Part I - General Background

In the opening chapters of Preaching Justice II, we aim to give some context to the chapters presented in the five main sections of the book. The history and situation of women religious, including Dominican sisters, is, sadly, less well known than that of their male counterparts, so some kind of contextualization is in order.

1 - Enclosure and Active Apostolates: Developments in Female Religious Life in Europe from the Council of Trent until Saint Vincent de Paul

In the first chapter of this part, Luigi Mezzadri addresses the complex history regarding “enclosed” and “active” religious life for women, focusing especially on the situation in Italy and France. He opens his account in the period of the Counter Reformation, at a time where church authorities were preoccupied with re-imposing discipline, part of which was a tightening of the rules about the enclosure of nuns. He describes two extremes of the experience that women had within the enclosure, one seeing it as a place of freedom from the “prison” of the world, and another as a “nunnish hell”. In general, the second type of experience was associated with forcing daughters from well-to-do families to enter a monastery, so as to preserve the family inheritance for a son and a dowry for one of the daughters. As this practice starts to die out, the enclosure can begin to find its proper place in the life of the Church.

Dominican monastery of S. Niccolò, 1328, Prato (FI)

At the same time, however, the Holy Spirit is inspiring the first really serious attempts to create a corporate form for active religious life for women. Angela Merici in Milan, Frances de Sales and Louise Maurillac in France, followed by Mary Ward in England all make important steps forward, even if they do not manage to achieve their goal. Vincent de Paul is among the first to make the breakthrough. Some of the modern congregations of Dominican sisters can also trace their roots to this period.

2 - Changes in the Position of Women in Society and in the Church in the Twentieth Century, with a Special Focus on Italy

Adriana Valerio outlines the main waves of feminism in the twentieth century and connects them with changes in the active life for women religious through that century, especially as this relates again to Italy. In many ways, her contribution shows that we are still only at the beginning of understanding how to deal with the equality and difference between men and women. Difference has always been accepted, but it had too often been associated with a hierarchy between the sexes; when equality came to the fore, it seemed as if it was necessary to suppress or ignore difference in order to win equality. Difference, however, has come back into feminist discourse; we must continue to try to find ways to respect both these values.

3 - Basic Characteristics of the Dominican Sisters in the Twentieth Century

Helen Alford looks at the data we have regarding the number and distribution of Dominican sisters across the twentieth century. On the juridical level, the sisters are organized in congregations, some of diocesan and some of pontifical right, with a generalate or motherhouse and sisters assigned to various places according to the history, constitutions and particular self-understanding that the congregation has. The number of sisters rose quite significantly across the twentieth century and then began to fall after 1975, but interestingly, in the most recent statistics, the number of sisters is still higher than it was at the beginning of the twentieth century.

Numbers of Sisters from a sample of 10 Congregations at key points since 1900

4 - The Contribution of Dominican Sisters International to the Development of the Dominican Family

Margaret Ormond presents the story of Dominican Sisters International and how it has contributed to the development of the idea of the “Dominican Family”. She shows how DSI was born out of concern to support the sisters in Iraq, and that its objectives are to support Dominican sisters in living out their mission. She also highlights important meetings between the various branches of the Dominican Family and collaborative projects between them. These are relatively new developments, even if they also build on older models of collaboration, and in the 21st century we are likely to see many changes in these areas as the seeds planted in the 20th century start to come to fruition.

DSI General Assembly 2013

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