Search Results

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

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

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