The White Nuns

Author : Constance Hoffman Berman
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812295080
Total Pages : 364 pages
Book Rating : 4.85/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The White Nuns written by Constance Hoffman Berman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2018-04-04 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Modern studies of the religious reform movement of the central Middle Ages have often relied on contemporary accounts penned by Cistercian monks, who routinely exaggerated the importance of their own institutions while paying scant attention to the remarkable expansion of abbeys of Cistercian women. Yet by the end of the thirteenth century, Constance Hoffman Berman contends, there were more houses of Cistercian nuns across Europe than of monks. In The White Nuns, she charts the stages in the nuns' gradual acceptance by the abbots of the Cistercian Order's General Chapter and describes the expansion of the nuns' communities and their adaptation to a variety of economic circumstances in France and throughout Europe. While some sought contemplative lives of prayer, the ambition of many of these religious women was to serve the poor, the sick, and the elderly. Focusing in particular on Cistercian nuns' abbeys founded between 1190 and 1250 in the northern French archdiocese of Sens, Berman reveals the frequency with which communities of Cistercian nuns were founded by rich and powerful women, including Queen Blanche of Castile, heiresses Countess Matilda of Courtenay and Countess Isabelle of Chartres, and esteemed ladies such as Agnes of Cressonessart. She shows how these founders and early patrons assisted early abbesses, nuns, and lay sisters by using written documents to secure rights and create endowments, and it is on the records of their considerable economic achievements that she centers her analysis. The White Nuns considers Cistercian women and the women who were their patrons in a clear-eyed reading of narrative texts in their contexts. It challenges conventional scholarship that accepts the words of medieval monastic writers as literal truth, as if they were written without rhetorical skill, bias, or self-interest. In its identification of long-accepted misogynies, its search for their origins, and its struggle to reject such misreadings, The White Nuns provides a robust model for historians writing against received traditions.

Author : Amy L. Koehlinger
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674024731
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The New Nuns written by Amy L. Koehlinger and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-30 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1960s, a number of Catholic women religious in the United States abandoned traditional apostolic works to experiment with new and often unprecedented forms of service among non-Catholics. Amy Koehlinger explores the phenomenon of the "new nun" through close examination of one of its most visible forms--the experience of white sisters working in African-American communities. In a complex network of programs and activities Koehlinger describes as the "racial apostolate," sisters taught at African-American colleges in the South, held racial sensitivity sessions in integrating neighborhoods, and created programs for children of color in public housing projects. Engaging with issues of race and justice allowed the sisters to see themselves, their vocation, and the Church in dramatically different terms. In this book, Koehlinger captures the confusion and frustration, as well as the exuberance and delight, they experienced in their new Christian mission. Their increasing autonomy and frequent critiques of institutional misogyny shaped reforms within their institute and sharpened a post-Vatican II crisis of authority. From the Selma march to Chicago's Cabrini Green housing project, Amy Koehlinger illuminates the transformative nature of the nexus of race, religion, and gender in American society.

Author : Elizabeth Kuhns
Publisher : Image
ISBN 13 : 0307423956
Total Pages : 253 pages
Book Rating : 4.55/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Habit written by Elizabeth Kuhns and published by Image. This book was released on 2007-12-18 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Curiosity about nuns and their distinctive clothing is almost as old as Catholicism itself. The habit intrigues the religious and the nonreligious alike, from medieval maidens to contemporary schoolboys, to feminists and other social critics. The first book to explore the symbolism of this attire, The Habit presents a visual gallery of the diverse forms of religious clothing and explains the principles and traditions that inspired them. More than just an eye-opening study of the symbolic significance of starched wimples, dark dresses, and flowing veils, The Habit is an incisive, engaging portrait of the roles nuns have and do play in the Catholic Church and in ministering to the needs of society. From the clothing seen in an eleventh-century monastery to the garb worn by nuns on picket lines during the 1960s, habits have always been designed to convey a specific image or ideal. The habits of the Benedictines and the Dominicans, for example, were specifically created to distinguish women who consecrated their lives to God; other habits reflected the sisters’ desire to blend in among the people they served. The brown Carmelite habit was rarely seen outside the monastery wall, while the Flying Nun turned the white winged cornette of the Daughters of Charity into a universally recognized icon. And when many religious abandoned habits in the 1960s and ’70s, it stirred a debate that continues today. Drawing on archival research and personal interviews with nuns all over the United States, Elizabeth Kuhns examines some of the gender and identity issues behind the controversy and brings to light the paradoxes the habit represents. For some, it epitomizes oppression and obsolescence; for others, it embodies the ultimate beauty and dignity of the vocation. Complete with extraordinary photographs, including images of the nineteenth century nuns’ silk bonnets to the simple gray dresses of the Sisters of Social Service, this evocative narrative explores the timeless symbolism of the habit and traces its evolution as a visual reflection of the changes in society.

Author : Theresa Keeley
Publisher : Cornell University Press
ISBN 13 : 1501750771
Total Pages : 220 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns written by Theresa Keeley and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns, Theresa Keeley analyzes the role of intra-Catholic conflict within the framework of U.S. foreign policy formulation and execution during the Reagan administration. She challenges the preponderance of scholarship on the administration that stresses the influence of evangelical Protestants on foreign policy toward Latin America. Especially in the case of U.S. engagement in El Salvador and Nicaragua, Keeley argues, the bitter debate between U.S. and Central American Catholics over the direction of the Catholic Church shaped President Reagan's foreign policy. The flash point for these intra-Catholic disputes was the December 1980 political murder of four American Catholic missionaries in El Salvador. Liberal Catholics described nuns and priests in Central America who worked to combat structural inequality as human rights advocates living out the Gospel's spirit. Conservative Catholics saw them as agents of class conflict who furthered the so-called Gospel according to Karl Marx. The debate was an old one among Catholics, but, as Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns contends, it intensified as conservative, anticommunist Catholics played instrumental roles in crafting U.S. policy to fund the Salvadoran government and the Nicaraguan Contras. Reagan's Gun-Toting Nuns describes the religious actors as human rights advocates and, against prevailing understandings of the fundamentally secular activism related to human rights, highlights religion-inspired activism during the Cold War. In charting the rightward development of American Catholicism, Keeley provides a new chapter in the history of U.S. diplomacy and shows how domestic issues such as contraception and abortion joined with foreign policy matters to shift Catholic laity toward Republican principles at home and abroad.

Author : Maureen Kelly
Publisher : Workman Publishing
ISBN 13 : 9780761150411
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.12/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Nuns Having Fun written by Maureen Kelly and published by Workman Publishing. This book was released on 2008-05-28 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hallelujah, it's a book! After proving itself to be the "funniest calendar of the year" (according to Gene Shalit), "irresistible" (USA Weekend), and "habit-forming" (Maxim magazine), the Nuns Having Fun calendar has inspired Nuns Having Fun, a book of endearing nuttiness. Catholic kitsch doesn't get any funnier. Written by Maureen Kelly and Jeffrey Stone, pitch-perfect co-authors of the nuns calendar and the New York Times bestseller Growing Up Catholic, Nuns Having Fun features hundreds of sisters in full habit, cutting loose and having a hoot. Here are nuns in the surf ("This is even more fun than walking on water"), nuns in bumper cars ("We brake for Jesus"), nuns in a beer hall ("Ale Marys"), and nuns in the museum, huddled in front of a study of nudes ("It's okay to open your eyes. Sister Wendy says it's art"). There are nuns on skates, at bat, at the theater, skeet shooting (nuns with guns!), even hitting the slots (you know it's for a good cause). The 125 images are from the 1950s and '60s, black-and-white and possessing a pure retro charm; the written material is all-new. Drawing on their years as parochial school students, the authors explore the lore and legends surrounding nuns, including Favorite Punishments from Nuns, Nuns Say the Darndest Things, How to Recognize a Nun After Vatican II, a Wimple Watch, and List of People Who Could Have Been Nuns. As Sister says, "To err is human. To laugh is divine."

Author : Constance Hoffman Berman
Publisher : University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN 13 : 0812200799
Total Pages : 407 pages
Book Rating : 4.99/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Cistercian Evolution written by Constance Hoffman Berman and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2010-08-03 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to the received history, the Cistercian order was founded in Cîteaux, France, in 1098 by a group of Benedictine monks who wished for a stricter community. They sought a monastic life that called for extreme asceticism, rejection of feudal revenues, and manual labor for monks. Their third leader, Stephen Harding, issued a constitution, the Carta Caritatis, that called for the uniformity of custom in all Cistercian monasteries and the establishment of an annual general chapter meeting at Cîteaux. The Cistercian order grew phenomenally in the mid-twelfth century, reaching beyond France to Portugal in the west, Sweden in the north, and the eastern Mediterranean, ostensibly through a process of apostolic gestation, whereby members of a motherhouse would go forth to establish a new house. The abbey at Clairvaux, founded by Bernard in 1115, was alone responsible for founding 68 of the 338 Cistercian abbeys in existence by 1153. But this well-established view of a centrally organized order whose founders envisioned the shape and form of a religious order at its prime is not borne out in the historical record. Through an investigation of early Cistercian documents, Constance Hoffman Berman proves that no reliable reference to Stephen's Carta Caritatis appears before the mid-twelfth century, and that the document is more likely to date from 1165 than from 1119. The implications of this fact are profound. Instead of being a charter by which more than 300 Cistercian houses were set up by a central authority, the document becomes a means of bringing under centralized administrative control a large number of loosely affiliated and already existing monastic houses of monks as well as nuns who shared Cistercian customs. The likely reason for this administrative structuring was to check the influence of the overdominant house of Clairvaux, which threatened the authority of Cîteaux through Bernard's highly successful creation of new monastic communities. For centuries the growth of the Cistercian order has been presented as a spontaneous spirituality that swept western Europe through the power of the first house at Cîteaux. Berman suggests instead that the creation of the religious order was a collaborative activity, less driven by centralized institutions; its formation was intended to solve practical problems about monastic administration. With the publication of The Cistercian Evolution, for the first time the mechanisms are revealed by which the monks of Cîteaux reshaped fact to build and administer one of the most powerful and influential religious orders of the Middle Ages.

Author : Melissa M. Wilcox
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1479820369
Total Pages : 318 pages
Book Rating : 4.68/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Queer Nuns written by Melissa M. Wilcox and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2018-05-22 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Modern-day badass drag queen superhero nuns"--"It was like this asteroid belt": the origins and growth of the sisters -- "We are nuns, silly!": serious parody as activism -- "A sacred, powerful woman": complicating gender -- "Sister outsiders": navigating whiteness -- "A secular nun": serious parody and the sacred -- New world order? -- Blooper reel -- Studying the sisters

Author : B.G. Wood
Publisher : Bogwood Films Inc
ISBN 13 : 0985194367
Total Pages : 235 pages
Book Rating : 4.69/5 ( download)

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Download or read book And Then There Was Nun written by B.G. Wood and published by Bogwood Films Inc. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 235 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welcome back to Maidenwell, where the Christmas snow is falling—but so are the bodies. Hired as the eyes and ears of eccentric billionaire Matthias Loneskum, Gina Biletti thought she’d signed up for a tranquil life in Maidenwell, enjoying cozy tea shops, quaint cottages, and harmless village gossip. Little did she know that the holiday season would bring a chilling turn to the village’s idyllic charms. As Christmas approaches, an engagement party for Matthias’ overachieving sister, Beatrix, sets the stage for murder and mystery. And everyone on the guest list has their own agenda: a bewitching young nun, a suspiciously suave ex-con, an enigmatic foreign businessman, and a group of ambitious young tech entrepreneurs competing for a $5 million start-up prize. Just as Gina decides maybe, just maybe, she can relax and enjoy her mulled wine, a gunshot rings out, disrupting a Christmas outing in Maidenwell’s snowy forest. Before you can say “figgy pudding,” tragedy strikes again with a jaw-dropping “suicide,” flipping Gina’s cozy world on its head. As if on cue, a massive winter storm seals the village up like a snow globe, and Gina faces a dreadful realization. She is trapped with a cunning and cold-blooded killer. Can she unravel the truth before another body falls, or will this be her first and last Christmas in Maidenwell? Book Two in the Murderwell Mysteries series, AND THEN THERE WAS NUN, is a suspenseful Christmas romp, garnished with humor, unexpected twists, and a dash—or maybe a blizzard—of holiday charm. About the Sleuth Gina Biletti is a spunky ex-New Yorker, ex-market researcher, and ex-wife with a talent for asking questions and uncovering secrets. Armed with a cat-like curiosity and a passion for telling it like it is, Gina becomes billionaire Matthias Loneskum’s trusted eyes and ears in Maidenwell. With each case, she fearlessly unravels mysteries, deciphering cryptic clues and untangling motives with a razor wit and a big heart.

Author : Sr Hedda M Jaeger Csj
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780692796214
Total Pages : 316 pages
Book Rating : 4.15/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Trapped in Paradise written by Sr Hedda M Jaeger Csj and published by . This book was released on 2016-10-13 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Trapped in Paradise, during World War II, four Catholic nuns from California were caught behind enemy lines in the South Pacific. Two of these Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange were teachers and two were nurses. Having arrived In the Solomon Islands in December, 1940, they were new to missionary life, new to a culture not their own, new to the languages spoken on their island and new to navigating in the geography that surrounded them. On December 7, 1941, a year and a day after the nuns arrived in the Solomons, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. After that devastating air-strike, the Japanese quickly and strategically occupied many of the islands of the South Pacific. What the nuns didn't know was that the Japanese wanted to occupy their island, Buka, and they wanted it fast! Buka, a small island just north of the large island of Bougainville, offered the Japanese a strategic site for an airfield to support their invasion of the rest of the South Pacific, including Australia. When the nuns had left Wilmington, California in 1940, one of them, Sister Hedda Jaeger, a nurse, was tasked with keeping a journal that was sent back periodically to their religious community in Orange, California. In good times and bad, Sister Hedda was faithful to recording their story. This first person account documents their journey-from their eager anticipation about their new mission, to adapting to the realities of native culture, to sheer terror as they run from the invading Japanese. Once in hiding on the larger island of Bougainville, they learn that other missionaries in the Solomons had been tortured and executed. Throughout their adventures and later ordeals, they are protected by the Marist priests, experienced missionaries who knew the lay of the land and feared for the sisters' fate should they be captured. After many months of hiding in the jungle and with no communication with the larger world, the sisters were ultimately rescued by United States submarine Nautilus in a high risk mission on New Year's Day 1943. The book tells the story of these four courageous and devoted women, the natives they taught and nursed, the priests who hid and protected them, and the incredible physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges they faced. After the end of the war, the Sisters of St. Joseph returned again to serve the people of the Solomon Islands. An epilogue describes the fate of the principal missionaries, both those who survived and those who died at the hands of the Japanese. The sisters' journal, related writings, maps, and original photographs form the basis for this book.

Author : Maureen Fitzgerald
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252047036
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.39/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Habits of Compassion written by Maureen Fitzgerald and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2023-12-11 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Irish-Catholic Sisters accomplished tremendously successful work in founding charitable organizations in New York City from the Irish famine through the early twentieth century. Maureen Fitzgerald argues that their championing of the rights of the poor—especially poor women—resulted in an explosion of state-supported services and programs. Parting from Protestant belief in meager and means-tested aid, Irish Catholic nuns argued for an approach based on compassion for the poor. Fitzgerald positions the nuns' activism as resistance to Protestantism's cultural hegemony. As she shows, Roman Catholic nuns offered strong and unequivocal moral leadership in condemning those who punished the poor for their poverty and unmarried women for sexual transgression. Fitzgerald also delves into the nuns' own communities, from the class-based hierarchies within the convents to the political power they wielded within the city. That power, amplified by an alliance with the local Irish Catholic political machine, allowed the women to expand public charities in the city on an unprecedented scale.