Sister Thorn And Catholic Mysticism In Modern America

Sister Thorn and Catholic Mysticism in Modern America

Review Kane's book is a noteworthy achievement. It demonstrates a remarkable fluency with a wide body of scholarly literature as well as with archival sources from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.--Journal of American HistoryFull of insight and surprises.--AmericaTo be sure, this is required reading for anyone interested in Catholic studies. But American religious historians of all stripes should read this book, which stands as a paradigm example of how to connect an intensely local topic with broader themes of modernity, ethnicity, gender, urbanization, assimilation, globalization, and the like.--BeforeItsNews.comSister Thorn is an impressive work of scholarship.--Catholic Books ReviewThe clarity and accessibility of the writing is exceeded only by Kane's expert analysis. Highly recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers.--Choice[An] innovative approach to anthropologically-informed history. . . . Likely to become standard reading for students of American religious history.--Religion in American HistoryShed[s] new insights on many topics relevant to the study of modern American Catholicism. . . . Provides a detailed window into Reilly's world.--The Journal of Religion Kane, Paula M. Review With Sister Thorn, a generation of American Catholic social and cultural history reaches a culmination. This brilliantly researched and told story of 'a failed saint and possibly a false stigmatic' is at the same time a revealing study of how American Catholics in the twentieth century lived their everyday lives in close proximity to the supernatural. Kane offers a new perspective on almost everything about modern American Catholicism--family life, ethnic tensions, Catholic bodies, kitchen devotions, urbanism, relations among nuns and between nuns and priests, attitude towards suffering and pain, and much more. Reading Sister Thorn, I was repeatedly gripped by the sense that nothing about American Catholicism would ever look the same again.--Robert Orsi, Northwestern UniversityRiveting. Kane's compelling narrative uses the story of a stigmatic nun to illuminate broader themes of convent culture, authority and resistance, and religion and science.--Kathleen Sprows Cummings, University of Notre Dame From the Inside Flap One day in 1917, while cooking dinner at home in Manhattan, Margaret Reilly (1884-1937) felt a sharp pain over her heart and claimed to see a crucifix emerging in blood on her skin. Four years later, Reilly entered the convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Peekskill, New York, where, known as Sister Mary of the Crown of Thorns, she spent most of her life gravely ill and possibly exhibiting Christ's wounds. In this portrait of Sister Thorn, Paula M. Kane scrutinizes the responses to this American stigmatic's experiences and illustrates the surprising presence of mystical phenomena in twentieth-century American Catholicism. About the Author Paula M. Kane is associate professor and John and Lucine O'Brien Marous Chair of Catholic Studies at the University of Pittsburgh and author of Separatism and Subculture: Boston Catholicism, 1900-1920.