Congregations Of Women Research Articles

IMPACT OF CATHOLIC SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM ON HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT WITHIN RELIGIOUS WOMEN’S CONGREGATIONS IN THE NORTHERN ZONE OF TANZANIA

This study aimed to evaluate the impact of the implementation of the Catholic Scholarship Program for Tanzania (CSPT) on human capital development within religious Catholic Women's Congregations in Northern Tanzania. The study was guided by the question: to what extent does the implementation of CSPT enhance human capital development within religious women’s congregations? The study was anchored on: Context, Input, Process, and Product (CIPP) Model. This study applied Convergent design under the mixed methods. The general target population for the study was 142 respondents from CSPT in the Northern Zone of Tanzania. However, this particular study comprised of: 122 religious women, 16 superiors of different congregations, 3 board of directors, and 1 executive secretary of the programme. The study sample comprised 84 respondents from whom 80 are religious women, 2 are superiors of congregations, 1 is from the board of directors, and 1 is the executive secretary of the programme. Purposive and simple random sampling techniques were used to obtain samples for this study. Data was collected through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. The validity and reliability of the evaluation instruments were ensured, and the instruments were pilot-tested. Quantitative data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics such as frequencies, percentages, and means. Qualitative data on the other hand was examined through the transcription of texts, generating themes for interpretation, discussions, and arriving at conclusions. The study established that the implementation of the Catholic Scholarship Program to a great extent enhanced human capital development within religious women's congregations in the Northern Zone of Tanzania. The study concludes that CSPT is a valuable programme for religious women congregations in terms of human capital development. The study recommended that the management of CSPT should frequently monitor the participating congregations. The monitoring ensures that the beneficiaries positively enhance the development of the human capital of the congregations as envisaged by the CSPT.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/soc/0011/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Introduction to the Special Issue Catholicism and Gender in Modern Spain†

Introduction to the Special Issue <i>Catholicism and Gender in Modern Spain</i>^†

Turning Gwer Sa La Festival into Intangible Cultural Heritage: State Superscription of Popular Religion in Southwest China

The Gwer Sa La Festival of the Bai in southwest China was recently announced as a national Intangible Cultural Heritage Project and nominated for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation world ICH candidacy, largely due to the local government’s promotion of Gwer Sa La’s religiosity by constructing and materialising the rhetoric of survival by a primitive fertility cult and ethnic carnival. However, the key concern of the participants is Gwer Sa La’s potency of prosperity, related to a series of encompassing powers vested in the patron god temples, taken care of by women congregations who renew the power of prosperity during the Festival. It is argued here that the state’s efforts to turn Gwer Sa La into an ICH project is an attempt of “superscription without encompassment”. The efforts are based on an imagined, primitive fertility cult that leads to sexual promiscuity and which entirely overlooks the locals’ concerns.

Civilizing Habits: Women Missionaries and the Revival of French Empire Civilizing Habits: Women Missionaries and the Revival of French Empire . By S arah A. C urtis . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. x + 374., ill., maps. Hb £45.00.

A glance at the library classification of Civilizing Habits might lead a reader to the wrong conclusion. It is true that the book concentrates on Rose Philippine Duchesne, Emilie de Vialar, and Anne-Marie Javouhey, all female missionaries in the nineteenth century. And yet, this is not simply a book about ‘women missionaries’. Indeed, it is neither hagiography nor biography in the usual sense. While this work might be classified as a women's history, a history of religion, or a history of empire, all of those classifications are insufficient. In the end, it is some of each of these things, and more. Sarah Curtis examines the lives of Duchesne, Vialar, and Javouhey, all founders of women's congregations, all remarkable leaders, and all committed Catholics. She does so in order to explore and recast a number of mostly unrecognized problems in nineteenth-century French history. Curtis notes that historians ‘have usually imagined imperial agents as either male and secular — explorers, merchants, soldiers — or, less often, male and clerical’ (p. 3). They rarely recognize the significant work done by women religious. Additionally, while women religious, ‘schooled in habits of self-abnegation and humility’ (p. 3), might have seemed traditional or even reactionary, women's religious life in France underwent a post-Revolutionary transformation that allowed Duschene, Vialar, Javouhey, and others to carve out a space for activism that could be independent and radical. Accordingly, the lives of these women do more than complicate imperialism and political activism. They point to a fissure at the intersection of religious history and women's history, where the ‘growing body of historical scholarship on the “feminization of Catholicism” […] sit[s] uneasily in the dominant narratives of modern French and European women's history, which are primarily concerned with the growth of domesticity, as well as the attempts to resist it’ (p. 8). Three women, all committed to the universal truth of Christianity and obedient to a hierarchical church, fought against patriarchy, promoted French Catholic culture around the globe, and engaged in power struggles to forward their goals. That is not to say that these women had entirely the same agenda or vision of the world. Duchesne endured gruelling conditions on the Missouri frontier in order to convert Protestant children and assimilate black and mixed-race children, but resisted American notions of capitalism, democracy, and individualism. Vialar used her personal wealth in the service of an order that provided medical care and treatment in an attempt to ‘civilize’ North Africans and convert Muslims. Javouhey did not resist egalitarianism like Duchesne and ‘had much in common with the Romantic socialists and utopians of her era’ (p. 178), although her commitment to Catholic dogma led her to underestimate the power of Islam in Africa. Yet, despite the differences in mission field, political beliefs, and philosophy, Curtis finds the overlapping themes of their lives and weaves them together in a way that allows us to see imperialism, women's activism, and religious belief in a profoundly new way.

Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement (review)

Reviewed by: Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement Donna Steichen Catholic and Feminist: The Surprising History of the American Catholic Feminist Movement. By Mary J. Henold. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2008. Pp. xii, 291. $32.00. ISBN 978-0-807-83224-0.) The American Catholic feminist movement, which Mary J. Henold examines in this history, was primarily a phenomenon of women religious, and it almost annihilated their world. This book is thus an account of the early years of a tragedy. But the author does not seem to know it; so reading it is something like hearing "Dies Irae" sung to the tune of "Seventy-Six Trombones." Henold never knew the Catholic universe that flourished from pioneer times through the 1950s. It demanded extraordinary heroism, courage, and apostolic zeal of women religious, who were missionaries, builders, nurses, educators, and social workers to Native Americans, urban immigrants, poor Southern blacks, and frontier farmers. They operated orphan homes, nursed wounded soldiers from both armies during the Civil War, and fought city halls and chancery offices. They were college presidents and hospital CEOs when few women held such positions. Their numbers were always modest, peaking at 180,000 in 1965, but their accomplishments were stunning. But by 1974, when Henold was born, most women's communities had effectively abandoned the charism of carrying one's cross. Certainly a scholar need not live in an era to write its history. Catholic and Feministis adapted from Henold's doctoral dissertation, and it reflects thorough archival research. What she reports did happen; the names and dates are accurate. Henold sees Catholic feminism as a consequence of the Second Vatican Council. It was an expression of the nuns' Catholic faith, she says, describing their revolt and even eventual apostasy as justified. Catholic feminism was indeed a consequence of the council, but I reject her rationale. Conciliar directives for the renewal of religious life were widely misinterpreted. The turmoil of the times disrupted the sisters' lives, shook their certitude, and unsettled their identity, leaving them vulnerable to radicalization. In the guise of "renewal," agitators inundated them in neo-mod-ernist skepticism, Jungian psychology, encounter therapy, and feminist liberation theology. Their Catholic faith destroyed, many nuns seized on feminism as a substitute belief. A strong-minded remnant kept the unadulterated faith, [End Page 888]but in most communities rebels seized power. The evidence is clear in the record of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the formal liaison group between women's congregations and the hierarchy. Like children from Hamelin trooping after the Pied Piper, nuns began vanishing from parishes. Many joined a precipitate exodus from religious life, driven by disillusion, disorientation, or rebel persecution. Others changed careers; between 1965 and 1975, more than half of American teaching sisters fled their classrooms, often to enter master's programs in catechetics or theology. Dissident books appeared, written by Mary Daly, Sidney Callahan, Rosemary Radford Reuther, and other Catholic feminists. Their articles, often published in Americaor Commonwealmagazines, were discussed in secular publications such as Timeand Newsweek. In the nascent prolife movement, activists puzzled over the failure of women religious to enlist as expected. Catholic school students reported that "Sister said" they need not attend Sunday Mass, confess sins, or remain virgin until marriage. Saints and scholars of the "pre-Vatican II" past were replaced in their curricula by new writers such as Gregory Baum, Hans Küng, and Malcolm X. Catholic culture, rooted in the Creed and the sacraments, seemed to be committing suicide. Perhaps because a dissertation requires an original premise, Henold insists that hers is the first book-length study of Catholic feminism. Not even feminist partisan Mary Jo Weaver's New Catholic Women(San Francisco, 1985) meets Henold's standards. She calls Weaver's revealing report on Catholic feminism "the most influential portrait of the movement to date" (p. 246n2) but rejects it as less comprehensive than her own. One book she does commend is Defecting in Place(New York, 1994), an essay collection edited by Medical Mission Sister Miriam Therese Winter, with Protestants Adair Lummis and Allison Stokes. Henold never addresses the substance of...

Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture (review)

Convents and Nuns in Eighteenth-Century French Politics and Culture. By Mita Choudhury. (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press. 2004. Pp.xi, 234. $42.50.) On July 17, 1794, sixteen Carmelite nuns went to the guillotine, accused of royalism and counterrevolutionary behavior. These nuns became symbols to both opponents and supporters of the French Revolution. To the former, they were heroic martyrs; to the latter, dangerous fanatics. What made these nuns such potent political symbols? Mita Choudhury's study of the discourse around convents and nuns in eighteenth-century France provides us with some intriguing answers to this question. Choudhury's study spans the period from the 1730's, when Jansenist nuns resisted the papal bull Untgenttus, through the French Revolution, which, as it became increasingly radical, closed France's convents and monasteries and labeled those who resisted counterrevolutionaries. She argues that during this period, discussions of convents and nuns were central to critiques-and to the eventual dismantling-of the political and social institutions of the Old Regime. Like the Bastille, convents came to symbolize the arbitrary and despotic nature of power in pre-revolutionary France. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, debates about nuns and convents centered on matters of enclosure and authority. In the 1560's, the Council of Trent declared that all religious communities of women must be cloistered and submit to the authority of the bishop, though these prescriptions were challenged by new active women's congregations, such as the Ursulines, and by nuns who brought court cases against ecclesiastical superiors who challenged their traditional rights. The Enlightenment shifted the terms of the debate. As Sophie, Rousseau's natural woman, became the basis for a new ideal of womanhood, convents and convent education were branded unnatural. The religious fanaticism denounced by philosophes like Voltaire and Diderot tended to be gendered female, and in the latter writer's scurrilous novel, La Religieuse, the convent stood for all that was wrong with Old Regime politics and society. Choudhury does a masterful job of unpacking the complex and contradictory images of nuns-as victims and despots, submissive and disobedient, holy and sexual-that appeared in the Jansenist controversy of the 1730's through the 1750's, in judicial memoirs of cases regarding the abuse of power by mother superiors, in narratives of forced vocations, and in debates over convent education. …

‘Good teacher’ or ‘good religious’? the professional identity of catholic women religious in nineteenth-century england and wales

Abstract Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten thousand women involved in these congregations have been rendered invisible in history. Despite their exclusion from historical texts, these women featured prominently in negotiating the boundaries of religious life, sometimes to their collective benefit, sometimes not. Prescriptive literature gave one model of womanhood, married life, with a second model, single life, clearly an inauspicious alternative. Women religious provided a different model and created a religious, occupational and professional identity that varied from the prescriptive literature of the day. Their religious identity had as its goal their own ‘perfection’ and the salvation of others. Their occupational identity as ‘nun’ often encompassed a wide variety of tasks, but by the end of the century, the professional identity of nun as teacher or nurse was firmly in place.

‘Good teacher’ or ‘good religious’? the professional identity of catholic women religious in nineteenth-century England and Wales

Roman Catholic women's congregations are an enigma of nineteenth-century social history. Over ten thousand women involved in these congregations have been rendered invisible in history. Despite their exclusion from historical texts, these women featured prominently in negotiating the boundaries of religious life, sometimes to their collective benefit, sometimes not. Prescriptive literature gave one model of womanhood, married life, with a second model, single life, clearly an inauspicious alternative. Women religious provided a different model and created a religious, occupational and professional identity that varied from the prescriptive literature of the day. Their religious identity had as its goal their own ‘perfection’ and the salvation of others. Their occupational identity as ‘nun’ often encompassed a wide variety of tasks, but by the end of the century, the professional identity of nun as teacher or nurse was firmly in place.

The Little Company of Mary: Charism and the Ethic of Care

Religious congregations of women have been socialized in a tradition rich in gospel values, but one which was also hierarchical and patriarchal. My own congregation, the Little Company of Mary (LCM), is an international one, involved in health care since our foundation in Victorian England. Within both spheres, religious and medical, the patriarchal influence was strong and uncritically accepted until the second half of the twentieth cen tury. Here, I attempt to bring feminist and nursing philosophy to bear on the care debate within nursing. An ethic of care demands that we go beyond competence, important as that is. This ethic, found to be at the heart of our LCM identity, suggests to us today, that our founder, Mary Potter (1847- 1913) was a feminist ahead of her time.

A Dictionary of Asian Christianity (review)

A Dictionary of Asian Christianity. Edited by Scott W Sunquist. Associate editors, David Wu Chu Sing and John Chew Hung Chea. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. 2001. Pp. xii, 937. $75.00.) This is a unique work, embracing a vast area of Christian life in time and space, with 1260 entries, each accompanied by a bibliography for further reading. Its writing has involved almost 500 scholars,Asians or those whose primary work is in Asia, from many countries and has been ten years in the making. Its completion is the fruit of numerous regional meetings within Asia, generously supported by a variety of international foundations concerned with mission. That such a work could have been brought into being is a major achievement, and though this review will have occasion to point out an unevenness and some major and minor lapses, we still have a valuable work for church historians interested in Asia. Into the 1260 entries 464 other articles have been incorporated, in an effort to assure a certain symmetry among the different countries involved. Nonetheless, as will be pointed out, such symmetry is badly lacking in a few. The three editors, all at that time faculty members of Trinity Theological College in Singapore, took up this project in 1990, and Singapore has remained the center of its compilation. It would not be unfair to say that the book bears evidence of its Protestant origins, though the editors made considerable efforts to involve Roman Catholic scholars, and even held a special consultation to decide on which of the many possible religious orders and congregations to include. In almost all cases, these particular articles have been written by members of the congregations themselves, and these generally approach a high level. There are, however, some major omissions. The Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres, the second largest women's congregation in the Philippines, with missions in several other Asian countries, are mentioned only for Thailand. The Augustinian Recollect Missionaries, also one of the larger women's congregations in the Philippines, receives only a brief mention under Indigenous Religious Congregations, as if the latter were less important than the many minor Western congregations that receive extensive articles. Among male orders, the Passionists, long active in China and the Philippines, receive no mention of any kind. Similarly, the Augustinian Recollects, the largest order in the Philippines at the end of the Spanish regime, and with seventeenth-century martyrs in Japan, go completely unmentioned. The Marists are spoken of only under China, while the Capuchins and the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart, both long active and in considerable numbers in the Philippines, only find mention under Indonesia, though they have been equally long or longer in the Philippines. The article on the Jesuits, not by a Jesuit, contains some dubious and irrelevant remarks on their European history, but has nothing on Vietnam, the Philippines, or Japan, the latter a considerable omission for an article that features St. Francis Xavier. It is true that the work of Alexandre de Rhodes and the Jesuits is treated in the country article on Vietnam (though nothing is said of the Dominican work in Tonkin, which produced canonized native and Spanish martyrs). It is also true that Xavier, Valignano, and the later Jesuits in Japan receive considerable treatment in the article Kirishitan Evangelism, but in the absence of any cross-reference, who would know to look there? The geographical scope of has presented problems. Indian Christians today have close ties to those Christians who in the early centuries were to the east of the Roman-Byzantine empire, though in the modern world they are more oriented to the Mediterranean and Islamic world. Hence the decision was taken to cover the Persian area of western Asia until the Arab conquest of the seventh century, and from that point onward to limit the coverage to the area from Pakistan to the East, excluding Asian Russia and the Pacific islands. …

Willing women and the rise of convents in nineteenth-century England

The second half of the nineteenth century saw a phenomenal increase in the numbers of women entering convent life in England. Initially, an overview, to delineate the extent of the growth of Women's religious congregations, is presented. The factors influencing this growth were the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church in England, its need for workers, the position of women in Victorian society and, not least, the willingness of women to adopt the religious life. Using material from convent archives, aspects of the nuns' lives are explored with reference to their work, their relations with clergy and their understanding of their personal identity. Examples of individuals and communities representative of these issues are cited for the purpose of highlighting the obstacles to and the possibilities of the religious life for women. The facts demonstrating the spread of Women's congregations are presented in table form. These include their country of origin, the date of arrival in England, the main work undertaken by them and the number of houses owned by them.

Willing women and the rise of convents in nineteenth-century england

Abstract The second half of the nineteenth century saw a phenomenal increase in the numbers of women entering convent life in England. Initially, an overview, to delineate the extent of the growth of Women's religious congregations, is presented. The factors influencing this growth were the restoration of the Roman Catholic Church in England, its need for workers, the position of women in Victorian society and, not least, the willingness of women to adopt the religious life. Using material from convent archives, aspects of the nuns' lives are explored with reference to their work, their relations with clergy and their understanding of their personal identity. Examples of individuals and communities representative of these issues are cited for the purpose of highlighting the obstacles to and the possibilities of the religious life for women. The facts demonstrating the spread of Women's congregations are presented in table form. These include their country of origin, the date of arrival in England, the main work undertaken by them and the number of houses owned by them.

Residence Stability and Decline in Roman Catholic Religious Orders of Women: A Preliminary Investigation

Previous research on lifestyle changes within U.S. Catholic religious orders has neglected to examine the extent to which their members still live communally. In this study, the archives of eight religious congregations of women were examined for 1964 and 1990 to determine changes in living patterns. When compared with 1964, sisters in 1990 lived in much smaller groups and in apartments rather than convents. The composition of the 1990 groups was also much more stable over time. Possible reasons for these changes are explored

Archives of Roman Catholic Orders and Congregations of Women

THE United States there are over 400 Roman Catholic religious orders and congregations of women.1 They range from autonomous convents of 30 members to organizations of 3,000 or more; they work in every State and in the territorial possessions; they began appearing in the days of President Madison; and they keep records.2 There may be great resources for historical research in their archives. Recently I tried to find out what sort of records sisters have and what they do with them. From the Official Catholic Directory of 1967, I chose at random the names and addresses of 50 such congregations of 500 or more members as subjects of my inquiry. Since sisters generally are very cooperative, 50 promised enough responses to give a sampling of common practices. Five hundred members indicated a fairly complex organization that had been growing long enough to have inactive records. To the secretary general, the official most likely to be responsible for archives, I sent a questionnaire, with a covering letter asking for any further information she could find time to give me. Thirty-nine of the subjects responded. Four have no archives because they are branches of larger groups that absorb whatever inactive records are kept. Four others are "between archivists" and have no one who could answer the questions. Thirty-one filled out the questionnaire and 12 of these sent additional information.