Educational Media Reviews Online

Relying primarily on interviews with members of the Poor Clares of Jamaica Plain (a monastery just outside Boston) and the Maryknoll Sisters (founded in NY in the early 1900s), director Rebecca Alvin presents an interesting study of a select group of women called to faith in service to the Catholic Church. Here, she combines archival film footage photographs, and these interviews to good effect. The film addresses issues of spirituality, sisterhood, calling, sexualities, contraception, female priesthood and various contradictions in the church’s hierarchy and conduct.

The Poor Clares are an order of contemplative nuns—whose primary work or apostolate is prayer. Nuns belonging to this type of order are considered "cloistered," implying they reside in a convent away from secular life. The sister interviewed from the Poor Clares is quick to point out that their order is very interactive with the local community and provides support to them in all manner of ways. This sister’s reflections on her decision to marry the Church and forgo secular life underscores a personal spiritual choice and desire to affect change through faith in the Poor Clare order.

Somewhat in contrast, the sisters interviewed with Maryknoll recall their early interest in the church as an appeal to their sense of adventure, cleverly articulated through the promotional films and magazines distributed by the Maryknoll order. One sister reminisced about the films she saw as a young girl depicting nuns helping children all around the world, riding horses on the beach, and being on the go. For these sisters, travel, intrigue, and interaction with other cultures seems to be of primary motivation. Here, Alvin illustrates with film footage from the Maryknoll archive showing nuns as missionaries—some sans habit—in exotic locales. Alvin goes on to interview a former nun and a female reverend as well as including footage from the November 2005 Women’s Ordination Conference protest in Washington, DC.

It should be noted that the real merit of the film lies in the interviews, themselves, and the unabashedly earnest contemplations and dialogues offered by these women. Their reflections on their calls to service are at once very individual and intimate—but also speak to broader appeal and how these groups came to be populated.

This film would find use with people interested in religious studies, women’s studies; feminist issues and Catholic studies. It may easily be used in high school classrooms and higher to motivate discussions on these and related topics.