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

Rating:
Summary: Was she really called?
Review: I find it hard to believe that the author was ever "almost" a nun. This rambling memoir gives no insight into the vocation, and is blantantly wrong on a serious matter of theology, e.g. The Immaculate Conception. This church dogma refers to Mary being born with without original--immaculate at HER conception. It does NOT mean "she was not defiled in the process" of conceiving Jesus! This is a basic tenet of the Roman Catholic church, and one that jumps out at a reader with a background of religious education.

Rating:
Summary: Misleading Title!
Review: I got this book because as a post-Vatican II Catholic, I wanted to know what type of life nuns had. I never went to Catholic school and my parish really never had any nuns present. To date, I still don't know! This title is very misleading. The author did not chronicle a year in the life; she took anecdotes from various nuns of their personal experience with their vocation. Also, one should be warned that the author is a lapsed Catholic with some bitter feelings toward the male hierarchy of the Catholic church that she has not resolved. Most of the anecdotes in this book are by women who left their orders because they were dissatisfied. Overall, the book was well-written and kept me very interested, but I believe the title is completely misleading and will cause more people to buy the book than normally would have, myself included.

Rating:
Summary: Misleading Title!
Review: I got this book because as a post-Vatican II Catholic, I wanted to know what type of life nuns had. I never went to Catholic school and my parish really never had any nuns present. To date, I still don't know! This title is very misleading. The author did not chronicle a year in the life; she took anecdotes from various nuns of their personal experience with their vocation. Also, one should be warned that the author is a lapsed Catholic with some bitter feelings toward the male hierarchy of the Catholic church that she has not resolved. Most of the anecdotes in this book are by women who left their orders because they were dissatisfied. Overall, the book was well-written and kept me very interested, but I believe the title is completely misleading and will cause more people to buy the book than normally would have, myself included.

Rating:
Summary: Title v. Rambling Content
Review: The book rambles a lot. The subject inside has nothing to do with the title. I was pulled in by false advertizing on that alone. I felt like I was invited to an old country estate and left outside to look in the windows. The interesting vignettes are far and few between, and the reader never really gets to know the characters well. I don't know the author, presumably who is the center point of the book. There are better books that discuss the decline in religious life, or chronicle individuals who have lived out their vocations.

Perhaps "The Calling" will be a better read for someone else.

Rating:
Summary: Title v. Rambling Content
Review: The overall sense I received from this work is that Catherine Whitney is more interested in speaking of herself (without so much as answering the question of why she suddenly shifted from would-be religious Sister to unbelieving radical feminist). The anecdotal information about several Sisters in the earlier chapters seems a promise of real development later, but this promise remains unfulfilled.

Half stories, some of which seem flavoured by stereotypes and prejudiced assumptions, are profoundly unsatisfying, particularly since the natural presumption to which the early chapters would lead was that depth, development, and understanding of the various Sisters' situations would follow. It did not happen. There is a sampling of moments from various Sisters' lives (not, as the sub-title implies, a chronicle of a year in the life of an Order), but no insight into anything.

Rating:
Summary: No part sufficient for a whole to develop
Review: The overall sense I received from this work is that Catherine Whitney is more interested in speaking of herself (without so much as answering the question of why she suddenly shifted from would-be religious Sister to unbelieving radical feminist). The anecdotal information about several Sisters in the earlier chapters seems a promise of real development later, but this promise remains unfulfilled.

Half stories, some of which seem flavoured by stereotypes and prejudiced assumptions, are profoundly unsatisfying, particularly since the natural presumption to which the early chapters would lead was that depth, development, and understanding of the various Sisters' situations would follow. It did not happen. There is a sampling of moments from various Sisters' lives (not, as the sub-title implies, a chronicle of a year in the life of an Order), but no insight into anything.

Rating:
Summary: Subtitle leads to false expectations - good in its own right
Review: The subtitle "A Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns" leads one to expect a book similiar to The View from a Monastery or A Monastic Year - both of which are excellent books. The books is rather another of the "sisters meet Vatican II' style written from the point of few of a Catholic-educated, nonpracticing Catholic.

The focus of the book is on what it means to be called; initially the author works from the premise that "called" means primarily called to religious life. At the conclusion, her primary insight is that ones "call" may be to a particular aspect of secular life.

She traces her slowing change view of nuns and call primarily through sisters she knew as a child or young adult - most of whom left the order. By not including some of those who joined the order after the substantial changes (for example, one who serves as a hospital chaplain), she fails to explore what a "call to religious life" means today. This results in an understanding of call that is primarily individualistic in a church that is fundamentally communal. The author is also sloppy in her Catholic terminology, sloppy in a way that reveals that her research assumed as a base the Church from which she was estranged rather than the Church of today. An example: she refers to the nun serving the King County Jail as "saying Mass" a role reserved for ordained priests rather than the more accurate "presiding at a Eucharistic service".

What the book truly is a memoir-exploration of a non-practicing Catholic sifting through her childhood with adult eyes, using the nuns who taught her in school as a catalyst for this exploration. In this exploration, we learn the stories of several young nuns who entered and left the order. We learn the stories of some who stayed, who redefined what it meant to be a nun (Dominican sister to be more precise). Those who stayed are presented rightly as remarkable people facing the world squarely in the face - assisting in jail, in urban social services, in hospitals, in rural Hispanic populations ...

The writing is such that you get a sense of who each person is in a very short section which leaves you wanting more or leaves you chuckling about the description if you know the individual described in person or through books. For example, she briefly mentions Fr. Joseph as becoming charimatic - Fr. Joseph has written and self published a delightful biography.

I recommend the book as a delight insight into a particular side of Catholic childhood and female religious orders. I am concerned that some readers may mistake the book for a more universal statement.

Rating:
Summary: This book is more than the title suggests
Review: When Whitney went to the Pacific Northwest to interview the Dominican sisters who had shaped her childhood, she met far more than old teachers in a community that was struggling to find its place in the modern world. She confronted her own loss of faith and began a personal quest for spiritual identity. The Calling is a penetrating analysis of the Dominican sisters who had been a significant part of the author's life from grade school through high school. It's also a journey inward. All this said, The Calling is not a ponderous, self-absorbed examination of conscience. With honesty, humor, and an obvious affection for the nuns, the author opens the doors to a modern religious community, and lets us inside. Through the personalities she remembers, she moves from past to present with ease, and with a style that reads like chapters in a novel. It's a great experience.

Rating:
Summary: Misleading title, great book
Review: While the subtitle of this book is incredibly misleading (this book in no way chronicles a year in the life of an order of nun, but rather a lot of different years for different nuns in one order....), I found that the author captured the mysticism of spiritual calling and the sense of sacred place at the center of religious orders. She exposed her own misgivings and feelings very clearly and chronicled (nicely) her own spiritual quest.