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Title: The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Women in the Political Economy) by Lora Ann Quinonez, Mary Daniel Turner ISBN: 1566390745 Publisher: Temple Univ Press Pub. Date: 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.95

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Average Customer Rating: 4

Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent But One-sided Analysis Of An Important Movement
Comment: You've come a long way, sister: from the 1950's demur, submissive and obedient daughter of the church who had to be pushed into organizing by the Vatican (!) to the 1990's educated, organized, Americanized, politicized, feminist mature woman who has found her own identity and moral agency and so her own inner authority, and has done so and maintained it despite almost constant hierarchical and Vatican opposition. The Vatican that ironically started this transformation is now cracking the whip and trying to get these tigers back on their chairs. American Catholic sisters have gone from the middle ages to postmodernity in the space of a few decades, one of the most astonishing transformations of a group of women ever, and it is excellently chronicled and its elements analyzed by Quinonez and Turner, starting with pre-Vatican II developments like the Sister Formation Movement, but focusing principally on the history of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which proved to be the vanguard and axis of growth. As former executive directors of the LCWR at the time much of this change was taking place they have an insider's feel for the meaning of the data they draw on and the comments their interviews surfaced, but as they admit (page x), "We bring certain biases to the work." The description of the transformation is a kind of in-house history that seems to say the LCWR has done all things well. Despite continuous conflict with the Vatican and the American hierarchy and internal conflict that at one time led to the establishment of a rival group, virtually no attempt is made to present the position of the minority among their members or their communities or the splinter group or the American hierarchy or the Vatican, except to characterize the men as anti-Vatican II, power hungry, domineering, rude male chauvinists who just refuse to listen to the constant and careful explanations of the enlightened sisters. While there may be some truth to this characterization, one still senses a lack of balance here. There are other viewpoints that need their tale told as well, there are other sisters who do not see this as their story. One annoying feature of the book is the constant intrusion of "[sic]" whenever a quotation from decades past includes a masculine common-gender form. One wishes the authors had had the imagination and prudence to make their rather obvious point in a more magnanimous and less irritating way. Nevertheless, the history and position of some, perhaps many, modern sisters are well and clearly presented here. I'd recommend this book especially to sisters and hierarchy alike, as well as to those interested in the feminist movement of the last half-century.