christ.” The Motherhouse is a sad retirement home and hospice for the aging women who remained in the order. I suspect most of them remain silent, pray individually, and weep for what has been lost. Ann Carey’s Sisters in Crisis is a riveting account of the unraveling. It concludes on the upbeat: Religious orders that are traditional in devotion and habit, who profess the Truth rather than “my truth” are growing in members, members who are younger and more faithful.
Alas, the town has another, more venerable institution that is on its way to extinction. The town of Loretto was named for being the site of the Motherhouse of the Sisters of Loretto, once one of the largest of the Roman Catholic orders of teaching sisters in the United States. I was taught in a school staffed by these sisters in the 1950s. The school, St. Peter’s, in Rockford, Illinois, had but one lay teacher, Miss Beetle, who taught third grade. The rest of the faculty were Loretto sisters, who wore the “M veil”, a heavily starched headpiece with a crease mid-forehead, so that it resembled the first letter in the Blessed Virgin’s name. The teachers lived together in a convent adjacent to the school on North Church Street. The church is now a cathedral, the school is now a cathedral school, but the sisters are no longer there. The order is a casualty of a sad concurrence of events: radicalization of culture in the 1960’s, emergence of radical feminism, appalling incompetence of Catholic bishops in communicating changes called for by Vatican II, and a campaign of deliberate misinformation on the part of radicalized sisters. Most notable among the radicals was the late Loretto Sister Mary Luke Tobin. Most radicalized among the orders was the Sisters of Loretto. The radicals called for religious to live a personalized truth derived from individual experience. The result of the radicalization has been the demise of orders like Loretto. The last Loretto sister joined in 1970. My wife and I visited the Motherhouse not long ago. We stayed in a guesthouse on the grounds. There are no Angelus bells. We were not invited to Mass or to daily offices or to the chapel. We ate with the sisters at their common dining room, but their were no prayers beginning or following the meals. We heard, from one of the more gregarious sisters, an angry tirade about the absence of women priests, but in our days there we never heard the word “Jesus” or the word “Christ.” The Motherhouse is a sad retirement home and hospice for the aging women who remained in the order. I suspect most of them remain silent, pray individually, and weep for what has been lost. Ann Carey’s Sisters in Crisis is a riveting account of the unraveling. It concludes on the upbeat: Religious orders that are traditional in devotion and habit, who profess the Truth rather than “my truth” are growing in members, members who are younger and more faithful.
March 2, 2015
Interesting and enlightening!
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews