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Pathways to Religious Life for American and Congolese Women

Casey Ritchie Clevenger

in Unequal Partners: In Search of Transnational Catholic Sisterhood

This chapter outlines the different ways women in the United States and Democratic Republic of Congo were introduced to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. It focuses on the people, institutions, and ... More

This chapter outlines the different ways women in the United States and Democratic Republic of Congo were introduced to the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. It focuses on the people, institutions, and social networks that were fundamental to their decisions to enter religious life. Historically, there have been different patterns of support for religious vocations among US and Congolese women. In Boston, the broad-based support for vocations that existed within close-knit Irish American communities where most members were raised prior to Vatican II has eroded. Young Congolese women who entered the novitiate in Kisantu and later Kimwenza never experienced this type of communal support as they pursued religious life. When the Sisters of Notre Dame opened a novitiate for local women in 1959, those who entered struggled to justify and explain their presence within a Belgian religious order to their families and communities, Congolese nationalists, and the white missionary sisters who ambivalently accepted them into the congregation. More recent generations of Congolese sisters have relied on the encouragement of parish vocation groups, the example and mentorship of older Congolese sisters, and personal encouragement from family members who believe God is calling them to religious life.Less

Vocation

John G. Stackhouse

in Making the Best of It: Following Christ in the Real World

This chapter examines the concept of religious vocation. In Christian history, vocation has become bound up with the category of work in three different ways. The chapter explains these three ways. ... More

This chapter examines the concept of religious vocation. In Christian history, vocation has become bound up with the category of work in three different ways. The chapter explains these three ways. The chapter also discusses the typical conceptions of Christian mission that have emerged over the last century or so. Evangelicalism and certain strands of Roman Catholicism have emphasized personal evangelism while Liberal Christianity has taken up another form of gospel service and tried to save society.Less

Living in the Present

Carole Garibaldi Rogers

in Habits of Change: An Oral History of American Nuns

This chapter presents oral history interviews with five nuns who have chosen to live in the present: Sister Catherine Bertrand, executive director of the National Religious Vocation Conference; ... More

This chapter presents oral history interviews with five nuns who have chosen to live in the present: Sister Catherine Bertrand, executive director of the National Religious Vocation Conference; Sister Ancilla Maloney, a Sister Servant of the Immaculate Heart of Mary from Scranton, Pennsylvania who now lives in an intercommunity house in the Bronx with other women religious and teaches in an inner-city high school there; Mary Jo Leddy, a Canadian whose book, Reweaving Religious Life, has had a very strong influence on many American nuns and who now lives with a group of refugees and other volunteers at Romero House in Toronto; Sister Patricia Marks, a full-time director of religious education in a suburban New Jersey parish who also works as a marriage and family therapist as well as a certified divorce mediator; and Sister Virginia Johnson, who is affiliated with Visitation House, a large private home in New York City. The narratives capture the women's experiences over the past fifty years, beginning in the 1960s.Less

Batteries, Crosses, Solar Panels, and Global Sisterhood

Casey Ritchie Clevenger

in Unequal Partners: In Search of Transnational Catholic Sisterhood

Although there is ongoing popular and academic interest in the ways globalization shapes contemporary social life, scholars know little about transnational organizations or how they influence ... More

Although there is ongoing popular and academic interest in the ways globalization shapes contemporary social life, scholars know little about transnational organizations or how they influence members’ everyday lives and experiences on the ground. Even less is known about these processes within transnational religious organizations. This chapter explores the relationships between US and Congolese Catholic sisters who belong to the transnational Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, asking how members work together across boundaries of race, ethnicity, and economic development. Drawing on transnational social field and transnational network approaches, it considers the extent to which members orient their lives to both local and transnational communities. Social scientists have noted that the “center of gravity” within the Catholic Church is shifting from Europe and North America to Asia, Africa, and South America. In the wake of the Vatican II renewal process among religious orders, the number of Catholic sisters globally began a steep and rapid decline. Today Africa is one of only two continents in the world where women’s religious vocations continue to grow. This chapter considers what these transformations mean from the standpoint of women in the Global South.Less

Facing facts: the empirical turn of Irish Catholic sociology in the 1950s

Peter Murray and Maria Feeney

in Church, State and Social Science in Ireland: Knowledge Institutions and the Rebalancing of Power, 1937-73

Catholic sociology in Ireland changed significantly during the 1950s and 1960s. This change had four principal strands. First, the joint action of the Maynooth Professor and Muintir na Tire to secure ... More

Catholic sociology in Ireland changed significantly during the 1950s and 1960s. This change had four principal strands. First, the joint action of the Maynooth Professor and Muintir na Tire to secure European and US help in fostering rural sociology. Second, the use made by Archbishop McQuaid of his power within UCD to establish social science teaching in the state’s largest university. Third, the tension between useful and critical social science that emerged as the growing number of Irish Catholic immigrants in an increasingly secular Britain became a focal point for research proposals. Finally, the manner in which Ireland’s initially abundant, but later faltering, supply of religious vocations and the maximization of its clergy’s contribution to worldwide Catholic missionary efforts was studied. All of these strands are tied together by a broad turn away from exclusive preoccupation with ethical principles and towards increasing involvement in empirical social investigations.Less

Conclusion: Circling Back and Looking Forward

Casey Ritchie Clevenger

in Unequal Partners: In Search of Transnational Catholic Sisterhood

This chapter considers the future of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in the United States and Democratic Republic of Congo with attention to questions of declining membership in the Global North ... More

This chapter considers the future of the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur in the United States and Democratic Republic of Congo with attention to questions of declining membership in the Global North and the reverse missioning efforts of sisters from the Global South. It also addresses the opportunities and challenges presented by embracing a transnational identity and the regional diversity of its membership. The tensions between transnational and local practices among Sisters of Notre Dame reflect longstanding struggles within Catholicism to balance the universal mission and claims of the church with local concerns. Too locally rooted to be global cosmopolitans, Sisters of Notre Dame have formed collective identities that depend on their presence and engagement in both transnational and regional communities.Less

Bridges, Not Walls: The Mission of International Sisters in the United States

Mary Johnson, Mary L. Gautier, Patricia Wittberg, and Thu T. Do

in Migration for Mission: International Catholic Sisters in the United States

This chapter focuses on the contributions that Catholic international sisters make to the United States—to religious life, the Church, and the nation. Sisters identified their contributions along two ... More

This chapter focuses on the contributions that Catholic international sisters make to the United States—to religious life, the Church, and the nation. Sisters identified their contributions along two lines—the benefits of diversity and the benefits of evangelization. The sisters responded that their presence and their cultures added a beneficial diversity to a wide variety of settings—to community, ministry, the Church, and the society more broadly. The chapter concludes with the point that there is a disjuncture between the sisters’ acceptance of diversity in the society and, to a degree, in the Church, but their nonacceptance of diversity in the charisms and lifestyles of religious life.Less

Autobiography of Ana de San Bartolomé

in Autobiography and Other Writings

This chapter presents English translations of Ana de San Bartolomé's autobiography, which offers a glimpse into the nature of monastic life during late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Spain. ... More

This chapter presents English translations of Ana de San Bartolomé's autobiography, which offers a glimpse into the nature of monastic life during late-sixteenth- and early-seventeenth-century Spain. In her autobiography, Ana describes memories of her childhood, her struggles for the religious vocation, her early relationship with the Carmelites, her becoming a Carmelite, the first steps in her Carmelite life, her love of God and love of others, her time as a companion and nurse to Saint Teresa of Avila, her time at the Discalced Carmelite Convent of Saint Joseph of Avila, her visions and revelations, and her travel to France and Flanders.Less

Inventing the Family Memoir: Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son

Alex Zwerdling

in The Rise of the Memoir

Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son inspects the traditional, hierarchical family from the son’s critical perspective, in which parents are found flawed, imposing the religious dispensation they ... More

Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son inspects the traditional, hierarchical family from the son’s critical perspective, in which parents are found flawed, imposing the religious dispensation they unquestioningly profess on their child’s malleable clay. From their perspective, their faith is the one true path. From the Son’s, their confidence takes no account of a nascent independence in their child, who becomes conscious of his growing critical awareness—questioning, testing, finding alternative “faiths” more suited to his nature. Yet the Son’s potential rebellion is contained by a deep reluctance to take a different path, in part because his own secular “vocation” as a writer is as compromised as his Father’s unquestioned faith. Their divergent paths are nevertheless both products of a parallel inability to break with the past.Less