Juliet Mousseau, RSCJ, and Sarah Kohles, OSF, editors. In our Own Words. Religious Life in a Changing World. Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota, 2018. 238 pp. ISBN 9780814645208, ISBN 978014645444 (ebook). Reviewed by Ana Lourdes SUAREZ, Catholic University of Argentina, Buenos Aires.

The book was written by thirteen young women religious. Each of them wrote one of the books’ chapters. The essays reflect the authors’ honest struggle to name their experiences as young sisters, highlighting the beautiful, challenging, and difficult aspects of religious life. The writers offer their arguments combining personal stories with scholarly insights, turning thus their narratives into vibrant reflections. As part of American female religious orders, over-represented by aging women, the voices of these young women (seldom heard) become a source of inspiration and hope for the future of religious life.

The two editors created a group of sisters that would represent diversity. That means ethnic diversity, age diversity (though under 50), and diverse orders, charisms and visions of religious life. Most writers are members of LCWR, and some of CMSWR as well. All these sisters engaged in a collaborative process in the writing of the book shaped by the impulse of having their own voices reflect topics that are significant to religious life today. Though in each chapter the author expresses freely her own ideas, the book reflects the collaborative process in which it is based. Each chapter demonstrates the author´s reflection on religious life, giving visibility also to those scholars—most of them women religious as well—that inspire and support them.

The book is arranged in thirteen essays and a concluding one. The first four essays focus on vows and on community life. They reflect on the theological and biblical underpinnings of the vows, and on the meaning they acquire within new paradigms of religious life. Essays five to ten address topics of individual identity and congregational charisms. The writers assess the importance and value of their congregation’s charisms within the global charism of religious life. They argue that both are the sources and strengths of each religious order’s identity. The richness of religious orders’ diversity unites religious life, and builds sisterhood by means of their diversity. The last essays reflect on leadership among younger members. Their having to take a stand about the future while being in between the new and the old, makes the reflections of these young sisters very appealing.

The concluding chapter, “Looking to the Future,” discusses the hope in the future of religious life. These religious women converge, as they want to explicitly affirm, on at least three central points: they are committed to religious life; they center their lives on Christ through prayer; and they rely on community to encourage and support one another. They believe that their commitment to a vocation of poverty, celibacy, and obedience helps them to live their commitment to God, the world, and one another. “Our fidelity to religious life means that we are flexible and imaginative as we consider the ever-changing demands of life today” (p. 222). They hope that the essays “are just the beginning of a conversation we hope will continue among women in religious life and beyond, a conversation in which we have raised some challenging questions” (p. 223).

The book covers a wide range of topics relevant to religious life today based on these young women´s own experience. Readers will find excellent insights on the challenges of religious life. However, the writers avoid reflecting on some of the most challenging/conflictive topics for present women religious, as those related to the relationship between religious life and the Church as hierarchy; or on the impact on their identity as women of the persistent denial on women ordination. They avoid topics that, no doubt, affect the dynamics of religious orders dynamics and their future. However, strong and courageous reflections are found throughout the book on what it means to be religious women in a changing world.