Book Review - BEHOLD THE WOMEN
Edited by Dan Paulos

Reviewed by Drew Bacigalupa

It is no small thing, for publishers among others, to swim against the tide, express convictions and expound ideas which challenge current fashion and trends. In today's ubiquitous buzzwords, to be politically incorrect, address subjects not considered relevant. A small independent press in Albuquerque has done just that, courageously publishing a handsome and excellent book of stories, testimonies and photographs of Women Religious. In an era when Nuns are associated with the Nunsense of Broadway and the film caricatures of Hollywood, are the targets of feminists and alienated activists who once attended schools staffed by religious women, such a publication seems indeed doomed to failure.

Yet Behold the Women (St Bernadette Institute of Art, Albuquerque; compiled by Daniel Thomas Paulos; hardcover, 210 pages, $24.95) is deservedly gaining wide enthusiastic acceptance, its stories by established writers as well as by people from all walks of life and levels of education enthralling readers with their tributes to women "powerful without even knowing it, unsung activists" to whom much is owed.

From a Foreword by Dame Felicitas Corrigan, O.S.B. of Stanbrook Abbey, England, Behold the Women launches into more than 200 memories of Women Religious by writers whose lives were profoundly affected by them. Archbishop Desmond Tutu requires only a few paragraphs to extol the two nuns assigned to him as aides when he first began studies at Theological College. Acknowledging his indebtedness to them, he comments that they've had to work overtime "on knee drill to keep me in the straight and narrow." Norman Vincent Peale wrote but two sentences, commending the nuns at St Joseph's Hospital in Houston for their daily practice of telling each patient a funny story, quoting "a merry heart doeth good like a medicine."

One of the longer tributes in the book is by Fr Daniel Berrigan, S.J., to his aunt Brigid Berrigan who was known as Sister Maria Josephine after she entered the Sisters of Charity in New York. The story of Sister Josephine perhaps best typifies traits, personalities, weaknesses and strengths shared by most of the women honored in this compelling volume. Though the individuality of these nuns, from abroad as well as the United States, is strikingly documented, they are linked in many ways beyond the essential commitment to Religious life. Like Josephine, many were from families of modest or poor means, no strangers to privation and sacrifice. Like Josephine, many, through death in the family or financial necessity, were enlisted at tender ages to assume roles as care givers to siblings. From those growing up in slums to those who enjoyed gracious privilege, they were for the most part intelligent and independent women, worldly wise and unafraid to fight for their right to enter lives which long before the age of Feminism were considered unconventional, a divergence from the prescribed roles of wives and mothers.

Women of exceptional courage, in ministry to others they do not flinch from exposure to hideous disease and contagion, from the ignorance and even abuse from so many of the underprivileged they serve, from excessive toil and the sneering patronizations of societies which too often look on their chastity, obedience and self-denial as being childlike, a refuge from the "real" world. The realities of their worlds in these pages reveals challenges which would make most of us outside Religious life cower; which, in fact, most of us could never meet, and for many would spell defeat. Human, subject to the same frailties we all know, there is hardly a whine or complaint among their quotations or letters in this book, little of the unbridled anger manifested in our age of lashing out at everything we consider unfair or frustrating. Inevitably, what sustains these women against formidable struggle in a secular world is Faith.

Will Durant wrote of nuns: "If we look back upon the nineteen centuries of Christianity, with all their heroes, kings, and saints, we shall find it difficult to list many men who came so close to Christian perfection as did the nuns. When all the sins of history are weighed in the balance, the virtues of these women will tip the scale against them, and redeem our race."

And British art critic of PBS television fame, Sister Wendy Beckett uttered a characteristically terse comment after receiving this book: "It's an epiphany!"

Behold the Women's 217 black-and-white photographs are of excellent quality, superbly printed. They provide intimate glimpses into community life of Women Religious. This is a book to be savored, kept near at hand on coffee table or bedside stand for repeated visits. Whenever you hear still one more chic condemnation of nuns from a disgruntled ax-student taught by  them, pick it up. There's an army of unheralded Mother Teresas within these pages.