The Calling: A Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns - Softcover

Whitney, Catherine

3.68

72 ratings by Goodreads

9780609805824: The Calling: A Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0609805827 ISBN 13: 9780609805824

Publisher: Three Rivers Press, 2000

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In a bluff north of Seattle, overlooking the glorious vista of Puget Sound and the white-capped Olympics, stands Rosary Heights, the motherhouse of the Sisters of St. Dominic of the Holy Cross. On a dark night in 1997, a catastrophic mudslide shifts the ground beneath the motherhouse and threatens to send it crashing into the water below. By this single act of nature, the sisters are forced to rethink their place in the world.

With Rosary Heights as a backdrop, best-selling author Catherine Whitney takes a personal journey inside the order that ran the school she attended as a child, the order that, for a short time, she contemplated joining herself. In this rare inside view of their lives of devotion, Whitney reveals how modern nuns are a study in contrast: worldly, yet removed; passionate, yet chaste; subservient, yet fiercely independent. She answers the questions that most fascinate the lay public: What would compel women today to join a religious order? How does faith unite so many women of wildly different backgrounds? What is their relationship--and struggle--with the male Church establishment?

Readers will meet these very human women, at work, at play, and at prayer--in times of crisis and harmony--and grow to enjoy their company. The Calling offers a luminous chronicle of a community that has existed for centuries yet is still evolving, and whose anxieties and joys are utterly relevant to us all, regardless of our beliefs.

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Review:

Like many Catholic baby boomers, Catherine Whitney left the Church in her late teens, turned off by its dogma and apparent oppression of women. And like many wayward Catholics, she returned to the Church at midlife, yearning for a deeper spiritual understanding and meaning.

It was her father's funeral that brought Whitney back to her Seattle roots as an adult journalist, and back to the doors of the Sisters of Saint Dominic of the Holy Cross--the same order of nuns that ran her childhood school. As a Catholic rebel, Whitney had dismissed her childhood teachers as archaic and out of touch with reality. But now as a seeker and wiser soul, Whitney was "completely disarmed by the women I found there.... They were smart, engaged, spiritually grounded, visionary women, remarkably at ease with uncertainty and change." Through interviews with the nuns and yearlong observations, Whitney explains how women hear this unique calling, and why they answer it. She also examines why some women break their vows and leave, becoming "Rebel Brides." Nonetheless, Whitney's writing is at its best when she tenderly explores her own heartfelt reckoning with God and Catholicism. --Gail Hudson

From the Back Cover:

"Thoughtful and absorbing . . . a nostalgic, bittersweet look at a world that may soon be gone."
--New York Times

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