‘Any of the works of mercy’, ‘material services’, ‘works of social benefit’; how many Dominicans, how many other religious, will recognise their work in those descriptions? Is this the kind of choice between community life and work that they are offered? How does it come about that such a false choice is both approved and supported? How is it that the break-down situation, which is what the ‘choice’ between community life and work is, can be seen as offering relevance and a future to Dominican, and other, communities? (In what follows I shall write mainly from what I believe to be a Dominican point of view. I doubt if any one writer can cope with a topic as broad as ‘religious life’; I am even less convinced that a male is going to provide the solutions for either female congregations or joint ‘communes’).