Embracing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well by Anna I. Corwin

Abstract

Reviewed by: Embracing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well by Anna I. Corwin Richard P. Johnson, PhD Embracing Age: How Catholic Nuns Became Models of Aging Well. By Anna I. Corwin. Newark, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021. Pp. xiv + 188. $120; $29.95; $0 (pdf and epub). Anna Corwin's book, Embracing Age invites us to ponder some very important questions: What does it mean to be old? What is the meaning in diminishment? How can we all "do" this human process of aging best? C. escorts us through her comprehensive research and intriguing narrative that showcases a deeper understanding of what it means to be fully human in one's later years. Through her lens of scientific anthropology, C. focuses upon a specific convent of Catholic nuns. C.'s findings create a fascinating, albeit somewhat academic, report of a way of aging that generates greater positive outcomes than is seen in the general population. The genius of her report sheds new light on how it is possible to embrace aging and flourish in the process. In the past two decades American Catholic nuns have been heralded as models of successful aging, perhaps prompted by the curious findings of investigator David Snowden in the "Nun Study." That study found nuns with the biological markers of Alzheimer's Dementia (AD) strangely showed only minor signs of the serious cognitive, emotional, and behavioral decline usually associated with AD. These findings prompted an avalanche of research looking at why and how the special "convent culture" of Catholic nuns provides a setting for aging well. C.'s anthropological work goes deep into this "convent culture" and gives a more panoramic answer to the question: what do Catholic nuns have that the general population might need to know about aging? C.'s thorough research looked at a range of factors that former studies of positive aging identified as contributing to improved aging, including: consistent nutrition, higher education, help with self-care tasks, greater linguistic [End Page 275] facility, positive emotions association with longevity, positive association toward the wider world, and others. C. found that while these factors certainly contributed to higher quality of aging, they neither individually nor collectively provided the key to why nuns better performed the "tasks" leading to more positive and meaningful aging. The central thesis of C.'s engaging work is that the nuns' attitudes about aging contrast with the prevalent mainstream American model. Her research confirms that nuns subscribe to a fundamentally different definition of what it means to be a valuable person. The very structure of the language they speak shapes an alternative worldview around aging. C.'s research shows that that the nuns, even in the last stages of life, believed that their lives were highly meaningful, purposeful, and worthwhile. C. finds no traces of ageism among the nuns, a ubiquitous prejudice in the wider American culture. Indeed, C. reports that there appears little, if any, negative judgment about aging. She writes persuasively that care in the convent seems blind to age and describes interaction among and between ages as "mutual, ongoing and dynamic" (42). Elder nuns are neither segregated nor stigmatized; indeed, their presence in the fullness of the flow of the convent is pervasive. The "convent culture" emphasizes the importance of prayer as a connection to the sacred, a way of communicating inner needs that encourages mutual support and feeling embraced by God. C. sees the emphasis on prayer as both a means for interpersonal connection among the nuns and also as a tool for creating and maintaining a personal relationship with God. Prayer and contemplation are known positive practices that promote mental and physical health, claims C. God is now proximate: not distant, but available and loving, which consequently fills the nuns "with the emotions of love, safety, and the knowledge that they were cared for by a benevolent companion" (109). C. finds, finally, that prayer allows the nuns to meet death in complete poverty through the freedom of self-abandonment. A series of theological insights help explain the nuns' approach to aging. First, the virtues of equanimity and acceptance with which the nuns approach old age are cultivated and informed by...