Nuns are earning a reputation for being defiant, but obedience has always had its limits

In September, three octogenarian Augustinian nuns left their nursing home in Austria to return to their convent at Schloss Goldenstein, outside Salzburg. The sisters allege they were removed from their convent and placed in care without their consent after their aging community dwindled below the canonical (if arbitrary) minimum of eight professed religious members. The story made headlines, which reliably used terms such as “defiant” or “independent” in glorying over the “nuns on the run.”