Breakaway Nun Anita Caspary Dies at 95
Breakaway nun and founder of the Immaculate Heart Community Dr. Anita Caspary has died at the age of 95.
Caspary died Oct. 5. A funeral mass in her memory was held Saturday at Immaculate Heart High School in Los Angeles.
Caspary left her mark on the history of American Catholicism when she initiated the largest single exodus of nuns from the Roman Catholic Church in 1970, after which she founded the Immaculate Heart Community in Los Angeles along with 300 other nuns.
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She founded The Immaculate Heart Community on democratic tenets, creating an elected board of directors and a representative assembly; both democratic systems are still observed today. Most of the members live outside of the former convent; all members contribute 20% of their salary to the organization. The community is primarily composed of Catholic women, though it also includes some men and people of other faiths and traditions. The Immaculate Heart Community continues to service the poorest neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
The cause of Dr. Caspary’s break from the Roman Catholic Church could be viewed as a matter of two different interpretations of the meaning behind new reforms issued by the Vatican II in the early 1960s. Dr. Caspary interpreted the new reforms as an injunction calling for nuns to claim more control over their lives. Her boss, Archbishop James Francis McIntyre of Los Angeles, did not same feel the same way.
Dr. Caspary did not want to abandon her vows, but felt that she and the other nuns did not have any other options due to Archbishop McIntyre’s obstinacy; he did not permit the nuns to teach in archdiocese schools if they did not wear habits and follow an array of conventional regimens dictating when they would pray, go to bed, and what books they could read. The conflict between Dr. Caspary and Archbishop McIntyre lasted for several years. Certain she had no other options, she finally broke away from the Roman Catholic Church and founded the Immaculate Heart Community.
Reflecting on what she had accomplished in 1969, Caspary said her change "gave us the freedom to be self-determining and to make moral choices on the basis of conscience without leaning on the authority of others" and that the struggle for feminist values continues everywhere today, “especially for women in the church."
In 2003, Dr. Caspary published a memoir of the upheaval called Witness to Integrity.
