Religion: The New Nuns

They dress in everything from miniskirts to medieval mantles. They do everything from classroom teaching to police work. One has a job with Cesar Chavez, another with Ralph Nader. There is a deputy attorney general and an Air Force lieutenant. They live in inner-city slums, in posh suburbs, on farms, even in the desert. They come singly, by the dozen and in battalions. They are the new American nuns who, in the decade since the Second Vatican Council first provided the inspiration, have streamed out of their centuries-old enclosures into the modern world....