Witness to Integrity: The Crisis of the Immaculate Heart Community of California

Rating:
Summary: A fairytale of a novel
Review: I am very moved by the tone of this book. It is very personal. Yet, although a participant in a controversial and personally distressing episode, the author does not denigrate or make personal attacks on anyone. This is in stark contrast to those who attack her rather than engage with what she has wriiten. Anita Caspary comes across to me as an exemplary human being and ultimately a true Catholic hero. The book is well named, 'Witness to Integrity', as it speaks of a quality that Anita lived at great cost. And so, indeed, did the IHM community. What is clearly documented is how the dispute with Cardinal MacIntire came about because of the sisters' obedience to the letter of what Pope Paul and the Council asked of them. The Cardinal was the one who was disobedient. Vaclav Havel has spoken ironically that one does not ambition to become a dissident but falls into it accidentally by trying to do one's job well. So too with these sisters. This book has given me much to ponder in regard to how the Catholic Church can shamefully treat its best members. I am grateful for its sad but honest testimony. As a result of reading this book I am committed to living as a member of the Church of Communion not Domination.

Rating:
Summary: Honest Account
Review: I am very moved by the tone of this book. It is very personal. Yet, although a participant in a controversial and personally distressing episode, the author does not denigrate or make personal attacks on anyone. This is in stark contrast to those who attack her rather than engage with what she has wriiten. Anita Caspary comes across to me as an exemplary human being and ultimately a true Catholic hero. The book is well named, 'Witness to Integrity', as it speaks of a quality that Anita lived at great cost. And so, indeed, did the IHM community. What is clearly documented is how the dispute with Cardinal MacIntire came about because of the sisters' obedience to the letter of what Pope Paul and the Council asked of them. The Cardinal was the one who was disobedient. Vaclav Havel has spoken ironically that one does not ambition to become a dissident but falls into it accidentally by trying to do one's job well. So too with these sisters. This book has given me much to ponder in regard to how the Catholic Church can shamefully treat its best members. I am grateful for its sad but honest testimony. As a result of reading this book I am committed to living as a member of the Church of Communion not Domination.

Rating:
Summary: A fairytale of a novel
Review: This book is nothing but bitter fantasy.

If you want the facts on how the IHM fell, check out Msgr. Francis Weber's "His Eminence of Los Angeles: James Francis Cardinal McIntyre" from your local library or bookseller.

Weber's work is based on fact, not fiction mixed with a large dose of misandry.

Rating:
Summary: So gripping.....I couldn't put it down!
Review: This is an amazing story about integrity - intrepid courage, resolute hope, valiant caring - pain and betrayal. I was so stunned...I had to go back and read it again.

Witness to Integrity goes far beyond the struggles of a group of nursing and teaching nuns who were ordered by their Church to renew -- to transform their Rule, their way of life -- from practices originating in the 13th Century to those relevant within the 20th Century -- while being battered by a cantankerous Cardinal who was adamant that no such thing would happen in his Diocese.

Anita Caspary's book is about integrity in facing the strains of these confounding forces - and it is also about Power ... and Betrayal. On the one hand, we see Power, rooted in integrity, used to "give itself away" as the Mother General guides her nuns, under their vows of Obedience, to assume responsibility for themselves, their Community, and their mission. With her other hand, Anita Caspary lifts a veil exposing the use of Power working in the shadows of the highest levels of the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Rome to "indulge" the Cardinal's drive to obstruct the legally prescribed Renewal within the Order of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Anita Caspary reveals what such wounds to trust and integrity did to the Sisters, to their Community, and what they did about it. -- You can feel the arching tension, you cringe at the anger, you share the incredulity, and you know where and when integrity and purpose converge.

Witness to Integrity takes us to the heart of some of the dilemmas facing religion in the world today; and into the caldrons of power misused -- not just in the Catholic Church, but in hierarchies of every kind. There is much to be found within and between the lines of Anita Caspary's book -- a book which stands out as an "Act of Integrity."

P.S.: There is also a lot of wry humor - be sure to read the footnotes.

Rating:
Summary: Apologetic Memoir, not History
Review: This is an important document for those who will someday write a serious non-polemical history of the McIntyre / IHM conflict. As such it deserves more than one star. Antia Caspary (Mother Humiliata) lead the IHM nuns during their confrontation with Los Angeles Cardinal McIntire over nuns wearing religious garb, living in community, and their terms of service in the diocesan schools of Los Angeles. This conflict lead to the sisters presenting demands unacceptable to the bishop and his request that they leave the schools of his diocese. Caspary's book gives her version of the conflict -- as is the role of a memoir. The world it reveals gives one pause, it is a Manichean dystopia of pure evil and pure good. McIntyre and the "male hierarchy" are corrupt wicked men with no redeeming qualities. The sisters who sided with Caspary are without any stain, the only real Christians, flawed only by perhaps occasional fearfulness in following her lead. Sadly, there are glaring omissions that leave the reader misinformed or uninformed: there is nothing about the role of the famous Maslow-Rogers sensitivity sessions that played such a large role in polarizing the congregation and fostering the self-assertive and uncompromising tone that characterized (as is clear in the book) the nuns confrontations with the bishop. Missing too are the 50 nuns that reestablished the IHMs in spite of the powerful influence of group think. Missing again is anything kind of context, such as what actually happened to other sisters' congregations that adopted the IHM model (polarization and then extinction mostly). To read this memoir is to step back into the late 1960s, when every Catholic nun and priest was absolutely certain that they know exactly what Vatican II meant (because they had read Xavier Rynne, if not the council documents) and so was empowered to tell everyone else what to do. Her apologia reveals remarkable similarity of attitude between poor old-fashioned Irish pastor McIntyre and the "up-to-date sister" Anita. Both were intolerant of those who disagreed and dismissive of other's views. Both were self-righteous (Anita, as is obvious from this book, and McIntyre, if we can trust her characture of him) and incapable of self-criticism. And it seems one of them still is: even though McIntyre's successor has apologized to the Caspary's Immaculate Heart Commuity (see p. 200) for his mishandling of the confrontation, Anita has no apologies for anyone. She has always been right and always will be. "It is better to rule in Hell than to serve in Heaven" --Milton

Rating:
Summary: One sided and unrealible
Review: Well written and scrupulously documented, Anita Caspary's first hand account of the intricate process which resulted in the "defrocking" of the Immaculate Heart Community grips the reader through to the very end.
As a woman, I highly recommend this book to other women. As a Catholic, I highly recommend it to other Catholics. As a Christian, I highly recommend it to other Christians. And as a human being, I highly recommend it to all.
Witness to Integrity is a story told with the heart and the mind. A factual account that reflects, as it unfolds, the exceptional, intelligent love and the intellectual, emotional and spiritual honesty, and the courage, not only of Dr. Caspary, but above all of the community of religious women she was chosen to represent and to lead through those trying times. A story that needed telling, Witness to Integrity will inspire all who read it to live and work to their higher ideals.