‘All Power to the Imagination’ was one of the rallying cries of 1968, calling global citizens to question established political, economic, and gender systems. Yet, to the Catholic world this clamour may have seemed somewhat tardy, having been at the forefront of the Catholic imagination since 1965 and the Second Vatican Council’s call for aggiornamento (updating) and ressourcement (going to the origins). Did the modern Church, too, give all power to the imagination of its institutes? How were post-war calls to reorganise, reform, and perhaps even revolt welcomed by Catholic nuns and sisters? What do they now have to say—in their own words—about the changes experienced between 1945 and 1990? These are the questions to which Mangion eloquently replies in her book. In seven chapters, Mangion moves from the post-war context and changing conceptualisations of femininity, through Vatican II’s impact on governance and its reception within the convent, to the influence of 1968 on Catholic institutions. In its final chapters, the book looks beyond the walls of the convent to nuns’ work in the community and the world, including their engagement with new ideas of charity, mission, and feminism.

The study uses a rich and varied corpus to conduct a far-reaching and convincing exploration of the lives of women religious between 1945 and 1990. The lifeblood of this study is the collection of 100 oral histories which Mangion conducted with women religious from eight different institutes. Interviewees reflect a range of experiences from those in enclosed orders to others who engage in teaching or social welfare activities. As theologian Joseph Komonchak (2004) said of Vatican II, to study how modern Catholicism was experienced by religious ‘the documents are inadequate’.Footnote ¹ Mangion’s work proves that, although inadequate when studied alone, when Catholic doctrine is put into dialogue with oral histories, convent records, memoirs, historiography, and cultural materials like television and print media, a vivid and rigorous picture of religious life is conjured.

Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age is part of Manchester University Press’s ‘Gender in History’ series, and this fact alone reflects an important step forward in framing women religious as worthy subjects in modern history and gender studies. As a cultural historian, Mangion is careful to trace evolving notions of femininity and how they are received in the convent. In its initial chapters, the book outlines the well-known drop in vocations which convents experienced in post-war Europe and the increasing secularisation taking place. This initial discussion leads cohesively into one key focus of the book regarding convents’ internal conflict over whether to change—or bend—to what one nun memoir calls ‘nasty modern methods’ (p. 76) and accommodate modern versions of femininity, or not.Footnote ² Mangion highlights convents’ perhaps surprisingly incisive awareness of modern opinions of convents with a cutting illustration from Catholic Pictorial in 1962 of two women commenting of an acquaintance: ‘I hear she’s gone into a convent—what a waste!’ (p. 56). This picture shows the convent and the secular world divided by a thick brick wall, but in reality, communities were actively ‘breaking down’ the border between the convent and the world. Taking an extraordinarily market-driven turn, institutes began ‘vocation exhibitions’ in the 1950s; large conference-style events to ‘showcase their ministries to a larger public’ (p. 63). The influence of these exhibitions is made all the more vivid by Mangion’s inclusion of oral testimonies. Through the combination of archival and oral sources, we learn not only of the 200,000 attendees to the exhibition in 1952, but that these events were veritable hives of youth and activity which led one interviewee to describe an ‘extraordinary sense I’d been hit on the side of the head’ (p. 64). Testimonies add embodied and emotional texture to our knowledge of historical events.

Professional opportunities grew both for religious and secular women after the post-war, and women’s work is a key feature of Mangion’s book. Chapter 2 nuances the clichés around women’s supposed professional liberation during the post-war period by drawing our attention to the convergence of religious and secular women’s work. Although seemingly different, consecrated and secular women alike were encouraged to find ‘meaningful work: to teach, to nurse, to engage in social work’ (p. 70). In other words, religious or not, women were frequently still held up to professional models revolving around care and community. Secular professional vocabulary such as ‘training’ also permeated the convent (p. 89). Mangion traces the evolution of church doctrine like Perfectae Caritatis (1965) and Gaudium et Spes (1972) and how these tracts were interpreted in religious communities as calls to transform nuns’ work.

Perhaps one of the most touching aspects of Mangion’s study are some sisters’ testimonies of objection, struggle, and alienation from evolutions in convent life. In 1968, Parisian students cried out for greater input into institutions from street barricades and occupied lecture theatres. In the convent, the picture somewhat differed. Consultation within convents burgeoned: not only were sisters asked ‘where do you see yourselves in five years’ (p. 204), but they began to respond to and challenge received notions of nuns as servants in middle-class institutions. Mangion represents divisions which appeared often along generational lines. In these passages, we are presented with a microcosm of ’68 being played out in the cloister.

Although the book may not have been one Mangion wanted to write (p. xi), it is one that many will be delighted to read. It is an important document in observing the interplay of both religious and cultural history and religious and secular female experiences in the modern era. At certain points, readers may find themselves thirsting for more information; early on, for example, Mangion notes that some institutes she approached ‘were unable to participate’ (footnote, p. 15), underlining how many sources in modern religious history we are yet to access. As is often the case with studies of women religious, readers may finish Mangion’s book with an appetite for a comparative study on male religious experiences in the same era. Similarly, the depth of Mangion’s research into English experiences is a rallying cry for complementary works to be realised in other national contexts. An inspiration in its originality and rigour, and a pleasure to read, Catholic Nuns and Sisters in a Secular Age is a major and progressive contribution to academic work on modern women religious.