Book Review: “Cloistered” by Catherine Coldstream
Sister Act
If you’ll allow me the indulgence to speak about the personal, one thing you might not know about me (unless you know me really, really well) is that I am involved with a Christian meditation group through my church on Monday evenings. My reasons for joining are private, but it’s always an experience to sit still and do nothing but chant the mantra “Maranatha” repeatedly for a good half-hour. (I participate over Zoom, but used to meet with the group in the chapel of my church — a lovely space that I miss — before the pandemic.) Even if you have a so-called “bad” session of mediation, you can always take something out of it. At the very least, if I go into meditation feeling anxious, chances are that I’ll be a lot calmer when the session is over. To that end, that’s why I picked up the book Cloistered for review. Though sent to me by a publicist blindly without me asking for it, the work was appealing because the memoir is about a Carmelite nun who took a vow of silence for nearly 10 years. (I’m trying not to split hairs here in writing the previous sentence, but things are a little more complicated than that. For instance, Coldstream could talk. Sort of.) Something is appealing about living a life of contemplation, but it turns out there’s more to the story — and it needed to be told. Warning: some spoilers abound in the next paragraph.
The author describes joining a convent in northern England after the death of her elderly father. She was just 24 years old at the time. The reason for the connection is kept private, which is a little frustrating to the reader but is also paradoxically understandable. However, she joins as an enthusiastic novice. She spends the time between joining and taking her final vows of a life of obedience — a period that takes about four or five years — ranging her emotions from excited to lacking faith and thirsty for something more than just following directions and hiding her true emotions, which is what the leadership of the convent wants. The trouble ramps up after Coldstream takes her final vows. On becoming a full-fledged nun, Coldstream is then thrust into a world of political upheaval where a Mother Superior is trying to hold onto her power, though the cloister’s constitution doesn’t permit nuns from being Mother Superiors permanently. When a new Mother Superior is found — from a defunct monastery that folded into the one the author attended — the new Mother Superior is gaslit and bullied into relinquishing her power bit by bit. Coldstream, meanwhile, starts being bullied for having controversial views about teaching, openness, and wanting to read more philosophy, whereas the other nuns want her just to shut her mouth and go along with the flow. Finally, Coldstream is beaten viciously by one of her own, and then she flees the abbey during the nighttime to seemingly start a new life — though she comes back to the cloister for another two years, at which time she officially is devested of her vows.
Cloistered is a bit of a slow read at first. And it meanders. Coldstream does have the habit (pardon the pun) of talking about one subject, such as the abbey having an influx of feral housecats wandering around the abbey, to something completely different, such as the power structure of the monastery. However, the book picks up and builds momentum as you read it, gradually unfolding a history of bullying and abuse that is, at first, emotional in tone (Coldstream complains of loneliness) before graduating to the physical. In short, even if the pacing is glacial, this is a crucial and important story that needs to be told of other abuses in the Catholic Church that are anything but sexual. Though the incidents in this book took place some 20 to 30 years ago, it shines a light on human frailty within the church and the power that a marginalized group of women will do to hang on to. After all, being a Mother Superior, as it would turn out, is just one rung below being a bishop, which is only a few rungs away from being the Pope. The reader will be shocked to learn that communiques from the Vatican were suppressed to keep the sort of stability found in the abbey before the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s. In a sense, the women of the abbey that Coldstream is a part of have no interest in “getting with the times.” And, if they do, they are driven to the point of madness.
All in all, this insider’s look at life on the inside of a nunnery is interesting but it does take its time to get to its main points. However, the journey is just as important as the destination. The whole draw of this book is to show readers how the flame of enthusiasm for a life of following the divine can be gradually snuffed out. This is also the memoir of a life mostly spent on the inside of a convent — the outside world rarely intrudes (usually in the form of a visiting priest or monk from a neighbouring abbey) and only comes roaring into this book before Coldstream had joined the convent and after she has escaped from it. (To the latter end, Coldstream is baffled as to what to do with money when her sister gives her some upon reconnecting with her family after leaving the nunnery for the first time. She hadn’t handled any finances or paper bills in the years spent behind the convent’s walls.) In the end, Cloistered is a vital book for those always wondering what it would like to be a nun and those who want to learn of the dangers of the vocation before agreeing to sign up for it. This is worth reading but be prepared for something a little unfocused and something a little languidly paced. However, once you realize the double meaning of why nun’s bedrooms are referred to as cells, this will grip you and won’t let you shake loose. This is intriguing stuff in its own way and is worth meditating over.
Catherine Coldstream’s Cloistered: My Years as a Nun was published by St. Martin’s Press on March 12, 2024.
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