Over the past week, I’ve read three quite blog-worthy books, so I’m going to take some time to discuss them. Between that and some papal postings, that should just about do me for the week, so don’t come here looking for lotsa news – go to any one of the excellent blogs I have on my sidebars – or others that you have. I can’t keep up with all the news any more!

Double Crossed : Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns is the title of the first, and my least favorite of the three, and it’s written by journalist Kenneth Briggs.

The book purports to explore the question of how and why religious life has collapsed in the United States – religious women, that is.  The title should clue you in right away as to the conclusions.

Briggs claims, in essence that American religious life collapsed because religious communities’ attempts at renewal were gravely hampered by conflicts with the male hierarchy – this both squelched renewal in direct ways and drained energy that the communities had to expend in combatting said hierachy. The ultimate damning point relates to the crisis in regard to retired religious: past treatment of these women like indentured servants has led to their contemporary difficult straits.

I’ll say first, that I read this book in pre-pub bound galleys, and it suffers from lots of typos that will undoubtedly be corrected, but also some garbled and repetititve writing which, I’m thinking a month before publication, probably won’t.

That said, the first part of the book, which lays the groundwork for the post-Vatican II era, is not terrible. It covers some ground of which I wasn’t aware, specifically, the move to try to get religious women engaged in education a little more education before they were thrown into the classroom.

As most of you probably know,  up until the 1950’s (and even past that), the vast majority of teaching sisters did not have any kind of college degree when they began teaching, and obtained that degree usually over the course of decades of summer school. In the 1950’s, the "Sister Formation" movement got underway, initially an outgrowth of the NCEA, in which reasons were given and even plans suggested for changing that situation. That, combined with Pius XII’s call for religious orders worldwide to do a little updating, tells us that there was a recognized need for change of some sort in the years before the Council. (For example, in this letter to teaching Sisters, Pius goes over some ways in which women in this particular ministry might consider adapting to the needs of modern students. The orders, for the most part, resisted, especially when it came to the matter of the habit.

(And, as is the case with liturgical music below, let’s not assume that all was a monolithic romp through paradise in the centuries preceding. Religious life for women has gone through monumental changes throughout history, expressive of the changing roles of women in cultures, the determination of male clerics to control new movements, as well as other forces. It’s the case with religious movement in general – the center holds and ossifies, new sparks flare up outside that center, sparks that are creative in their attention to new situations and needs, and then slowly, but inexorably, move to the center themselves…and ossify. Such is life.)

So, that’s the helpful part of the book. The rest of it is just too slavishly worshipful of the courageous band of Kane, Chittister and their many sisters for my taste. But, even as the book sort of stands in awe at their brilliance, constantly under siege from the Vatican, you know, it offers them a long, unintentional, backhanded insult.

For in essence, what Briggs does is to free the religious women themselves from even a speck of responsibility for the collapse of their own orders.

Which, I must insist, is ironic for a book that would like us to celebrate the brilliance and strength of women – to make them victims.

And it’s not as if he even makes his case. He uses a very few incidents in the early period – the IHM conflict with Cardinal McIntyre in LA (without ever once mentioning, for example, the role of Rogerian therapy in that mess, and how that impacted the IHM’s), some tensions about the Sister Formation project and how that eventually ended up, then the formation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and, beginning in the 80’s, the heightened tensions with Rome over the direction of religious life in the US.

Throughout the book, Briggs would like you to think that this is all about the rigid male hierarchs afraid of the women. Now, let us be clear that religious women have, indeed, been ill-treated through much of American Catholic history in one way or another. However, this treatment has to be seen in context. While at times, religious women had a great deal of autonomy to use their creativity in constructing so much of this country’s Catholic educational and health care infrastructure, they were, indeed, often in conflict with male clerics, and the system could ultimately be stifling and infantilizing. This is all true.

However…Briggs would like us to think that the problem, as reform loomed, was all about the Male Clerics. Trouble is, his own text belies his preferred conclusion.

At every turn, in the stories related to those pre-Vatican II and early post-Vatican II years, resistance to "reform" comes just as strongly from religious women as anywhere else. Superiors of religious communities, in particular were skeptical about the Sister Formation program. The tensions that accompanied "renewal" of community life in the 60’s and 70’s were not created by male hieararchs – they were created within the communities themselves by the women who could not agree, who pushed, pulled and resisted.

Let’s take the pertinent V2 document for example: Perfectae Caritatis

Briggs, of course, is all about faulting male clerics for suppressing the women’s attempts at reform. Of course the big push for reform came about because of Vatican II, an overwhelmingly gathering of male clerics. (And one could fault the Council for issuing this document with a startlingly minimal amount of input from women religious. True, that.)

So, we have the inspiration for reform coming from males at this point (Pius XII, V2 Fathers). The next ten years in the US, most religious communities were totally consumed with trying to figure out how to do this. It was an enormous drain of energy and broke many hearts on all sides. And why was this a problem? Because, you see, Perfectae Caritatis was too vague. It had not been specific enough, and had left the women without enough guidance.

But, I’m thinking, if the overwhelmingly male clerics had been more specific, that would have been…authoritarian, probably. And what an insult – to declare that the women couldn’t handle this transition smoothly because they didn’t have enough guidance from the men?

The book is full of this type of declaration with a dearth of evidence and sometime unintentional irony. The annoyance of American bishops at religious women is unfailingly put in terms of simple sexism or fear of uppity women. What the religious were actually doing – besides changing habits – is hardly ever mentioned. No, I am no fan of church bureaucracy and don’t see episcopal interests as necessarily altruistic at all times, but the truth is, the religious women of this period got bishops’ attention, not because the bishops were all hostile to social justice (the new cause) and wanted to squelch the women, but because the institutions which these women had created and committed to serve were suffering.

There is a bit more honesty once we get to the 80’s and the predominance of some religious women in radical feminism and the whole abortion-ad signing turmoils, but again, the fundamental issue is glossed over in favor of the power struggle. Never is the position of the religious women who signed ads supporting abortion rights or came to prominence in the women’s ordination movement questioned. All of these women are "bright" "accomplished" "creative" and "brilliant." Those who would question them are fearful and reactionary.

I have to say, I found this book to be really, really problematic.. To declare that the collapse of mainstream religious life in this country is the bishops’ and the Pope’s fault is deeply dishonest and simplistic. It treats women as less than fully adult, responsible for the consequences of their own actions, even as it decries the hierarchy for doing the same thing.

It would lead you to think that "renewal" didn’t happen at all, when it most cases, "renewal" has been constant, obvious and ever-present. And the women were completely in charge of it, and in most dioceses they did exactly what they wanted and got their way. It ignores the reality that religious women of that generation hold great power in the American Church. Yes, they got what they wanted. It’s hard to imagine how they could be any more "renewed" than they are.

But…you’re asking…what about the numbers? Briggs does come around at the end and venture that perhaps the loss of focus of many religious communities has had dire consequences. That’s about as specific as he will get – "focus." He doesn’t dare to plunge any deeper and ask, Why should a young woman in 2006 become this kind of religious sister? When you live in your own place, follow the Spirit of God blowing through your life at your own pace, in your own way, have no local community life, have your own stuff…why bother? Why not just remain a lay person? For heaven’s sake, there are even lay movements that are more demanding and sacrifical that modern religious life.

Now, he does discover that, um, there are a few religious communites that are growing. Gee, why? Let’s see what he says about them:

Young people who showed any interest in religious life were inclined more toward an older, contemplative model of community than the post-Vatican II concept of worldly involvement. The most conservative communities where the old ways had been kept claimed to be showing the most growth. In a nation that bows before the gods of growth and the gross national product, such claims command great attention and respect. They constitute, in many minds, proof of what works. To religious communities, of course, success was far more than an imitation of America’s obsession with increasing sales figures and portfolio returns.

Oh, I get it. If you’re pleased that because your community is growing, more children are being taught and poor being served and a vibrant spiritual center in your community is growing and providing what vibrant spiritual centers have provided for two millenia of monastic and religious life…STOP IT, YOU CRASS AMERICAN CAPITALIST, YOU!

To repeat – the book doesn’t tell the whole truth about the past 40 years – not by half. A lot of forces gathered up and created a perfect storm that put unbelievable pressure on religious life in the 1960’s and 70’s. But this book basically excuses religious women from any responsibility for the consequences. That’s incorrect and in a sad kind of way, insulting.

Some thoughtful discussion of reform and renewal in religious life here:

The impulse to re-examine the religious life and see how it can be applied under our unfortunately uniquely hostile circumstances was an inspired one I think. The RL as it was being lived up to the time of VII was like a house riddled with termites, looking solid but ready at the slightest touch to go to dust. Which indeed, is precisely what happened.

Perfectae Caritatis is not a bad document, as VII docs went. It was a continuation of a discussion between the religious orders and the Church that had been ongoing for some time. Pius XII tried to get the orders to undertake some reforms and had a very difficult time of it. It was well known that the time had come to take a serious look at the whole business.

What happened was not what was supposed to happen, I am convinced. And what was supposed to happen suddenly became moot as the asteroid destroyed the subject of the discussion. It has since then, become a matter of deciding what to do with all the bodies.

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