As a response to the US Bishops’ Fortnight for Freedom, I’ve
invited a few friends to supply appropriate essays on women who
have exemplified the faith in the face of persecution, even at
the hands of religious authorities. Today, my friend John
Donaghy offers a contribution from the Latin American Church,
where he has served in the mission apostolate for the past five
years. Religious life for women in the middle ages and the early
modern period was not always what we might think of as the
cloistered life. That’s why there were reformers like St. Teresa
of Avila for the Carmelites. Often families would send their
daughters to a convent with a nice dowry. There they would have
a chance to learn but also, in some cases, to entertain their
friends, male and female, in the convent parlors. Yet the
convent was almost the only place where women would have a
chance to use their talents. One very interesting woman who
joined the convent in seventeenth century Mexico is Sor Juana
Inés de la Cruz, because “given the t