Midwives of the Future

...Released from the constraining rigidity of the conventual worlds they had eagerly entered initially, they revel in the potential of diversity and risk...

...Still, two important questions remain unaddressed and unCommonweal: 380 answered...

...Their faith finds purpose in challenge and change...

...advocates for the poor, minorities, women, or homosexuals...

...21 June 1985: 381...

...Joseph of Peace, Dorothy Vi dulich...

...Vidulich's account of the recla mation of her institute's much-maligne< founder, Margaret Anna Cusack, is ; pointed reminder that innovation is bj definition revolutionary, that latetwentieth-century nuns are descendants of risk-taking pioneers who were able to perceive unmet needs in their own day and to respond to them by doing what had not been done before...

...What this suggests, of course, is that however upset those in Rome may be, events of the past twenty years were born from the very sort of obedience to Vatican edicts that John Paul II so earnestly desires — and thus are quite literally, if perhaps unexpectedly, traditional...

...The excitement and liberation which thai process generated is an implicit subtex to nearly every essay, and is dealt witl specifically in those by Joan Chittister Margaret Traxler and, particularly, Sis ter of St...

...None of the authors here has had an easy or complacent life...

...Several have left their original congregations to join (or found) others...

...As leaders of their orders, or as pioneers in controversial ministries, some have had difficult dealings with bishops, Roman officials, and their own sisters...

...a few have confronted — and overcome — traumatic crises of vocation and belief...

...Well, despite a 40 percent decline in the number of women religious since 1965, Bernie stayed a nun (now in a Peruvian House of Prayer), as did the nineteen women whose essays appear in Midwives of the Future...

...This is hardly, of course, a random collection of autobiographies...

...The almost uniform prominence of this anthology's contributors could allow it to be dismissed as aberrant or unrepresentative by those critical of what it has to say...

...facilitators of East-West spiritual dialogue...

...Such a response would be unfortunate, for surveys and other data suggest that the majority of American sisters today espouse views similar to those presented here...

...despite the pain and the struggle reflected in these narratives, the principal message they convey is of hope and joy...

...four of the writers, and editor Ann Patrick Ware, were signers of the controversial October 1984 "Statement on Pluralism and Abortion" that led to Vatican threats of dismissal...

...Midwives is an anthology with a mission...

...professors...

...And yet...

...Concern over what are perceived and labeled as reactionary initiatives now emanating from Rome — especially the forced resignations of Agnes Mary Mansour and others from political office, the 1983 Vatican directive on "Essential Elements of Religious Life," and the investigation of American orders currently underway — permeates both Ware's introduction and most of the pieces that follow...

...Although none is employed in what used to be regarded as typical "nuns' work," these sisters all see themselves as ' 'living the Gospel'' more fully than they found possible in pre-renewal days — as apostles to prisons...

...Bernie was a "normal" Brooklyn teenager whose saga began happily at home, continued through a presumably typical postulancy and novitiate, and ended with her leaving eagerly for South America in the full habit of a professed Maryknoller...

...Margaret Susan Thompson DURING the 1950s, thousands of girls who would later become sisters — and, no doubt, more who would not — pored over the carefully enticing pictures and text of Bernie Becomes a Nun...

...Had this point been made explicitly, perhaps through an essay by social scientist Sister Marie Augusta Neal who has conducted much of the relevant research, Midwives might be less vulnerable to that sort of criticism...

...After anywhere from twenty to fifty years of religious life, these women are engaged and alive: grateful for the growth they have experienced and eager for more...

...Second, and perhaps more crucial, the reader may be left uncertain as to the typicality of these accounts...

...The writer of nearly every essay is a well-known and recognized member of Catholicism's progressive feminist vanguard...

...Seen in such a light, Midwives of the Future is a provocative, illuminating, and often moving witness to history in process...

...political activists...

...And as they recount their experiences in community before, during, and after the tumultuous renewal impelled by Vatican II, we come to understand why and how they did so...

...All Catholics, including those in Rome, need to recognize that the renewal which produced the changes celebrated in this volume — the same phenomena apparently so disturbing to those currently in the Curia — was implemented in direct compliance with papal directives, particularly Perfectae Caritatis, that ordered communities to explore and recapture their founders' charisms...

...First, in spite of the fulfillment these nuns have experienced, why did over 60,000 others leave communities during the very years of the authors' adaptation and growth, and why are so few candidates entering to replace them...

...The message is clear and persuasive — so far, at least, as the twenty women here are concerned...

...It is quite evident that these sisters will resist those and any other attempts to close the windows that were opened two decades ago, and that this book is intended as testimony and justification of their position...