Conscience and Calling

Reviews / Votes

Conscience and Calling is a beautifully written and powerful tribute to the courage and dedication of women religious. In a volume filled with penetrating insight into the present situation in the Catholic Church, Patrick describes how women religious have both worked and struggled with church authorities but have emerged with their consciences and vocations intact and renewed. This book opens up a history that needs to be known and celebrated while offering its readers a moral framework for understanding what it means for all of us to answer our callings. It is meticulously documented, written in an accessible style, and based in insightful analysis of difficult situations...Change happens slowly, but chronicling it in concrete words and connecting the dots between and among people, places, and ideas and actions is a real service. Patrick does that work well in this book, for which readers will thank her for generations to come. * National Catholic Reporter * This book is both deeply informative and a joy to read...Her inclusive vision seeks to account for the rich diversity of women's experiences with, and reactions toward, a church plagued with sacramental sexism, without losing sight of either the great strides women have made in and out of the church, or the long road that lies ahead for women's full baptismal dignity to be recognized. That Patrick enlivens discussion about the sins of institutional sexism while keeping these sins in perspective and remaining mindful of the privilege of white, middle-class feminists exemplifies the virtues of justice, inclusivity, and holiness that are the subject of this book. * American Catholic Studies *