A Nun on the Bus

April 14, 2014
Campbellâactivist, attorney, and nunâmixes autobiography with a strong call for justice in this brisk-paced, crisp, inspiring account. Having grown up in a Catholic family in California in the 1960s, college-aged Campbell joined the Sisters of Social Service, an especially "modern" order, whose sisters were very much involved in the world. ("Aren't those the quasi nuns?" asked her mother.) Campbell earned a law degree, first practicing low-income family law, and then taking the helm of NETWORK, a Washington, D.C.-based organization of sisters promoting economic justice. Under Campbell's leadership, NETWORK advocated health care reform, work that garnered censure from the Vatican, which claimed that NETWORK was devoting too much time and energy to social justice. "Well, yes, social justice is what Catholic sisters do," Campbell tartly writes. In order to advance the organization's mission in the wake of this Vatican censure, Campbell and other nuns took a nine-state bus tour, highlighting the struggles of low- and middle-income people. Throughout this account, Campbell writes with wisdom, charity, and backbone. She offers a nuanced position on abortion, and issues a rousing call for Americans become involved in the public square. The volume is marred only by a self-indulgent appendix of rather pedestrian poems.

May 15, 2014

Optimism, passion, and resilience pervade Campbell's candid account, written with journalist Gibson, of her California roots; vocation as a Sister of Social Service, a Catholic community in the Benedictine tradition; and 18 years practicing family law with the working poor in Oakland, after receiving a University of California-Davis law degree. After performing leadership within her religious community, in 2004 Campbell became executive director of NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby in Washington, DC. NETWORK, founded in 1971 by 47 Catholic sisters promoting social justice, focused its advocacy in 2012 on health-care reform (opposing Congressman Paul Ryan's budget cuts) with an influential public letter signed by 59 sisters in leadership. That year, the Vatican revealed an investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States, of which Campbell was a longtime member, asserting its promotion of feminist themes incompatible with Catholic faith. Major media attention and the sisters' two-week bus trip advocating health-care legislation (2,700 miles, nine states) ensued. A similar trip in 2013 focused on immigration reform. VERDICT Progressive, pro-life, favorable to Pope Francis, Campbell intelligently argues for the poor. Recommended for anyone promoting social and economic justice.--Anna Donnelly, St. John's Univ., Jamaica, NY

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