Becoming Human: A Story of Transformation through Conflict and Healing (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Becoming Human. A Story of Transformation through Conflict and Healing Angelyn Dries OSF Becoming Human. A Story of Transformation through Conflict and Healing. By Godelieve Prové. (Delft, Netherlands: Eburon Publishers. Distributed by The University of Chicago Press. 2004. Pp. 254. $28.00 paperback.) Becoming Human is not so much a history of European and American religious life between the 1950's and 1990's, as it is an engaging reflection from a major religious superior identifying the changes and meaning of religious life just before and after the Second Vatican Council. Flemish-speaking Godelieve Prové (she does not indicate where she was born) entered the Medical Mission Sisters in 1956, became a medical doctor, a missionary in Malawi (Nyasaland), co-ordinated the Society's work in East Asia, and was elected the major superior of her congregation in 1973. Part One presents what the author terms the "history" of the Medical Mission Sisters and her own life within the group, unfolding the changing configurations in religious life and the personal joys and traumas which were part of those years. Part Two imparts the same material [End Page 776] from a personal and corporate psycho-spiritual perspective. The Medical Mission Sisters were founded in 1925 by Anna Dengel (1892–1980), and Prové provides pertinent information and insight upon the foundress's last years in Rome, when, as major superior, Prové lived with Dengel. The conflict and change Dengel experienced when she was no longer the major superior mirror the book's theme in the subtitle, "transformation through conflict and healing." The book contains firsthand experience of key developments in religious life, at least in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United States. We see the use of social science as an analytic tool for ministry (Louvain's Francis Houtart, who also influenced the Sister Formation Movement in the United States), alterations in authority/obedience dynamics as a more democratic form of religious life emerged, intercontinental influences in spirituality and religious practice, the growth of the Medical Mission Sisters from an international to an intercultural group, and the modification of the Sisters' mission from physical healing (though that is still present) to a healing presence. Today 650 Sisters from twenty-three countries belong to the Medical Mission Sisters. A glossary of terms provides definitions for readers who are unfamiliar with the terminology related to religious life. The book contains no index and given the genre, has only thirty-one footnotes, most from the Sisters' Rule and Constitutions. The transparently written book enhances the reading of Jo Ann McNamara's Sisters in Arms and Marjorie Noterman Beane's From Framework to Freedom: A History of the Sister Formation Conference. Angelyn Dries OSF Saint Louis University Copyright © 2005 The Catholic University of America Press