Add to that internal Catholic controversies. 1972 was only a few years after the Second Vatican Council. The language of the Mass had changed from Latin to the vernacular (basically English in the U.S.A.).
The nuns, yes, still more or less universally in habits back then, were nevertheless among the most educated women at the time, something that may surprise non-Catholics today. Even more surprising to most non-Catholics (yet I do believe it largely follows) is that the nuns _largely_ embraced the women's movement.
If one insists that women's rights begin and end at abortion, then no. But if it comes to questions of equal respect, equal pay, or the right of nun (or even a woman lay-worker) to whack the head of a pastor or even bishop/cardinal with a ruler if she thinks he's wrong (and keep hitting him with that ruler until he gives in) then certainly.
And ironically/amusingly the proudly, ever habit-wearing ("what else would you think I'd do...") Mother Angelica who _no one_ would accuse as being "liberal," did exactly that to Los Angeles Cardinal Mahoney some years back when she used _her_ television network (that _she_ built from the ground up) to openly challenge a well-written, highly theological pastoral letter of his on the Eucharist.
Anyway, the point is that writer/director Tim Chambers was walking through even a Catholic minefield making this movie about an all-women's school run by the nuns, with younger nuns starting to leave the convent at the beginning of the women's movement.
Yet, given what the nuns were (and are), it actually doesn't surprise me much at all that they would give support to a basketball program that produced the first three women's national basketball championships _ever_. They were already forming young women to be the best that they could be. And Catholic parents putting their daughters in such institutions expect (and have expected) nothing less.
(Fr) Dennis Kriz, OSM
http://frdennismoviereviews.blogspot.com/2011/10/mighty-macs.html
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