Books: Force of Habit

A probing look at the lives of contemporary nuns

Thanks to pop culture, Catholics don't have a monopoly on nuns. The religious sisterhood has been widely appropriated as a vehicle for the comic, the dramatic and the sublime. Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Sally Field and Audrey Hepburn have all played roles in habits, proving, in the process, that no one looks great in a wimple. But to actually know what God's call sounds like; how feminist nuns manage in the still patriarchal post-Vatican II church; or how liberating it is for some brides of Christ to be untrammeled by children, sex and romantic love--none of that is covered in Sister...

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