Inside the Cloister

Casey N. Cep recently wrote about Abbie Reese’s new book Dedicated to God: An Oral History of Cloistered Nuns at the New Yorker. The book contains essays and photographs about an order of nuns in the Corpus Christi Monastery of the Poor Clare Colettine in Rockford, Illinois:

In a time when abstaining from social media for a few days passes for asceticism, the lives of poverty, chastity, obedience, and enclosure to which the Poor Clares make vows seem especially worthy of our attention. They use a phone only to operate a prayer hotline; have heard of iPods and text messages only through family visits, which are limited to four times a year; and only one of their members has used the Internet. Such technologies, they believe, are a distraction from their contemplation.

Read the whole piece here.