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  • Habits of Change: An Oral History Of American Nuns
  • Cornelia A. Pokrzywa and Rachel Seiderman
Habits of Change: An Oral History of American Nuns. By Carole Garibaldi Rogers . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. 319 pp. Softbound, $27.95.

Women's religious communities are often characterized as either cloistered or comical. Carole Garibaldi Rogers shines a light on the real lives of American nuns as they reflect on the changes they have sometimes witnessed, other times endured, and often shaped through their own activism in the wider culture.

Between 1991 and 1995, Rogers collected ninety-four oral histories of religious women ranging in age from forty to ninety, with the majority in their sixties. They came from a variety of ethnic backgrounds and belonged to more than forty different religious communities. The interviews lasted about two hours, focusing around three main questions: "Why did you enter religious life? What were some of the crisis points or times of change in your religious life? Or, to put it another way, how have you become the person you are today? And, finally, why are you still a religious?" (xvii).

Of the ninety-four original interviews, fifty-four appeared in Rogers's (1996) book Poverty, Chastity and Change: Lives of Contemporary American Nuns (New York: Twayne). This second edition, Habits of Change, includes the original, unchanged interviews with appended updates from the author, as well as two new oral histories, which brings the total of interviews for her new edition to fifty-six.

The women Rogers selected for her oral histories were highly educated, which may surprise those with little direct experience with women religious. Yet Rogers argues that this is representative of American nuns, many of whom attended [End Page 153] college and earned advanced degrees or sought additional credentialing to meet the needs of their evolving ministries.

Rogers includes a selected bibliography to represent the "explosion" of multidisciplinary materials that have emerged since her first collection was published in 1996. This includes work by new scholars with an interest in the accomplishments of women religious of the past as well as contemporary women. Rogers's collection offers a bridge between these scholarly works written by outside stakeholders and the memoirs, essays, and studies written by women religious, many scholars themselves.

Rogers organizes the book into two parts, each section devoted to an overarching theme, though she acknowledges that many of the oral histories could fit comfortably into multiple sections. Her writing, where it appears, is fluent and thoughtful, offering insights into each woman religious based on her observations. The first section, titled "From the Past into the Present," categorizes the oral histories into subsections: "Evolving Ministries" and "Changing Attitudes." Readers will find the expected interviews with sisters serving as educators, missionary workers, hospital workers, and also those "on the cutting edge," including those who started their own orders to advance their causes of interest, often women's causes. What is not expected is the frankness and strength revealed in those interviews, often covering taboo topics such as chastity, church reform, and protests. Sister Margaret Traxler, described as an imposing woman, offers a scathing evaluation of "pervasive arrogance among the Catholic clergy and hierarchy" (127). Reflecting on her emerging feminism in the 1960s, Traxler offers,

It was time for women to speak up and defend themselves. We had bishops telling nuns what time they could get up, what time they had to get to bed. No man should run our lives! That's the mistake of churchmen. . . . In 1970, we were the first group to call for the ordination of women. Now, something like 64 percent of the laity believe in the ordination of women. Oh, it's got to change! We've got to have ordination of women so that we can get out and reach the people.

Back then I just about got killed for it.

(131)

In "Changing Attitudes," Rogers includes oral histories with nuns whose ministry included ecumenical efforts, artistic endeavors, and minority voices. This section also explores the oral histories of those who were called to lead, those involved in communities that were torn asunder by changing times, and those nuns who eventually made a decision...

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