"In Conservative Catholicism and the Carmelites, Darryl V. Caterine explores the historical transformation after Vatican II of one community of Carmelite sisters into a neotraditionalist order defending an essentialist understanding of Catholic teaching and spearheading a movement among women religious to define the parameters of normative Catholicism. The story of this order suggests that the fundamental disagreement between "conservative" and "liberal" Catholics may lie in a dispute about looking to Anglo-Protestant culture for a theological and ecclesiological model for the church."--BOOK JACKET.