Since 1845, along the River Raisin in the southeastern Michigan town of Monroe, the Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary (IHM) have distinguished themselves as educators, activists, and Catholic pioneers. At the congregation's peak, the motherhouse dispatched nearly 1,600 nuns to more than 100 schools across metropolitan Detroit and several states. For 175 years, the sisters taught the three Rs and the meaning of faith to nearly 700,000 students and established important metro Detroit institutions such as Marygrove College, Immaculata and Marian High Schools, and St. Mary Academy. Widely known by their initials, the IHMs have extended their reach worldwide. Monroe IHM members have served in key roles at the Vatican, as leaders of organizations representing Catholic sisters in the United States, as missionaries in Third World countries, and as groundbreaking activists and theologians. The Monroe IHMs today also attract lay women and men who dedicate themselves to the congregation's values and goals by becoming IHM Associates.

Love Tenderly is a collection of personal stories shared by women religious who identify as lesbian or queer, and who have come to embrace their sexual orientation as an integral part of their identity and vocation to religious life. Each story is a journey of love and an embrace of truth and wholeness. These stories are some of the voices of women religious who are lesbian or queer.

The often forgotten role of Catholic sisters is told in experiences deeply rooted in self-realization and feminist methodology. In this collection of thirteen essays the contributors illuminate the little known world of a very creative and committed community of women—their aspirations, their values, their mission. An often neglected part of feminist research, this type of sisterly collaboration affirms the seminal paradigms in women's work and writing. These essays deal with many of the same issues of power, economic autonomy, friendship, spirituality, socialization, and professional commitment encountered in other feminist endeavors. Building Sisterhood gives the reader insight into the rigorous training involved in becoming a nun, including the complex relationships between the Monroe community, other IHM sites, and within the intricate church hierarchy. Feminist historian Margaret Susan Thompson places the essays within a historical context and provides detailed background for those unfamiliar with the life, duty, and experience of Catholic sisters. This book will make a unique contribution to feminist scholarship, religious studies, and women's history

For 125 years, the Sisters of the Holy Spirit and Mary Immaculate served the poor and, in particular, people of color. They are the first order of sisters founded in Texas. Their foundress, Margaret Mary Healy Murphy, built the first Catholic African American school and church in San Antonio, the second in the state of Texas. The sisters carried their mission and work beyond the Lone Star State's borders and included most of the South and a few metropolitan areas of the North. They crossed the Rio Grande and had several missions in Mexico and traversed a new continent when they opened a learning center in Zambia. The sisters were primarily known as educators and, in later years, worked in religious education and pastoral ministry. They have also operated orphanages and nursing homes and served in hospitals, homeless shelters, incarceration facilities, and immigration residences. The school they built over 100 years ago, now known as the Healy Murphy Center, serves the community as an alternative high school, and the sisters still teach there.

"Sandra Schneiders' brilliant and perceptive analysis projects a new model of religious life. Deeply exciting and genuinely consoling ....." [from back cover]

More and more people-- especially millennials-- are turning to religion as a source of comfort and solace in our increasingly chaotic world. Rather than live a cloistered life of seclusion, the Daughters of Saint Paul actively embrace social media to evangelize, collectively calling themselves the #MediaNuns. In this collective memoir, eight of these Sisters share their own discernment journeys, struggles and crises of faith that they have overcome, and episodes from their daily lives. They offer practical takeaways and tips for living a more spiritually-fulfilled life, no matter your religious affiliation. -- adapted from jacket

Maddie believes herself safe at her prestigious boarding school, until she receives an ominous tarot card in the mail and realizes that she must return to her home town, a community still haunted by the Salem witch trials.