Ms. Anita Caspary This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. When the nuns were out of order

   news.newspress.com/topsports/0 - [Cached]

   Published on: 3/6/2005   Last Visited: 3/12/2005

   Anita Caspary, the soft-spoken leader of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart back then, has written a book about their battle with Cardinal James Francis McIntyre. Many regard the face-off as a pivotal moment in feminist history, so ground-breaking that she even wound up on the cover of Time magazine.
   
   "We were going by our conscience," says Ms. Caspary, now 90.
   ...
   "You will suffer for this," Ms. Caspary quotes the cardinal in the opening to her book, "Witness To Integrity."
   
   "With little notice . . . (he) stormed into my office at the motherhouse in the hills of Hollywood," she writes.
   ...
   Many held advanced degrees, including Ms. Caspary, who earned a doctorate from Stanford University.
   
   "We became quite well versed in what Vatican II had to say," she said, in a recent interview at her Los Angeles retirement home.
   ...
   "Never had we expected our first mild experiments in religious renewal to encounter such impassioned resistance," writes Ms. Caspary, who was known then by her religious name, Mary Humilita, meaning "humble."
   ...
   But by then the women had made a decision, Ms. Caspary said. And there was no going back.
   
   ". . . We came to realize that what we claimed for ourselves -- the right to make decisions affecting our personal lives -- we could not surrender," she wrote.
   ...
   The cardinal, Ms. Caspary says, gave them no choice.
   ...
   Anita Caspary, now 90, leader of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart in the 1960s, recalls the group's struggle over rigid rules.