Into Silence and Servitude

About this book

"Much has been written about prominent nuns and the institutions they built, but there is little on the decision to enter a convent or on the training that followed. In Into Silence and Servitude secular historian Brian Titley examines the experiences of young women recruited into Catholic religious sisterhoods during the two decades of convent expansion that followed the Second World War. Overwhelmingly deployed as teachers in the Church's schools, the nuns' wageless labour reduced costs and made Catholic education more affordable. The Church adopted a more active approach to recruitment at this time in order to expand its teaching force of nuns as baby boomers filled its classrooms. Recruitment involved identifying suitable girls in Catholic schools and encouraging them to validate their religious vocations in formation programs behind convent walls. Tactics of persuasion, derived from a growing body of field-tested ideas, were directed at the girls--and at their parents too if they were unsupportive, which many were. Convent formation programs--aspirancy, postulancy, and novitiate--presented recruits with unique challenges. Although expulsions and withdrawals punctuated each formation stage, the total number of nuns nationwide continued to grow until reaching a pinnacle in 1965, just as Catholic schools achieved their highest enrolment. The book concludes with an analysis of the unexpected collapse of the convent system after 1965. Based on extensive archival research, memoirs, oral history, and obscure Church publications, Into Silence and Servitude presents a compelling narrative that opens a window on little known aspects of America's convent system."--