Bridges, Not Walls

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the contributions that Catholic international sisters make to the United States—to religious life, the Church, and the nation. Sisters identified their contributions along two lines—the benefits of diversity and the benefits of evangelization. The sisters responded that their presence and their cultures added a beneficial diversity to a wide variety of settings—to community, ministry, the Church, and the society more broadly. The chapter concludes with the point that there is a disjuncture between the sisters’ acceptance of diversity in the society and, to a degree, in the Church, but their nonacceptance of diversity in the charisms and lifestyles of religious life.