Poverty, chastity, and change

the long version

In Poverty, Chastity, and Change: Lives of Contemporary American Nuns, Carole Garibaldi Rogers interviews over 50 American nuns. In their own words, the women candidly describe how they moved from a life of rigid seclusion to one of responsible freedom. The stories are revealing and often poignant. Some of the women are nationally known - such as Sister Joan Chittister, a Benedictine nun from Erie, Pennsylvania, who has written numerous books and articles about the Catholic Church and religious life; and Sister Theresa Kane, the Sister of Mercy who publicly addressed Pope John Paul II on the subject of women in the Church when he visited the United States in 1979. But most of the voices here are ordinary voices: they are women who have lived during a time of tremendous change in their Church and their society and have reflected on what has happened to them.