Religious Vocation Research Articles

In search of the Solemn with Sri Lankan migrant priests

The declining number of religious vocations joining Catholic seminaries in Italy has encouraged some dioceses to hire migrant religious workers to compensate for the lack of clergy available for parish work. Although initially approached as a temporary solution, an unforeseen consequence of this policy has been the emergence of congenial relationships between migrant priests and Italian parishioners, who often describe their bond as deeply spiritual. This article examines the experiences of Sri Lankan priests who work in Italy, highlighting the distinct emphasis that they place on reaching out to the communities that they work with. Through fieldwork conducted in Sri Lanka and Italy, I analyse how South Asian priests use concepts such as devotion and sincerity to explain how their approach to the priesthood makes a ‘solemn’ difference that is celebrated by local parishioners. With an explicit focus on pastoral work, this form of Asian Catholicism emphasises the importance of bodily comportment, ceremonial poise and ritual dignity, capturing the yearnings of Catholic laities avid for devotional celebrations capable of re‐connecting them to the spiritually meaningful aspects of their faith. My work draws lines of connection between the historical, theological and pedagogical underpinnings of Sri Lankan Catholicism and the affective responses that South Asian priests elicit in Europe.

Negotiating religious change and conflict: Female religious communities in early modern Ireland, c.1530–c.1641

This article explores how communities of female religious within the English sphere of influence in Ireland negotiated their survival, firstly in the aftermath of the Henrician dissolution campaigns of the late 1530s and 1540s and thereafter down to the early 1640s. It begins by examining the strategies devised by women religious in order to circumvent the state’s proscription of vocational living in the aftermath of the Henrician suppression campaigns. These ranged from clandestine continuation of conventual life to the maintenance of informal religious vows within domestic settings. It then moves on to consider the modes of migration and destinations of Irish women who, from the late sixteenth century onwards, travelled to the Continent in pursuit of religious vocations, an experience they shared with their English counterparts. Finally, it considers how the return to Ireland from Europe of Irish Poor Clare nuns in 1629 signalled the revival of monastic life for women religious on the island. The article traces the importance of familial and clerical patronage networks to the ongoing survival of Irish female religious communities and highlights their role in sustaining Catholic devotional practices, which were to prove vital to the success of the Counter-Reformation mission in seventeenth-century Ireland.

The Chester Penn Higby Prize for 2016

The Chester Penn Higby Prize for 2016

Susan Bell’s Christine De Pizan

Susan Bell’s Christine De Pizan Paula Findlen (bio) I first encountered Susan Bell’s work in a seminar on medieval women I took in 1983, as a senior at Wellesley College. Her article on Christine de Pizan had been out for several years and her path-breaking study of medieval women book owners was just off the presses—so fresh and new that the professor brought it to class like a recently rediscovered relic that deserved a certain degree of veneration.1 The Italian professor who taught this wonderful class, the Italian literary scholar Rachel Jacoff, has been a visiting professor a number of times at Stanford University; so, in some fundamental way, I feel that this experience (many years ago) and the community I joined (in 1996) have always been connected. This seminar overflowed with exciting discoveries, giving undergraduates access to the most recent scholarship on medieval women and a nascent corpus of writings in translation that allowed us to begin to study them in their own words. Every week brought interesting visitors from greater Boston into this seminar, where they talked about their exciting new research and shared their knowledge of these texts. At that point, I was not yet decided on what I would do after college and contemplated a range of possibilities, academic or otherwise. But I knew that I was truly privileged to listen to a multidisciplinary conversation among some very interesting medievalists about how a nascent field was beginning to take shape. We poured over all the equally new and fascinating work on pious and saintly women pioneered by the historian Caroline Walker Bynum, who already seemed to inspire a number of former students and colleagues, some of whom were my mentors, to do more with the embodied practices of female spirituality. I reveled in Catherine of Siena’s invisible stigmata and Margery Kempe’s strong-willed demands of her husband to share her religious vocation. We followed the courtly women etched finely by Chrétien de Troyes and the bawdy Wife of Bath writ larger than life by Chaucer—and so many other things that I have surely forgotten after more than thirty years. What I most recall, quite vividly, because she spoke with a voice that seemed to bridge all those centuries between the late medieval and modern worlds (the fifteenth and the twentieth centuries), was Susan Bell’s discussion of Christine de Pizan (ca.1364–1430). Let me invoke the first line of her 1976 article, where she wrote, “The works of Christine de Pizan are filled with her love of learning and the satisfaction she experienced during her journeys into the world of knowledge.”2 These are words to remember, inspiring Susan’s readers to want to hear more. [End Page 214] That same fall, another professor, the historian of architecture Alice Friedman, who knew of my interests pulled a brand-new book off the shelf—Earl Jeffrey Richards’s 1982 translation of The Book of the City of Ladies—and told me with great excitement that this was a “must read.” She was absolutely right. I found it breathtaking, a kind of women’s college in a medieval castle that firmly shut the doors on Thomas More’s Utopia and rewrote every nuance of the narrative about the women Giovanni Boccaccio’s Concerning Famous Women made famous. I connected this book to my encounter with Bell’s articles, which I was reading in the other class. Rachel Jacoff made it clear—even to novice undergraduates who knew nothing about how research unfolds—that this was truly pioneering work. I believed her then and I still believe her now, which is why it is such a great pleasure, indeed an honor, to be asked to say a few words about Susan Bell’s impact on her field. Fast forward to a later point in life, a number of years after I earned my PhD. You can imagine my surprise at discovering that the author of the marvelous studies I read as an undergraduate was at Stanford University at the (then named) Institute for Research on Women and Gender (nowadays known as the Clayman Institute for Gender Research), and that...

The Civil War Diary of Father James Sheeran: Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist ed. by Patrick J. Hayes

Reviewed by: The Civil War Diary of Father James Sheeran: Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist ed. by Patrick J. Hayes William B. Kurtz The Civil War Diary of Father James Sheeran: Confederate Chaplain and Redemptorist. Edited by Patrick J. Hayes. Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2016. 584pp. $29.95. Although the study of religion during the U.S. Civil War has boomed over the last decade, scholars have focused on mainline and evangelical Protestants who dominated the country’s landscape both numerically and in social and intellectual importance. Civil War scholars seeking to understand the growing yet small body of Roman Catholic Americans (perhaps 10 percent of the total population in 1860) have faced a number of obstacles, from a basic ignorance of Catholic archives and their rich records to an extreme paucity of published primary sources. Thus Patrick J. Hayes’s new edition of the diary of Father James Sheeran, CSsR (1819–1881) is a welcome effort to make a major primary source on wartime Catholic life more accessible to historians and the general public. Although a previous edition was published in 1960 by renowned Catholic historian Joseph T. Durkin, SJ, only Hayes’s edition publishes the diary in full. Hayes admits that the manuscript diary used for this edition, which is located at the Redemptorist Archives of the Baltimore Province, may [End Page 89] not be written in Sheeran’s hand. Still, he argues persuasively that the words are Sheeran’s even if an amanuensis wrote out the surviving diary manuscript. Born in Ireland, Sheeran was married and had three children prior to his religious vocation later in life. Ordained a Redemptorist in 1858, Sheeran was assigned to Louisiana shortly before the Civil War. Despite spending most of his antebellum life in the North, Sheeran left New Orleans in August 1861 to serve as chaplain of the 14th Louisiana Volunteer Infantry Regiment in the Confederate Army. Unlike most Catholic chaplains on either side, Sheeran left behind a detailed record of his activities in General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia in a diary chronicling his experiences from the second half of 1862 through the last days of the Civil War. Sheeran’s diary is most useful for understanding the nature of a Civil War chaplain’s service, how the conflict affected civilians in Virginia, and Catholic life in the Old Dominion state. Although the American church had always counseled its priests to stay out of politics, the war provided space for the Irish American Sheeran to become not just a regimental chaplain but a full-fledged advocate of the Confederacy and its right to secession and national existence. Having sparred with anti-Catholic editors over parochial schools before the war, Sheeran was highly opinionated and quick to criticize anyone who crossed him. Sheeran frequently quarreled with Union prisoners, including Catholics, over the cause of the war. He denounced federal attacks on southern civilians such as the shelling of Charlestown, South Carolina, as “diabolical” (294). Like many southerners he blamed abolitionists for causing the war, writing, “Were it not for this fanaticism of the demonical Abolitionists of New England, this unholy and murderous war should never have taken place” (203–204). While Sheeran criticized Protestant bigotry wherever he found it, he himself was extremely anti-Protestant. For example, he refused to associate with other chaplains in Lee’s army, whom he denounced as “a parcel of excommunicated Heretics” (225). In addition to looking after the souls of Catholic soldiers, Sheeran was the moral policeman of his brigade, and was completely unafraid to correct the disrespectful or immoral behavior of any Confederate officer. He even chastised John McGill, the bishop of Richmond, for not doing enough to support Catholic schools. Finally, he publicly denounced Union General Philip Sheridan in print for arresting him without cause in late 1864. Even after his release, Sheeran personally berated Sheridan, whose hands were “stained . . . with blood, rapine and every species of injustice,” over his poor treatment of a Catholic priest. [End Page 90] In assessing the diary’s value as an accurate and contemporary window into Catholic life in Lee’s Confederate army, it is important to note it is...

Psellos and the Patriarchs: Letters and Funeral Orations for Keroullarios, Leichoudes, and Xiphilinos by Anthony Kaldellis and Ioannis Polemis

Reviewed by: Psellos and the Patriarchs: Letters and Funeral Orations for Keroullarios, Leichoudes, and Xiphilinos by Anthony Kaldellis and Ioannis Polemis Christine Angelidi Psellos and the Patriarchs: Letters and Funeral Orations for Keroullarios, Leichoudes, and Xiphilinos. Translated by Anthony Kaldellis and Ioannis Polemis. [Michael Psellos in Translation.] (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. 2015. Pp. x, 242. $35.00 paperback. ISBN 978-0-268-03328-5.) By its translations in numerous languages, Michael Psellos’ Chronography made the text accessible to audiences not necessarily familiar with the medieval Greek of one of the most sophisticated Byzantine authors. On the grounds of style, rhetorical vividness, and especially of the authorial-self that pervades it, the text is deservedly considered a major achievement of the eleventh-century Byzantine literary production. In contrast to the Chronography, access to the rest of Psellos’ œuvre, which comprises almost all literary genres, displays a variety of stylistic levels and rhetorical devices, and predominantly sets the subject matter within a theoretical framework, has long been exclusively available to the specialists. In this regard, the series “Michael Psellos in Translation” offers to historians of the Middle Age as well as to the informed public and students a valuable tool for assessing the intellectual aspirations of a key-figure in the development of medieval thought. The first volume of the series presented texts in which are evidenced Psellos’ per-ception of and attitude toward family bonds; the second introduces the long funeral orations he wrote for three successive mid-eleventh century patriarchs of Constantinople, Michael Keroullarios, Constantine Leichoudis, and John Xiphilinos. Letters he addressed to Keroullarios and Xiphilinos complete the selection of texts comprised in the volume. Aspects of the specific thematic choice are insightfully analyzed by Anthony Kaldellis and Ioannis Polemis in the introductory chapter of the book. The Funeral Orations were composed to celebrate the memory of the deceased patriarchs on the anniversary of their death. Whether they were actually orally delivered in public or read to a limited group of relatives and friends, the texts, remark Kaldellis and Polemis, are the earliest examples of encomiastic speeches for ecclesiastics, who were not sanctified and therefore did not deserve hagiographical encomia. Indeed, none of the three Patriarchs had manifested any significant religious vocation in the early stages of their lives; instead, they were deeply involved in secular activities, political (as is the case of Keroullarios), administrative (Leichoudes), or heading high-level schools of Constantinople (Xiphilinos). Moreover, all of them were chosen to lead the Patriarchate of Constantinople and later [End Page 114] deposed by imperial resolution. These substantial changes in the course of their lives served Psellos for constructing the orations “in two movements” and exploring the abstract notions of “virtues and states of being” (p. 2). In the “Historical and Interpretative Essay” (pp. 10-35), Kaldellis and Polemis contextualize Psellos’ relation with the patriarchs and thoroughly discuss the different ways by which he approached each of them. They also consider the framing of the discourses on the secure, for Psellos, philosophical ground and their stylistic elegance, which supports the appreciation of Leichoudes’ personality as the “harmonious mixture of all the best elements of human life,” but barely veils criticism toward Keroullarios and Xiphilinos—the former for his bigotry and false Neo-Platonic reasoning, the latter for moving away from the true philosophy to adhere to conservative positions. Transposing a text from one language to another is a delicate endeavor, especially in the case of the writings of Psellos, who was relishing allusiveness and constantly dialogued with his subjective perception of persons and events with the assistance of ancient authorities. Yet, the excellent translations of the Letters and the Funeral Orations render the subtleness of the texts and enable the modern reader to follow effortlessly the, often complicated, argumentation of Psellos. The volume concludes with the bibliography of sources and secondary literature, and a useful index. Christine Angelidi Institute of Historical Research National Hellenic Research Foundation Athens, Greece Copyright © 2017 The Catholic University of America Press

Self-Attributed Importance of Spiritual Practices in Catholic Pastoral Workers and their Association with Life Satisfaction

Although much is known about the frequency of the spiritual activities of pastoral workers, less is known related to how important specific spiritual and existential practices are to pastoral workers personally or existentially. This part of the German Pastoral Ministry Study analyzed (1) which forms of spiritual activities were regarded as important, (2) how the perceived importance of religious practices related to frequency of engagement in spiritual practices, and (3) how these practices contributed to the life satisfaction of ordained priests and of non-ordained pastoral workers. Participants included 1826 Catholic pastoral workers, composed of 65% priests and 35% (non-ordained) pastoral assistants and parish expert workers. Prosocial-Humanistic practices scored highest in importance, followed by Gratitude/Awe, Existentialistic practices, and Religious practices; specific forms of Spiritual Mind-Body practices were not relevant. Differences in the frequency and ascribed importance of spiritual practices between ordained and non-ordained pastoral workers were identified, as well as a surprising lack of connection between religious practices and their proclaimed importance, particularly of Prosocial-Humanistic and Gratitude/Awe practices. These findings may stimulate further research into the underlying causes of these differences between priests and other pastoral workers and between the frequency and importance of spiritual practices in all groups, which in the researchers’ opinion indicate challenging inconsistencies with regard to the ideals of religious vocations.

Health Effects of a Religious Vocation: Perspectives from Christian and Jewish Clergy

Clergy often serve in multiple capacities within religious organizations, making them indispensable to the day-to-day operations of these organizations. Although quantitative studies have highlighted negative health outcomes among clergy, whether this can be attributed to characteristics of the clergy vocation is poorly understood. To explore this possibility, this article presents perspectives from Christian and Jewish clergy about how the religious vocation has affected their health.

An Introduction to Franciscan Questing in Twentieth Century Ireland

During the twentieth century, members of religious orders visited homes and farms on an annual basis seeking material support for their continued presence in a locality. Known to Franciscan friars as questing or simply the quest, it was essential for the existence of friaries across Ireland. Most friaries accommodated on average ten friars, and some such as the Novitiate in Killarney and the city friaries of Dublin and Cork had larger communities. Without an alternative income, questing for alms amongst the local population was a necessity for the friars but also met needs in the lives of the people. In practice, both parties gave and received according to their different roles and means and usually within the context of a shared faith. In times before modern or private transport, the customary visits of questors to rural homesteads forged an enduring bond between country people and town-based friaries evident in the testimonies of those who recall them. Nonetheless, questing seems to have fallen victim to the myriad of changes that prevailed in Ireland from the 1960s onwards, including improved standards of living, rising car ownership and a decline in religious vocations.

An Introduction to Franciscan Questing in Twentieth Century Ireland

During the twentieth century, members of religious orders visited homes and farms on an annual basis seeking material support for their continued presence in a locality. Known to Franciscan friars as questing or simply the quest, it was essential for the existence of friaries across Ireland. Most friaries accommodated on average ten friars, and some such as the Novitiate in Killarney and the city friaries of Dublin and Cork had larger communities. Without an alternative income, questing for alms amongst the local population was a necessity for the friars but also met needs in the lives of the people. In practice, both parties gave and received according to their different roles and means and usually within the context of a shared faith. In times before modern or private transport, the customary visits of questors to rural homesteads forged an enduring bond between country people and town-based friaries evident in the testimonies of those who recall them. Nonetheless, questing seems to have fallen victim to the myriad of changes that prevailed in Ireland from the 1960s onwards, including improved standards of living, rising car ownership and a decline in religious vocations.

The Way Out: Closure of and Departure from Anglican Religious Communities

Anglican religious communities are currently experiencing decline. Member numbers are decreasing as their average age increases, recruitment of young people is virtually impossible and it is not uncommon to find a small and dwindling group of elderly religious inhabiting premises designed for a time when committing oneself to life as a member of a religious order was much more fashionable. There are several underlying reasons: young people are offered a wider and more diverse array of possible occupations; employment with a specific employer is no longer undertaken for life, but people tend to move from one job to another and from one sector to another; women in particular have more choices than previously and for those with a religious vocation the priesthood is a more exciting alternative; and, bearing in mind that many Anglican religious communities incline to the Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum, the Ordinariate beckons.

An example of ambivalent seventeenth‐century Dante reception: Arcangela Tarabotti's uses of the Commedia in her Semplicità ingannata

AbstractThis article considers Venetian author Arcangela Tarabotti's dependence upon, and ambivalent reception of, Dante's Commedia in her Semplicità ingannata (1654). Through close reading and intertextual analysis, Tarabotti's engagement with the Commedia is situated in contemporary pro‐woman discourse, and post‐Tridentine textual criticism of imaginative literature. From within the convent Tarabotti entered the querelle des femmes, building on the pro‐woman texts of Venetian authors Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella. She clothed her text in the authority of the Commedia, through quotation and literary allusion, while manipulating that work to put her own case against women being placed in convents without religious vocations.

Seroras and Local Religious Life in the Basque Country and Navarre, 1550–1769

In the early modern period, Basque women who could not or did not want to follow the traditional paths of monasticism or secular marriage had a third option. They could become seroras, or celibate laywomen licensed by the diocese and entrusted with caring for a shrine or parish church. Seroras enjoyed significant social prestige and their work was competitively remunerated by the local community; yet despite their central place in the local religious life of the early modern Basque Country and Navarre, the seroras have attracted almost no historical study. The purpose of this article is twofold: first, it summarizes the social and spiritual context that allowed for women to experiment with the more unorthodox religious vocations like that of the seroras; and secondly, it draws from extensive primary documentation concerning the seroras in order to outline the main features of the vocation, by extension differentiating them from better-known categories of the semi-religious life such as the beguines, Castilian beatas, or Italian tertiaries.

Prácticas y actividades religiosas en los colegios privados del País Vasco durante el siglo XX

The presence of schools ruled by religious orders and congregations in the Basque Country throughout the twentieth century is a known phenomenon. What is less known are the kinds of activities religious practices carried out in these schools. The objective of this collaboration is to analyse this situation, with a focus on two aspects: 1) the religious activities and, 2) the extracurricular religious activities. The first of these were carried out within the schools (liturgical acts, masses, rosaries, etc.). They were the rituals bywhich the student body could live spiritually through the religious teaching linked to catechism, religious education, the gospel or sacred history. The extracurricular activities were related to religious associations which were used for carrying out certain apostolic actions. Many of these activities served to recruit religious vocations or to involve the youth in Catholic Action. In the 1970s, these activities diminished and evolved. As an example of this process, which was extended to the majority of the schools, we have focused on the De La Salle schools in the Basque Country. A historical methodology has been applied to the diverse sources that have been analysed (photographs, archival documentation, etc.). The documentary corpus comes from the files and museums of De La Salle Brothers. We can conclude that during Franco’s regime, under which the teaching of the Catholic religion played an important role, the practice of these activities increased.

Reguliertes Abenteuer: Missionarinnen in Südafrika nach 1945 by Martina Gugglberger

Reviewed by: Reguliertes Abenteuer: Missionarinnen in Südafrika nach 1945 by Martina Gugglberger Martina Cucchiara Martina Gugglberger, Reguliertes Abenteuer: Missionarinnen in Südafrika nach 1945. L’Homme Schriften. Reihe zur Feministischen Geschichtswissenschaft 22. Vienna: Böhlau, 2014. 276 pp. In this noteworthy monograph, Martina Gugglberger seeks to illuminate the personal histories and experiences of European women religious missionaries after 1945. The author based her work on interviews with twenty-three Austrian and German Catholic sisters from the congregation of the Schwestern vom Kostbaren Blut, who have lived and worked as missionaries in South Africa for decades. These mostly elderly sisters represent the last generation of European women who joined new Catholic religious congregations dedicated to charitable works in large numbers during the monastic spring in the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. In this buoyant age of monastic revival, the abbot Franz Pfanner (1825–1905) founded the order of the Missions-schwestern vom Kostbaren Blut in 1885, and hundreds of German and Austrian women subsequently joined the congregation through the 1960s, when the prevalence of religious vocations declined sharply. By the 1970s, few women were entering religious life, and it was only then that scholars in the emerging fields of women and gender studies hesitantly began to turn their attention to the complex roles of women in organized religion. Since then, historians have struggled with the question of why so many women in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries joined the patriarchal Catholic (and Protestant) churches that seemed to oppress rather than liberate [End Page 159] them. Offering satisfactory answers has proven quite difficult, and despite a growing body of research on the topic, in many ways the scholarship on women religious has not moved far beyond the somewhat laconic assertion Martha Vicinus made thirty years ago that “religion opened and closed doors for single women.” Martina Gugglberger, too, focuses on the question of why the women she interviewed took the veil. She writes early on that “Kern der Untersuchung war es, Bilder und Vorstellungen zu eruieren, die die Motivationen für ein Leben als Missionsschwester zeithistorisch begreifbar machen” (16). Although the author’s conclusions are familiar in that the stories of the women missionaries take on the gestalt “eines ‘regulierten Abenteuers’, im Spannungsfeld zwischen individuellen and gesellschaftlichen Begrenzungen und Ausbrüchen,” her substantial chapter on the missionaries’ early lives, their “Herkunftsraum,” is nonetheless a highlight of the monograph (16). Gugglberger’s skillful and sensitive presentation of her interviewees’ early life stories that ended in the cloister addresses a significant gap in the scholarship on religious women, that is, the woeful lack of autobiographical sources on individual sisters. Readers will no doubt study with great interest her detailed descriptions of the women’s rural upbringing that was commonly shaped by “hard work and deep religious attitudes” and the deleterious impact of World War II on already limited educational and professional opportunities and marriage prospects (97). In this often bleak postwar era, many adolescent girls found refuge first in vibrant Catholic youth groups in their villages and then within the “stützende Gemeinschaft von jungen Frauen” in the cloister (175). For women who felt drawn to religious life, the Missionsschwestern vom Kostbaren Blut’s missionary school in Neuenbeken near Paderborn was an accredited Oxford Centre that offered attractive educational opportunities to its candidates for sisterhood. But Martina Gugglberger found that not all missionaries were created equal; unlike the mostly German graduates of Neuenbeken, who usually entered the teaching profession and were well prepared for further university studies abroad, young Austrian women who entered the congregation’s cloister Wernberg in Austria did not achieve the same level of education and usually found themselves employed in lower positions within the congregation in (housekeeping, clerical tasks, farming, and other manual labor). The uneven education the sisters received in Europe perhaps accounts for why quite a few of the sisters the author interviewed were ill prepared for [End Page 160] missionary work. Severe language barriers, feelings of incompetence, overwork, and disappointment about their work assignments caused some to suffer severe breakdowns and psychological crises. This is an important insight that speaks to the potential of oral histories to introduce intriguing nuances to a...

Review: Juan Caramuel y la probable arquitectura, by Jorge Fernández-Santos Ortiz-Iribas

Jorge Fernandez-Santos Ortiz-Iribas Juan Caramuel y la probable arquitectura Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispanica, 2014, 591 pp., 114 color illus. €33.66, ISBN 9788415245353 This is a remarkable book on a remarkable individual and his work. In character with its subject, it is also erudite and ambitious, written by a scholar who has searched many archives and libraries and obviously has read widely in various languages and on many topics as he followed the travels and thoughts of Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz (Madrid, 1606–Vigevano, Lombardy, 1682). Caramuel, who wrote books on subjects ranging from theology to mathematics, typography, and linguistics, is best known, especially among architectural historians, for his three volumes of Architectura civil, recta y obliqua (a fourth volume was never published and is lost), the focus of this publication. However, Caramuel and this treatise probably have not been understood so well in our times as they are in this volume. Caramuel was a Spanish subject at a time when that could signify many identities. His own identities had their origins in his having been born in Madrid, the son of a royal guard from Luxembourg at the court of Philip II and a Bohemian mother who was born in Antwerp. He studied at the Jesuit Colegio Real in Madrid and then at the University of Alcala. Before he reached the age of twenty, his religious vocation took him to the Cistercian monastery of Santa Maria de la Santa Espina at Castromonte (Valladolid) and to other monasteries in Castile. Always in the Spanish Habsburg sphere, he subsequently traveled to Flanders, the Palatinate, and Prague, then to Rome and the Spanish kingdom of Naples, and finally to Lombardy. Fernandez-Santos examines all of these movements in detail because he believes that they are key for understanding Caramuel, and especially the Architectura civil , published in Vigevano in 1678 …

Vocation and time in Rumer Godden’s In This House of Brede

Rumer Godden’s 1969 novel, In This House of Brede, transcends linear time in its account of a divinely inspired vocation. As Brede relates the events surrounding a monastery of Roman Catholic nuns, the novel’s blending of past, present, and future—along with an indeterminate beginning and open-ended conclusion—reflects the connection between eternity and temporality experienced in a religious vocation. Drawing upon the narratological theories of 20th-century philosopher Paul Ricoeur, this article argues that Brede’s time-transcending structure creates a realistic and captivating narrative that invites readers to engage in the action of the novel as its story of Christian vocation unfolds.

“Shun not the struggle”: The Language and Culture of Deaf Catholics in the U.S., 1949–1977

Culturally Deaf Catholics in the U.S. have defined themselves not by their disability but by their shared history, language, and traditions. This article narrates the history of Deaf Catholics from the founding of the International Catholic Deaf Association (ICDA) in 1949 to the ordination of the first culturally Deaf priest in North America in 1977. Deaf Catholics have long struggled for inclusion in parish life. Beginning in the 1950s, the work of hearing priests and pastoral ministers resulted in improved availability of religious education and sacraments in sign language. In the 1960s and 1970s the institution of vernacular Masses after Vatican II, the acceptance of American Sign Language (ASL) as a language, and the increase of preaching in ASL provided for an expansion of ministry by the Deaf, for the Deaf. Consequently, Deaf Catholics themselves laid the groundwork for the first Deaf religious vocations. The growth of a core group of Deaf Catholic leaders, including clergy and laity, spurred the creation of several national organizations whoich sought to coordinate gatherings, including retreats in ASL, to further include this marginalized group in the life of the Church.

Missionary women and work: Benedictine women at New Norcia claiming a religious vocation

The community of Catholic women from Spain and South America who worked with Aboriginal children in the Benedictine mission town of New Norcia in Western Australia offers a case study of tensions within the definition of a missionary vocation. This article looks especially at the place of work within the broader monastic tradition and assumptions about the work of women in a mission context. Taking the Benedictine Missionary Oblate Sisters as a case study, this article explores the tensions within the definition of a missionary vocation. It looks especially at the place of work within the broader monastic tradition and negotiations about the role of women as authentic missionaries. Drawing on Foucault's concept of physical discipline as a “technology of the self”, especially as it has been refracted for religious life by Pierre Hadot, this article tests Foucault's theory against the experience of the Benedictine missionary women of New Norcia, using letters from the 1930s as well as oral evidence from contemporary members. I argue that the Rule of Benedict upheld the status of manual work, and so supported the women's claims for the full religious status of their missionary vocation.

Joyce's City: History, Politics, and Life in "Dubliners" by Jack Morgan

Reviewed by: Joyce's City: History, Politics, and Life in "Dubliners" by Jack Morgan David Spurr (bio) JOYCE'S CITY: HISTORY, POLITICS, AND LIFE IN "DUBLINERS," by Jack Morgan. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2015. 186 pp. $60.00. Jack Morgan's elegant and enlightening study of Dubliners is the most recent in what appears to be a historicist turn in the study of James Joyce's early book of short stories. Looking back on the two decades that immediately preceded and followed the turn of the twenty-first century, one is struck by the extent to which the study of Dubliners was dominated by ethical and narratological readings. R. B. Kershner's Joyce, Bakhtin, and Popular Literature stressed both the performative nature of Joyce's stories and the extent to which his characters were caught within conflicting sets of discourses and ideologies.1 In 1993, Garry M. Leonard's Reading "Dubliners" Again proposed a psychonalytic perspective which focused on stylistic shifts in the stories.2 The subtitle of Tanja Vesala-Varttala's 1999 study of Dubliners, Ethical Probing of Reading, Narrative, and Textuality speaks for itself.3 Finally, Margot Norris's Suspicious Readings locates those strategies of conflict and occlusion in Joyce's stories that oblige the narrator, and even the reader, to play an interpretive role which frequently includes an ethical dimension.4 In contrast to an earlier generation of formalist readings, what all of these works have in common is the interpretation of an interplay between narrative form and the ethical implications of Joyce's fiction. Such interpretations have their roots in a long tradition; we learn lessons and make judgments about stories based on what we are told or not told about what fictional persons do or not do. What changes through the passing of time are the ethical frameworks of the lessons we draw and the judgments we make. In contrast to this preoccupation with ethical interpretations, [End Page 439] what I am calling the turn toward historicism takes the view that the deepest understanding of Joyce's first published work of fiction is to be found in the dense network of its allusions to the cultural and historical contexts of Ireland at the beginning of the twentieth century. In keeping with this view, Frank Shovlin's Journey Westward: Joyce, "Dubliners" and the Literary Revival takes up such apparently marginal subjects as the role of whiskey distilleries in the Irish economy or the survival of Jacobitism into Joyce's day.5 Morgan works in the same way, proposing what the anthropologist Clifford Geertz would call a "thick description" of a seemingly minor incident or ritual in order to show how its meanings resonate throughout the world Joyce evokes.6 This kind of work has the virtue of bringing new and relevant historical knowledge to bear on Joyce's work. Two different readings of Joyce's story "Clay" offer a striking contrast between the ethical and historicist interpretations outlined above. Norris argues that Maria, the middle-aged, unmarried woman at the center of the story, is a victim of the class and gender ideologies that stigmatize her as an "old maid" (140), even if the narrator fails to acknowledge this designation. When, in the Hallow Eve divination game toward the end of the story, the blindfolded Maria chooses the saucer with "a soft wet substance" (D 105), Norris finds that a trick has been played on her, one which unjustly reaffirms her lowly status as an object of ridicule. In reading the same episode, Morgan is more interested in the nature of the Hallow Eve game as a vestige of pagan Irish folklore. He finds the real issue to be the attempt to reappropriate and sanitize the ritual in the name of bourgeois Catholic values. At the time when the story takes place, the augury game included saucers containing a ring, a prayer book, water, or clay—respectively symbolic of expected marriage, a religious vocation, fertility, and death. Morgan points out that the prayer book must be a late addition to the ancient Celtic practice (94). When Mrs. Donnelly scolds the next-door girls for having imported garden dirt for the death option, her attitude reflects...