Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America by Margaret M. McGuinness (review)

Margaret M. McGuinness’s, Called to Serve: A History of Nuns in America, is timely, given the attention paid to women religious in the Catholic and public press after the announcement of the Apostolic Visitation of Congregations of women religious in 2008. New York Times Op-Ed columnist, Nicholas D. Kristof, titled his April 28, 2012 essay, “We are All Nuns.” Citing his experience of women religious in the United States and around the world, he observed first-hand their self-sacrifice, engagement with justice in life and death situations, and assistance to the needy in multiple ways through education, socio-economic development, social service, and healthcare.

The book is a “collective study” (7) that shows how Sisters (a term McGuinness uses interchangeably with women religious and nuns) had far more daily interaction with people than did the clergy, except for sacramental ministration, and even then, Sisters were responsible for sacramental preparation, altar server training, choir development, and musical accompaniment. Sisters’ works and presence are “in the bones” of the U.S. Catholic Church and much of American society. There are probably very few geographic spaces in the country historically untouched by a group of nuns.

McGuinness’s writing style is engaging. The La Salle University Professor has benefitted from the last several decades of research on women religious, most notably beginning with the Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller edited volume, Women and Religion in America. McGuinness provides germane examples from congregations of diverse ethnic/racial backgrounds in discussing Organizing to Serve (Chapter 1), Service to a Growing Catholic Community (Chapter 2), Service through Education (Chapter 3), Serving the Sick (Chapter 4), Serving Those in Need (Chapter 5), Praying for the World (Chapter 6), and, in the light of the documents of the Second Vatican Council, Redefining Sisterhood (Chapter 7), and Sisters Today (Chapter 8). In these situations, we see nuns as authority figures in their own right, sometimes challenging local bishops, sometimes working collaboratively with bishops and priests, but, because Sisters did not have a canonical “place” in quite the same way as did clergy, nuns moved across various ecclesiastical jurisdictions, especially in frontier or “boundary-less” situations to meet people’s spiritual and practical needs.

McGuinness’s insightful chapter on cloistered women (known canonically as “nuns”), a group little known to Catholics or the general public, provides an entry to their ethos, but she notes that cloistered women have not observably affected the American public in the same way as “active” Sisters.

College students, educated Catholics, and the interested public, who are curious about women’s role in the church in the United States, and about how religious faith functions in a social milieu will find a fine overview of about two centuries of Sisters’ communities, who were also shaping an American expression of religious life. McGuinness deftly reveals the significant, dare we say, indelible, mark nuns stamped on American Catholicism and on structures of service in the civic venue, especially to the underserved, sometimes long before public attention was given to these social service, healthcare, and education needs.