Product Description

A funny, poignant account of a young woman's experiences becoming a Catholic nun during the tumultuous 1960s.

In 1964, Karol Jackowski was an eighteen-year-old girl just out of high school. But while her friends were heading off to college or finding their first jobs, Karol was following a different path. To the surprise of her family and friends, she decided to enter the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Cross in South Bend, Indiana, and spend the next eight years studying to become a Catholic nun.

Those years were a time of enormous change in the country and in the Church. They were times of joy, dedication, and a great deal of fun, set against the Second Vatican Council and the reforms it fostered, many of which remain controversial today. In this playful and candid memoir, Jackowski pulls back the curtain on the mysteries of convent life, as she recounts her rocky transition from worldly teenager to cloistered postulant; the trials she faced in coping with the restrictions of convent life ("nun of this and nun of that"); and the lessons she learned from the elderly nuns she was assigned to, who weren't nearly as pious as people thought. In prose that's as lively, insightful, and wise as she is, the author of Ten Fun Things to do Before You Die brings us a touching and heartfelt memoir of a woman following her true calling.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #279741 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Jackowski, a Catholic nun who tackled the Church’s pedophilia scandal in her 2004 book The Silence We Keep, offers a funny, revealing memoir about her early years as a nun. As the subtitle makes clear, she joined holy orders during an era that saw upheaval in both American society and the Roman Catholic Church. After the Second Vatican Council, Catholic liturgy changed, nuns’ habits were modified, young nuns like Jackowski were allowed to keep their birth names, and the rigid hierarchy of religious orders gradually gave way to a kind of egalitarianism. Still, conforming herself to the intense community life of the sisterhood was difficult for Jackowski (whose high spirits recall another lively young woman in a convent, The Sound of Music’s Maria). Humorous stories enliven her struggles—such as the time high school friends snuck Jackowski a bag of vodka-laced oranges, and the fruit was intercepted by one of Jackowski’s superiors. Jackowski came to love both the close-knit community and the prayerful silence that punctuated her life. Some of her most moving writing considers the fruits of meditative solitude. "[I]n solitude…I was given a divine sense of what was rock under my feet and what was sand." More evenhanded than Karen Armstrong’s Through the Narrow Gate, this account will both entertain and edify.

From Booklist
Although the story is a familiar one--a young girl follows her vocation into the convent in the early 1960s--this time around the outcome is a bit different. What separates Sister Karol Jackowski's delightful recollections from the pack (Mary^B Gilligan Wong's Nun, 1983,and Deborah Larsen's more recent The Tulip and the Pope, 2005) is the fact that she is still a nun. With considerable candor and a refreshing lack of bitterness, she recalls her transition from carefree girlhood to serious sisterhood during a period of formative, but often confusing, change in the Catholic Church. As Jackowski recounts the seven years that culminated in her final vows as a Sister of the Holy Cross, the reader is treated to a fascinating insider's view of pre-Vatican 2 convent life. Hilarious, tender, and, above all, unflinchingly honest, this entertaining memoir is a must-read for Catholics of a certain age. Margaret Flanagan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
Love, jealousy, deceit, alcoholism, faith, bliss, and cruelty to animals. Did I mention it all takes place in a convent? Sister Karol Jackowski's memoir about the life of a young Catholic nun in the 1960s is human, funny, entertaining, and a total delight. Amen to that. -- Michael Patrick King, executive producer, Sex in the City

Customer Reviews

An Honest Look At Religious Formation in the 1960's
When I first saw the dust jacket of FOREVER AND FOREVER, AMEN with it's photo of a young, blushing nun in a modified habit, with 1960's colors, I immediately thought it would be a WHERE ANGELS GO, TROUBLE FOLLOWS type tale, but there are no Rosalind Russell types as superiors in this book and Stella Stevens' Sr. George is hardly Sr. Karol Jackowski, so if you're looking for a gooey overly nostalgic view of convent life in the 1960's, this may not be your book. If you're looking instead for a story about a young woman who enters a novitiate as the changes of Vatican II are just about to begin, told with faith, perseverance, pluck, and humor, then you'll love FOREVER AND EVER AMEN.

The young Karol Jackowski we meet at the beginning of the book is, in her opinion, an unlikely candidate for religious life. She enjoys life too much to be a nun, at least from her perspective, but something inside her in gnawing and won't be satisfied until she at least looks into joining the nuns who taught her in high school, the Sisters of the Holy Cross. The book then tells of her idealistic days as a postulant, the stringent years she spent in then novitiate, the troubling yet insightful years in the juniorate, and ends with her decision to take final vows. Her gift with words makes a reader feel present in the novitiate with Karol and her comrades, a credit to the fine writing in this book.

The book is honest and well written. While Jackowski sees no need to return to the early days of her training, nor the upheaval that took place during her formation. She's at times critical of what happens, but she's also aware of how the training formed her to be the person she is today. She's appreciative of what she learned, and writes about the shortcomings with objectivity and at times sympathy. She genuinely cares about her fellow sisters, even the oddball characters she lived with from time to time.

Perhaps what I appreciated most about this book was the inside view of convent life in the 1960's and how tumultuous it could be. It made me understand why some women chose to leave the convent and gave me a new admiration of those who persevered. This is an honest, witty, and compelling work that should be appreciated by anyone interested in Catholic religious life. Jackowski also pays attention to small details that could be lost on a reader not familiar with Catholic religious life which makes it reader friendly for people of all denominations.

Beyond solitary confinement
In 1964, Karol Jackowski was a spunky and popular high school senior who loved friends, music, and partying. She also loved the nuns who were her teachers and wanted to join them. This memoir follows the next seven years which were spent preparing to take her final vows.

When she became a postulant, convent life had been unchanged for a hundred years; her days were spent in silence and prayer. Karol had to adjust to living in close quarters with sisters of all ages and personalities, without the essentials of her previous life (TV, radio, phones, cars, books, etc.) She never lacked for friends and fun, however, and maintained her outspoken personality even in the face of rigid conformity.

After two years, the plans for modernization given by Vatican II began to revolutionize convent life. Gone was the habit as well as the all-powerful authority of the Superior. Sisters now made decisions as a group and restrictions on personal freedom were eased. Still, Karol worried that she might not be able to handle community life as a religious "forever and ever, amen." Her personal struggles and enthusiastic love of life make for fast, entertaining reading, light on religion with the emphasis on personal growth. After forty years as a nun, Karol views those first seven years as the most dramatic and rewarding of her life. A fun read.

Captures the emotional essence of the time.
I have read many books about religious life (the sisterhood) over the years. I entered the convent myself in the early 70's as the mass exodus of sisters was waning. What I most appreciated about Sister Karol's book was how accurately she captured the emotions of the time. She was able to shine a gentle light on that singular experience, known perhaps only to women who have been in formation (postulancy, novitiate, juniorate) to become a sister, of joy, belonging, and awe juxtaposed with fear, sadness, and anger. Her book so precisely captured that experience that I found I could not put it down.

I am grateful to her for evoking those feelings so clearly in me, and, I assume, all who will read the book and remember. Convent life is almost indescribable if you have not lived it. As Dickens wrote, it was for most of us, "the best of times and the worst of times."

If you have been in the convent you will recognize yourself in Sister Karol and her classmates, I promise you. And if you have not, you will have as clear a glimpse as you can get into what life was like in the convent of the 60's.