Take Heart: Growing as a Faith Community by Nan Deane Cano (review)

Nan Deane Cano, IHM explores in the book Take Heart: Growing as a Faith Community, the history of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Community in Los Angeles, its origins in Spain, its first trek to California, its evolution from the nineteenth century through the tumultuous Vatican II years, and its reinvention as a new, independent community without canonical status. Cano’s work offers an engaging and compelling exploration of the life of a religious community, reminding her readers that religious life is not static nor fixed in time.

Cano, herself a member of this Los Angeles-based IHM community, writes with the keen insight of an insider, but provides the context needed to understand the complex and rich history of this religious community. Those unfamiliar with the longer IHM history in Spain and California often only have an awareness of its tumultuous 1960s dispute with church authorities. These were the “radical” nuns who voted to disband their religious congregation and had the audacity to form a new community under the initial guidance of Sister Anita Caspary. This decision and the recent “rediscovery” of artist Corita Kent are all that is generally known by outsiders to American Catholic women religious history. Cano, thankfully, gives readers a deeper understanding of the longer history of the IHMs, effectively putting the 1969 decision to reform as a noncanonical community in its proper context.

Take Heart is divided into two parts: “Lives of Service” and “Faith in Action.” The first section examines the community’s origins in Spain and the decision to send missionaries to the “New World” in 1871. Ten Daughters of the Most Holy and Immaculate Heart of the Blessed Virgin Mary left Europe arriving in New York on August 22, 1871. By the end of the month, they arrived in California and developed their ministerial work in education. Cano provides a good overview of the growth of the IHMs in Los Angeles, describing the establishment of schools and the growth of the community’s membership up to the 1960s. The last chapter of this first part, “The Heart of the Matter,” concentrates on the impact of Vatican II and the IHMs’ efforts to take to heart the messages of renewal. The turning point that was the dispute with clerical authority in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s did not come from nowhere. Cano, by providing the origins and development of the community through the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shows that the IHMs understood who they were as a religious congregation, tracing the sisters’ growth and ultimate separation from the Spanish congregation. In this case, the California IHMs had the support of their local bishops to take this independent step. The step towards separation that occurred in 1969 came as a result of the ongoing conflict with Cardinal James McIntyre, who opposed this community’s efforts to modernize and embrace renewal.

Cano’s work makes use of primary documents to highlight the spirit of the community since its foundation, and to get to the heart of the dispute in the 1960s with Cardinal McIntyre. She provides transcriptions of original documents that pinpoints the crux of the matter for the cardinal—holy obedience. As the IHM’s re-envisioned religious life in response to Vatican II, they moved beyond what McIntyre thought suitable for women religious. The second section, “Faith in Action,” picks up with “what happened next?” In the immediate aftermath of the creation of the new community, the IHMs found new work and defined new norms of religious life. The chapters provide an overview of the growth of the community, highlighting individual sisters and new ministries. Cano writes that “the aim of this book has been to chronicle one group of Catholic nuns’ transformation into an ecumenical faith community outlining the painful challenges along the way.” The author’s description is quite accurate. This, Cano offers, is a “hopeful story . . . in God’s hands” (99).

Take Heart is not an...