To Speak the Truth in Love: A Biography of Theresa Kane, RSM by Christine Schenk (review)

Author Christine Schenk begins her insightful and inspiring biography of Sister of Mercy Theresa Kane’s with the welcome Kane, as president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), gave to Pope John Paul II during his 1979 visit to the United States. She spoke of the pain many Catholic women felt about their position in the church and respectfully told him that to be faithful to its call for reverence and charity for all persons, the church “must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all the ministries of our Church” (9–10).

Catholic and secular media clamored unsuccessfully for interviews as they analyzed Kane’s greeting. While some judged it to be defiant, for many sisters it was a logical outgrowth of their years of study of the documents of the Second Vatican Council and of the people of God’s share in Christ’s prophetic ministry.

With this dramatic beginning Schenk skillfully parallels her biography of Kane with a brief institutional history of the New York province of the Sisters of Mercy of the Union as they responded to the Council’s call for renewal of the church and of the role of women religious within it.

The daughter of Irish immigrants, Kane was raised in a hospitable, spiritual home filled with books, and as a child she wished she were a boy so she could be a priest. In 1955 she entered the Sisters of Mercy in Tarrytown, New York where her administrative skills were quickly recognized and fostered.

In 1965 Kane was a delegate to the General Chapter of the Sisters of Mercy which began a long period of sisters reflecting together on how to live out the gospel, the documents of the Second Vatican Council, and their Mercy charism in church and society.

Recognizing that all the people of God have a role in discerning the signs of the times and God’s purpose, the delegates of the 1977 chapter affirmed their role in supporting the church in the development of new teaching or a new emphasis of traditional teaching, when to work for a change or when responsible dissent might be necessary. Even though it was directly at odds with findings of the Vatican’s own biblical scholars, the Vatican had recently affirmed that women could not be part of the ministerial priesthood. The chapter issued a Statement of Concern regarding this to be shared with the media and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. Elected as their Administer General, it was Kane’s responsibility to implement these decisions of the chapter delegates.

The Mercy sisters’ attempts to engage with the church hierarchy in the spirit of the Council resulted in years of tension over medical ethics, sisters’ involvement in political ministry, and equality of women in the church. The executive secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops actually approached a provincial administrator about accepting an appointment as president if Kane were removed. The sister adamantly refused, and Kane continued to speak the truth in love to church and society, as she carried out the chapter directives and advocated for women’s equality in all her future ministries.

The resulting media scrutiny, public controversy, and tense relations with some of the church hierarchy that Kane experienced was disconcertingly similar to mine decades later as I served in the LCWR presidency (2011–2014) when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) publicly released its doctrinal assessment of the LCWR and appointed an apostolic delegate “for review, guidance, and approval, where necessary of the work of the LCWR.”

In the epilogue Schenk describes how the actions of the CDF and a concurrent Vatican investigation of all the congregations of active women religious in the United States by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life were a manifestation of the continued tension over the...