Organizational Change and Social Participation: Results of Renewal in a Women's Religious Order

Abstract

An examination of social participation of members of a Roman Catholic women's religious order undergoing renewal in response to Vatican II provides an opportunity to explore processes of internal change and their relationship to members' increased activity in society. Organizational participaiton rates are more than twice as high as those reported five years earlier. Age and socio-economic status are strongly associated with participation. Belonging to organizations has a significant impact on active involvement and participation on current social issues, and this effect is maintained when controlling for background variables. Organizational involvement increases activity on issues of traditional concern as well as directly on political issues. Evidence indicates that the increases in social participation will continue in the future. In the late 1950's and early 1960's, both secular and religious developments increased pressures on Roman Catholic religious orders for change. These developments included a heightened concern for liberation of poor and oppressed, an increased professional training and education of religious (especially outside orders), and an extended criticism of established structures from outside the Church by secular humanists and from within by intellectuals and the new theologians of hope, future, and revolution (Neal, 1971a). In part a consequence of these developments, Vatican Council II provided the most visible pressure for change both in scope and in specific directives for reexamination in terms of wider sharing of advantages, greater adherence to the spirit of founders, and greater concern for the needs