Anita Caspary dies at 95; 'rebel nun' founded Immaculate Heart Community

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The L.A. order she led, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, was the largest Catholic order in the U.S. to sever ties with the Vatican.

By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times
October 16, 2011

During a showdown with the Catholic Church in the late 1960s, Anita Caspary and the Los Angeles order she led, the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, were cast as "rebel nuns" for progressive reforms that included abandoning the nun's habit and suspending a fixed time for prayer.

Although the moves were made in response to a call from the Vatican to modernize, conservative Cardinal James Francis McIntyre of the Los Angeles Archdiocese barred the sisters from teaching in the Catholic schools he oversaw.

The sisters appealed to Rome, but when the Vatican squelched their modernization efforts, more than 300 of them made what was an "unthinkable choice" for most nuns and asked to be released from their vows, Caspary later wrote.

As of last year, it remained the largest Catholic order in the U.S. to sever ties with the Vatican, according to the 2010 edition of "Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns."

http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-anita-caspary-20111016,0,4520954.story

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1. Recommend

[moobu2]

2. Weird

It's like reading something from the middle ages, nah, if this had been the middle ages, some of the nuns would have been tortured and cooked as an example.

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3. Nuns would not produce this in the Middle Ages.

Times, people and institutions all change.