Vocation and Social Context (Religion and the Social Order)

Vocation and Social Context

Religion and the Social Order An Ofcial Publication of the Association for the Sociology of Religion

General Editor

William H. Swatos, Jr.

VOLUME 14

Vocation and Social Context Edited by

Giuseppe Giordan

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

ISSN 1061-5210 ISBN 978 90 04 16194 8 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Preface ......................................................................................... William H. Swatos, Jr.

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Introduction ................................................................................ Giuseppe Giordan

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1. Vocation ................................................................................. Andrew J. Weigert and Anthony J. Blasi

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2. Italian Youth and Ideas of Vocation ...................................... Franco Garelli

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3. Vocation as a Personal Choice ............................................... Luigi Berzano

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4. Vocation versus Vocational Status in the Lives of Current and Former Vowed American Catholic Religious .................. Anthony J. Blasi

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5. Vocation and Vocational “Crisis”: A Study of Italian Former Priests ........................................................................ Giuseppe Giordan

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6. Civic Engagement and Church Policy in the Making of Religious Vocations: Cross-National Variation in the Evolution of Priestly Ordinations .......................................... Robert M. Fishman and Keely Jones

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7. Women, Religious Agency and the Politics of Vocation ........ Laura M. Leming

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8. Seminarians and Vocation ..................................................... Giovanni Dal Piaz

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9. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Life: Vocation as a Social Movement .............................................................................. Robert C. Butler

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Contributors ................................................................................

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Series List ....................................................................................

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PREFACE William H. Swatos, Jr. Handing a Weber scholar a collection of essays on the subject of vocation seems to me not too far from letting a cat loose in a mice hatchery—or whatever it is in which mice are bred. There is so much that might be explored and exploited from so many angles! I will resist that temptation and instead offer a couple of personal observations—one that will probably prove how old I am and the other on behalf of the continuing relevance of St. Max “in spite of all.” The matter of my age is in itself irrelevant, but one of the few good things I can think of associated with aging is the ability to assess change through personal experience. And in my own experience, vocation has gone around several different ways. For the most part when I was a teenager, “vocational” programs were never associated with “calling”—à la Weber or anyone else. People went to vocational programs who were going to learn a trade rather than a profession. Perhaps this use still persists in some areas and contexts. I’m not sure whether the change I sense in this regard is because of the hypercredentialing of the trades or the increased technologization of the professions. Truck drivers, bakers, and mechanics earn college degrees, while medical doctors unionize and increasingly work with machines rather than bodies. It would be encouraging to think that this is a democratization process, but I’m not sure that the reverse is not in fact more likely. In any case, however, it is gratifying to see in this volume a reconsideration of vocation, both in the religious sense and more generally. As far as Max Weber is concerned, a number of years ago I began a process that I continue with undergraduates in the introductory course especially. Before jumping into the Protestant ethic with both feet, I ask if there are any Catholic students in the class, and there always are. I ask them to tune me out for a minute, and I then ask the rest of the students: “If I had come to your high school and said there would be a vocations conference that you and your parents could attend, what would you think I was talking about?” The answer is always along the line of careers or jobs. I then ask the Catholic students, “If you went to Catholic school or if you worship in a Catholic parish and the principal

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or priest said there was going to be a vocations conference, what would you think that would be about?” Some look blank, but every time so far at least one will say, perhaps a little timidly, “About becoming a priest or a nun.” A hundred years after the publication of the Protestant ethic thesis—and four to ve hundred years after the various reformations— the distinction still holds, though now it is the Catholic ethic of vocation that is unique, while the Protestant ethic has been secularized into the mainstream (at least in the United States). As you read this book, you will see that it moves back and forth somewhat in its coverage, with a good deal of material coming from Italy and the bulk certainly reecting issues that are most immediately germane to the Roman Catholic Church. It would be quite helpful to see a future volume that might look at Protesantism as well, in both its liberal and evangelical variants. I was amazed recently to see the glitz and hype of college and seminary ads now placed in a popular evangelical magazine—a genre that I probably haven’t seen at all in over a decade. Evangelicals are moving “the call” beyond “the preacher”—at least as they are trying to market higher education. The liberal churches continue to attract men and women, both gay and straight, in numbers that likely exceed their capacity to absorb the output. Varieties of vocation within religion continue to emerge, even if it is the case that it is probably harder today than it was a hundred years ago to nd an empirical “Poor Richard” living out Franklin’s transformation of the Protestant ethic.

INTRODUCTION Giuseppe Giordan The concept of vocation has intrigued sociology since Max Weber made it a fundamental element in understanding the relationship between the individual and society. Not that the concept did not exist before Weber. In theological and pastoral circles, God’s call to his people has always been of key importance, especially for the Christian religion and the Catholic church in particular, in relation to the recruitment of “specialized personnel” in the form of priests and nuns. But development of the theme by the German sociologist in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, as well as his assertions during the famous conferences held at the University of Munich in 1919, made the concept less “provincial” and “parochial” and gave it a place in the heart of sociological thought (Weber 1946, 1978, 1998). And it is precisely in Weber’s category of Beruf, a word which underlines both the polarity and at the same time the interpenetration between the subject’s personal profession and vocation in the sense of a call from God, that we can trace the richness and nuances that make this concept useful and fertile also for contemporary sociological study. An extremely simple experience is enough to illustrate the numerous facets of the word “vocation” and the wide range of ideas it stimulates in the mind of, for example, young students. During my sociology course at the University of Aosta, a small city on the slopes of Mont Blanc in Italy’s smallest region in the north east of the country, I proposed a brainstorming on precisely this theme, asking the students to write down what the word “vocation” meant to them in no more than ve lines. For most of them, vocation referred to God’s call to some men and women in connection with a particular mission to be undertaken either inside the church or at the service of the world. In the latter case, missionaries were used as an example. So for this majority of students, the concept of vocation had a direct reference to religion, and they therefore spoke of a priestly, monastic, or missionary vocation. For some of them, however, vocation also had another meaning. It could be interpreted in a much more worldly and less religious way, as an inclination or personal predisposition for a specic profession, type of

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study, or particular artistic activity. In this sense, vocation is an innate tendency within the individual that leads him to prefer certain activities rather than others. For my students, examples of this were doctors, professors, and architects, together with painters or musicians. Finally, two other students drew attention to two very unusual aspects that extend not just the concept of vocation but also illustrate how it can be interpreted in a historical or geographic sense. For one of them, a vocation can also be attributed to a natural territory, a landscape, a general environment. A mountainous region, for example, may have a “vocation for tourism,” while an area with easy access to the road network or a wealth of raw materials may have a “vocation for industry.” The student who wrote this observation was the son of the owner of a hotel bordering directly on the ski runs and also a keen promoter of the valorisation of the scenic and natural assets of the Valle d’Aosta. The other student observed that one can use the word “vocation” when talking about companies able to develop manufacture of a product with particular commitment and creativity. The family of this last student owns a company making the typical lardo di Arnad, a local product (lard) known both inside and outside Italy for its unique avor. Invited to reect further on what it means to interpret one’s activity in terms of vocation, many students referred to the “meaning” the person can attribute to their everyday actions, or, in a more general sense, the thread that runs through someone’s entire existence. Talking about vocation in those terms helps understand all the vicissitudes of everyday life, from the most banal and repetitive to the most important and demanding, as though imbued with a sense which, though not always immediately apparent, is nevertheless ever present and concealed even in those events that my otherwise in themselves seem senseless—such as suffering or death. In short, perceiving life in terms of vocation means lifting it out of the banality of a simple succession of random events and giving them the added value of a framework able to make even the smallest details precious. Related to this is the rediscovery of one’s own intimate self within the everyday “things to do.” It is no coincidence that the word “authenticity” kept coming up during discussions with the students. The events of the world outside the person, ever more complex and overwhelming, are thus given a bearable and tolerable dimension through the criterion “harmony with myself ” which would overcome the sense of being scattered and fragmented by providing a consideration of a unitary and reassuring recomposition. According to this other approach,

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a vocation would thus lead to a rediscovery of the everyday through a process of selection and simplication, giving a sense of self-control that can easily be translated as “personal well-being” or “self-realization” (Giordan 2006). My students’ considerations were clearly strongly inuenced by the social and cultural context in which they live—a country where the Catholic church occupies a position that could still be dened as a relative monopoly (Garelli 2005, 2006; Diotallevi 2001), and a context, the Valle d’Aosta, where the tensions of social change and, more specically, the transition from the traditional world of agriculture and sheep farming to the modern world of industrialization and tourism, as well as the typical migrations of people and cultures of postmodernity, have all produced a marked fragmentation of values that people could use for reference. Finally, this is a context in which the need for meaning is in all probability becoming ever more urgent because it is accompanied by a profound redenition of the ofcial religion, “the Catholic faith,” and by a high level of well-being guaranteed as much by the tourism typical of a mountainous area as by a particularly advantageous system of guarantees provided by the autonomous legal status of the region. Obviously, although stimulating and in some ways surprising, the results of this brainstorming need to be systemised in a wider and more complex theoretical framework. Without doubt, the concept of vocation offers a very interesting point of view for understanding the meaning that individuals give to their own professions, activities, and life more generally—“being in the world.” As Max Weber said, this is responsible for extending the concept of vocation and making it no longer exclusive of religion. Precisely the ambiguity, positive in this case, of the German word Beruf, meaning both vocation and profession, widens the possibility of applying the concept itself in the secular material world of the professions. As is well known, Weber’s reasoning starts from a Protestant, and more precisely, a Calvinist perspective according to which the role of the Christian in the world is to act ad maiorem Dei gloriam, in other words, for the glory of God. From this derives an unremitting commitment to live one’s professional life with responsibility and sacrice, in a context of complete abnegation of the self and the pleasures of life. This “inner-worldly asceticism” is the only element able to conrm the state of grace that reassures people about their election to eternal salvation. This is an asceticism that leads to ever higher nancial earnings, but at

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the same time avoids all material and earthly pleasures. For Weber, this is therefore the true vocation: performing professional duties according to a rigid inner-worldly morality that has nothing to do with monastic asceticism bent on escaping from earthly realities considered dangerous for the salvation of the soul. In Weber’s own words, the Puritan professional takes ascetism from the connement of the monastic cell to the concreteness of business life. The dimension of ascetism is therefore closely bound to that of vocation (Giordan 2007). And this is true both from a secularized Perspective and a Catholic religious one. The concept of ascetism is associated with the idea of exertion, struggle and exercise, practised with method (rationality) and rigour (sacrice), with a view to an improvement that may be moral, religious, or even professional. The Catholic approach to the concept of vocation, which as we have already seen refers to priestly ordination or commitment to the religious life, links a call by God to the willingness of a man or woman to respond in the afrmative. But precisely this willingness to accept the call of God to a special consecration is born, grows, and is developed by practising ascetic exercises. It is through the concentration of meditation, constant prayer, “mortication” of the body, and meticulous control of one’s own senses and sentiments that a call by God can be perceived and followed. This is the origin of the long tradition of vigil, abstinence, and fasting that, particularly in medieval times, could sometimes lead to excesses. In the Calvinist Puritan mentality, this ascetic exercise is developed in an absolutely earthly and worldly manner, but this does not make it less difcult or demanding. In both cases, it involves a dynamic of rationalization that, from Weber’s perspective, is typical of the process of modernization. Enzo Pace (1983) interprets the political commitment of many Italian Catholics inside (and above all outside) the Christian Democratic party, in power in Italy uninterruptedly for almost 50 years, in this specic sense of inner-worldly ascetic commitment as a response to the “Christian vocation.” Contrary to the ofcial indications of the Catholic church which insistently invited Catholics to “vote united” for the “Christian party,” many Italians committed on both the front of faith and the front of social and political militancy did not obey the religious institution’s instructions in order, as explained above, to be faithful to their “Christian vocation.” According to these Catholics, it was precisely to remain faithful to their call from God that they were obliged to denounce on one hand the compromises ever more evident

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between the institutional Church and the majority political party and, on the other, the Catholic hierarchy’s failure to address the situations of poverty, marginality and suffering that characterised certain areas of the country. Over and above the particularities of the Italian case, what Pace describes suggests that it is possible to interpret a political commitment as a call coming directly from God in the Catholic context as well, and it does not require any legitimation by the ecclesiastical institutions. Quite the contrary, it is precisely the inner-worldly asceticism of political commitment that makes it possible to interpret one’s own actions as directly related to the evangelical message of equality, justice, and solidarity, giving one the right to criticize one’s own ofcial church. The maximum expression of the interpretation of vocation in ascetic terms is without doubt the martyr, both in the traditional sense of the Christian martyrs and also in the sense found in the modern Muslim world. In both cases, it means sacricing one’s own life, demonstrating profound dedication to an ideal (religious or political or both bound together). What is interesting is the logic that supports martyrdom. The martyrs’ lives are worth less than the call (vocation) to sacrice themselves for a greater ideal. This logic is closely bound to the idea of vocation, which leads the individual to transcend the self to answer a call coming from outside and above: God, religion, nation (Pace 2007). It is evident from the case of the Muslim martyrs that the call by God to sacrice one’s own life is not only of a religious nature, but also responds to needs specically related to politics and identity. Perhaps never so much as in this case has personal vocation had a social value and has the interpretation of this vocation, taken to the extreme, merged (and becomes confused) with the interests and values of a given social and cultural context. In this sense, it can be said that the religious vocation of the martyr is the last resource available for a political system unable to legitimize the right or duty to kill others in any other way. Coming back to Weber’s approach to Beruf, as well as vocation interpreted in terms of ascetism, there is also the other meaning, that of profession, which as we have seen is particularly important in a Calvinist perspective. The aspiration to economic success is a source of security not only in this life, but above all in the next life—and in any case closely links the private and individual dimension to the public and collective dimension. One’s own profession is not identied so much with “making money,” or at least not exclusively, but also offers the possibility of a more deeply rooted and vital place in the social

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fabric. As Robert Bellah and his colleagues (1985) observe, a profession in the sense of vocation can never be reduced to the purely economic dimension of the maximisation of prot, or exclusively to the private aspect of personal well being. This dimension of work, which integrates the individual and society, without doubt emerged with greatest clarity in the context of relatively small towns and cities in the nineteenth century, where the success of one’s work commitment contributed almost naturally to the good of the whole community. The major transformations affecting the way of interpreting work in the transition between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and now the new millennium) very probably also make it necessary to review the close connection between profession and vocation and therefore between individual and society. From Bellah’s perspective, work is no longer seen as a vocation, but simply as a means of obtaining a satisfactory private life, codied according to a “lifestyle” that is no longer common to the community in general, but only to those people considered to have a similar sensibility, wealth, and culture. No longer, therefore, rooted in the fabric of small local communities, but a network of relationships with a much looser mesh and lifestyle enclaves. The challenge to rise to the top of the bureaucratic and corporate pyramid therefore brings with it a loosening of bonds both in a unitary sense within one’s own life, in terms not just of prot but also of relationships, affections and amusement, and within the reference society. Interpreting Beruf in terms of profession also means opening up another eld of study, namely the relationship between profession and employment (Tousijn 1997). While generically speaking, profession can be used to indicate any sort of employment, it sometimes has a more restricted and limited meaning, making it stand out from generic “jobs” and in particular the trades. This exclusive meaning of the word profession dates back to the Middle Ages, in particular to the birth and development of the universities, where, with courses lasting a number of years, the faculties of theology, philosophy, medicine and law trained those professions held at the time to be most prestigious—the theologian, the philosopher, the physician, and the jurist. As modernity advances, the word profession, although including new jobs, continues to maintain an elitist and in some ways exclusive meaning, and the important sociological (and also historical) question is to understand how some types of job become “professions” while others

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are never attributed this elite status. For us, the matter is particularly important since, for the “man in the street” (as conrmed by my Aosta students), the concept of vocation in the sense of profession is reserved for only certain types of job and not others. But why does this happen? What qualities must a job have to become a profession-vocation? What added value must it have? Or, seen from another point of view and widening the perspective, what added value is there in perceiving one’s own work in terms of a vocation? As already mentioned, interpreting one’s job as a vocation means attributing a special meaning to it, perceiving in what one does in the work a particular expression of one’s own abilities and gifts and, above all, seeing in it a unied meaning. This means lifting one’s everyday activities out of the monotonous and sometimes banal continuation of days to make them part of a wider project that is full of signicance. And it is precisely the signicance one attributes to one’s own actions that enables one to produce change, both at individual and collective level. Once again, the idea of vocation requires one to go beyond the self, to discover a wider plan, usually with positive connotations. In a time such as the present, when certainties seem ever more fragile and the only certainty that remains seems to be doubt, the need to gather together and unify the fragments of belonging and employment, together with those of relationships and emotions, accentuates the need for a unied vision to give existence a framework of signicance (Bauman 1999). While the idea of progress in a general sense has lost the attraction it had until a few years ago (Rossi 1997), today there is still at least the possibility of carving out small areas of signicance that enable one to go beyond the provisional nature of the present moment and escape the logic of carpe diem. The perspective of life interpreted in terms of vocation seems to represent an Ariadne’s thread to prevent one from losing one’s way in the multiplicity and sometimes inconsistency of everyday events. Implicit in this idea of vocation is without doubt the vision (utopia?) of the perfectibility of humans and their nature, even though for contemporary people this immediately translates into fragility and the reversibility of everyday decisions (Michel 1994). What I have described above are just some of the themes that emerge when talking about Beruf. The chapters that follow demonstrate how the vocation-profession can be studied from various perspectives and with very different scientic sensibilities. The rst chapter by Andrew J. Weigert and Anthony J. Blasi is the key contribution (not just for this

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volume) and offers a reliable point of reference for those wanting to study the theme of vocation in depth. By creating interaction between the sociological and psychological dimensions, Andy and Tony isolate the particular social form, “vocation,” interpreting it in relation to personal identity, status and role. Starting from these categories, they examine the meanings usually attributed to that concept, both inside and outside religious circles. This is truly rich and instructive work that opens up new areas of study. The two subsequent chapters originate from recent research on the theme of vocation carried out among a representative sample of young Italians aged between 16 and 29. What Weigert and Blasi explained previously from a theoretical point of view is conrmed empirically by the contributions of Franco Garelli and Luigi Berzano. In the second chapter, Franco explains the results of the survey showing that the concept of vocation is not distant from the life of young Italians and that it is understood by them in both a religious and non-religious sense. Among the interesting results, I will limit myself to highlighting just two aspects: the different levels of vocation attributed to various types of profession and, a particularly surprising nding, the relatively high percentage of young people who have considered a specic religious consecration, even if they then did not go on to realize it. Taking the results of the same research as his starting point, Luigi develops a number of specic aspects relating the theme of vocation to the most recurrent cultural aspects of the world of young Italians, starting with the uncertainty of employment and the difculty of nding one’s way in a context in which theoretically all choices are possible, but in practice, only a few are realisable. The contributions that follow, one by Anthony J. Blasi and one by myself, shift the reection to a phenomenon that necessitates considering vocation from another perspective, namely that of change. As discussed in the rst chapter, this means not necessarily passing from one vocation to another as much as changing the way the same vocation is expressed. Reinterpreting the data from a previous survey carried out with Zimmerman on the “transition from vowed to lay ministry in American Catholicism” (Blasi with Zimmerman 2004), Tony goes back to Weber’s concept of the “routinization of a charisma,” placing the vocation as calling and vocation as status in a dialectical relationship. Studying two samples of current and former members of Catholic religious communities in the United States, he analyses their commitment

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to working class issues in relation to their vow of poverty. My chapter, starting from 25 in-depth interviews with the same number of former Italian priests, sets out rst to describe how the Italian social and cultural context reacts to those who decide to “leave the priesthood” and then to examine how the concept of vocation in the sense of the “will of God” is transformed in those who make this choice. Through an extensive and systematic cross-national analysis performed in seventeen countries covering the period from 1945 and 1995, the rich and full study by Robert M. Fishman and Keely S. Jones describes the evolution (and not always the decline) of priestly ordination in the Catholic church. According to the authors’ hypothesis, this evolution is not due mainly (or solely) to the changes introduced by the Second Vatican Council or the issue of the law on the celibacy of priests, nor is it exclusively related to religious devotion. It seems, on the other hand, to be more fully explained by political regime transitions and specically by a “socially solidaristic (or also civic) set of commitments.” The seventh chapter focuses our attention on the efforts made by women for recognition of their specic identity in the Catholic church. This means, according to the passionate comparison Laura M. Leming draws from her concrete teaching experience in the United States and India, not just analysing their attempts to appropriate their own religious tradition autonomously, but also those made to inuence the distribution of power within their own religious institution. This is precisely what Laura denes as the “politics” of vocation and can be seen as a form of “religious agency.” The last two chapters talk of religious vocation from another two different points of view. Giovanni Dal Piaz illustrates how the training to become Catholic priests in seminaries is based not just on theological but also psychological and sociological presuppositions that are today in deep crisis. Whether vocation is interpreted in the sense of a “small seed” which can grow inside the adolescent only if cultivated with patience and dedication, or whether it is considered as a process of conversion that can only be tackled by mature people, it requires radical rethinking in relation to the role which the priest will be required to occupy in contemporary, secular and pluralist times. As Robert Butler explains, the difculty of redening the role of religious vocation within our society was positively overcome by Martin Luther King Jr. The family experience of Dr King, his deep roots in the Black Church,

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and the sense of responsibility and dignity which he animated in his community and in his education transformed his “traditional vocation” into a worldwide social movement. Finally, before handing the discussion over to the various authors, I would like to thank Tony Blasi for having involved me in this project right from the start and Bill Swatos for having supported and backed me with invaluable advice. Without their friendship and wisdom, this book would never have seen the light. I am obviously grateful to all the friends who have taken part in this book, for their punctuality and their competence in adding signicant pieces to the mosaic of scientic study of vocation. A particular thanks to my wife Patrizia who patiently waited “just one minute more” when the pasta was getting cold on the table and a special thought for Francesco, my four-month old son, in the hopes he will never lack a vocation for an ever more inspired and luminous life. References Bauman, Zygmunt. 1999. La società dell’incertezza [The Society of Uncertainty]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Bellah, Robert N., Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler and Steven M. Tipton. 1985. Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Blasi, Anthony J., with Joseph F. Zimmerman. 2004. Transition from Vowed to Lay Ministry in American Catholicism. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Diotallevi, Luca. 2001. Il rompicapo della secolarizzazione italiana: Caso italiano, teorie americane e revisione del paradigma della secolarizzazione [The Puzzle of Italian Secularization: The Italian Case, American Theories, and a Revision of the Secularization Paradigm]. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. Garelli, Franco. 2005. “Il pluralismo religioso in Italia” [“Religious Pluralism in Italy”]. Rassegna italiana di sociologia 4: 585–604. ———. 2006. L’Italia cattolica nell’epoca del pluralismo [Catholic Italy in the Age of Pluralism]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Giordan, Giuseppe, ed. 2006. Tra religione e spiritualità: Il rapporto con il sacro nell’epoca del pluralismo [Between Religion and Spirituality: Relating to the Sacred in the Age of Pluralism]. Milano: FrancoAngeli. ———. 2007. “Asceticism.” Pp. 185–89, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, vol. 1. Oxford: Blackwell. Michel, Patrick. 1994. Politique et religion: La grande mutation [Politics and Religion: The Great Change]. Paris: Editions Albin Michel. Pace, Enzo. 1983. Asceti e mistici in una società secolarizzata [Ascetics and Mystics in a Secularized Society]. Venezia: Marsilio. ———. 2007. “Martyrdom.” Pp. 799–802, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, edited by George Ritzer, vol. 6. Oxford: Blackwell. Rossi, Pietro. 1997. “Progresso.” [“Progress.”] Pp. 76–88, in Enciclopedia delle Scienze Sociali, vol. 7. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.

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Tousijn, Willem. 1997. “Professioni.” [“Professions.”] Pp. 48–57, in Enciclopedia delle Scienze Sociali, vol. 7. Roma: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana. Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1998 [1904–05]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Roxbury.

CHAPTER ONE

VOCATION Andrew J. Weigert and Anthony J. Blasi We write this chapter out of the conviction that the social world is affected in important ways by the phenomenon of the “vocation.” Much of the change and resistance to change in social life takes the form of the long-term commitments that people have and which they experience as transcending callings. Vocations are not the total explanation for history—i.e., for change and resistance to change; one can cite alienation, disaffection, greed, lethargy, and conventionality as well. But vocations surely ll out a major part of the picture. As will be seen below, vocations reside in social as well as psychological dimensions. Thus in calling attention to the importance of vocation as a sociological concept, we are not promoting a “great man” theory of history, but rather a theory that recognizes that men and women are called to be great often enough that the proceeding to live by a greater than everyday calling is an important kind of event in the social structuration process. The Meaning of Vocation Vocation and analogous terms are found in various religious traditions and secular approaches to “the meaning of human biography” (Haughey 2004). William Placher (2005) offers a fourfold historical periodization from a religious perspective: klesis for early Christian adults called out of pagan society; vocatio for medieval Christians called to the higher statuses of religious or clergy; Beruf for Reformation Lutherans called to seek God in worldly pursuits; and a pluralism of options within or outside of “work” as job, career, lifestyle, or activism in the contemporary Post-Christian world. Such terms can be taken as metaphors for a subjective experience that is described in the authoritative religious

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narratives as hearing and answering a call from the Divinity.1 Perhaps the best known call and answer in the Judeo-Christian tradition are the calls of YHWH to Moses from the Burning Bush and God the Father to Saul, who was on the way to Damascus to combat the new Christians there. In the latter case, the experience occasioned a transformation that was reected in a change of name from Saul to Paul. That kind of subjective experience can be taken as real as an experience. In this essay we are seeking analytical commonalities and interpretive dimensions of the phenomenon of that kind of vocation, using a sociological social psychology, while bracketing the religious narratives. By “bracketing,” we simply mean what we are focusing on could occur in non-religious as well as religious narratives. Thus we are seeking to isolate a particular social form, vocation, which is not itself peculiar to any one tradition and may not even be essentially religious in nature. This is not to explain away the phenomenon of vocation but to identify it; indeed to make it ancillary to a particular religion or even to religion in general would be to explain it away, albeit in a non-scientic procedure. By sociological social psychology, we mean neither the positing of innate behavioral impulses that work themselves out in social patterns nor the positing of external social “structures” that leave their imprints on impressionable human psyches. Rather, we look to the pragmatist, or symbolic interactionist, tradition of scholarship that refuses to posit a human psychology apart from society or a human society apart from psychological processes. In sociological social psychology one recognizes characteristically human consciousness as emergent in nature, a kind of occurrence that comes into being because of humans being or having been wide awake to other human beings (see the topical overviews in Reynolds and Herman-Kenney 2003).

1 Weiss et al. take the biblical parable of the annoying friend (Luke 11:5–8) as the Christian paradigm of vocation. This is the parable in which a friend comes knocking at the door at midnight asking for loaves of bread for a visitor: “I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.” They suggest that Luke erred in placing the tradition in a section about prayer. “The parable takes on a different and more logical sense if we do not assume that it is about prayer but rather about calling. Then the story is not about us needing to badger God, but about God needing to badger us” (2004: 186–87).

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A vocation will be a particular pattern in which individuals are related to the other people around them. The fact that particular cultural traditions, such as received religious discourses, are what necessarily provide the intellectual materials with which the individuals conceptualize their own vocation simply means that vocations will evince variety. The followers of YHWH, Jesus, Allah, the Buddha, and so forth may be comparably but not identically situated to others in their social worlds even if the sacred texts or revealed scriptures in each tradition give different substance to the content of vocations in the context of each tradition. The “universalizing” of vocation does not deprive it, as a concept, of meaning but rather distinguishes that meaning from the varying traditional contents with which it is usually associated in the received discourses. Poetry may be lost by such making of distinctions, but not meaning. More specically, we approach the culturally available meaning of vocation from a pragmatic social constructionist perspective, a type of analysis within the broader tradition of symbolic interactionist sociological inquiry, which does not presuppose particular mental states or attitudes but rather allows the observed “back and forth” exchanges among people to indicate what social psychological phenomena are relevant in particular contexts. In the interactions among people we can observe them presenting and recognizing typical situated “selves,” or identities (Weigert et al. 1986). We study the vocation as a specic kind of identity. We therefore have, in order of breadth of inclusion of the relevant “others,” three terms that refer to the individual in society: self, identity, and vocation. Following the terminology used by George Herbert Mead, a self is “that which can be an object to itself ” (1934: 140). Taken as a structure, such a statement would be circular. But the core of the conceptualization is the act of someone imagining oneself as one would appear from the standpoint of another person; the self happens, comes into view imaginatively, when one “takes” the standpoint or role of the other. Because individuals base their actions and consequently give a foundation to history on such imaginative selves, they are no less real for being hypothetical. Moreover, selves are no less social for being individual, for an awareness of others must be involved in one’s taking the role of the other. “If the self-form is an essential form of all our consciousness, it necessarily carries with it the other-form. Whatever may be the meta-physical impossibilities or possibilities of solipsism,

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psychologically it is nonexistent. There must be other selves if one’s own is to exist” (Mead 2001: 16).2 “Identity is a typied self at a stage in the life course situated in a context of organized social relationships” (Weigert et al. 1986: 53; see Blasi 1972: 456). An identity is typical; it implies expectations or a pattern of activity that persists through the owing sequence of moments and transcends immediate circumstances. Thus it is typical of the person, capable of inspiring resistance to “temptations” to participate in on-going activities that would be inconsistent with the expectation or pattern. It is capable of change however, so long as that change is a development, a change of the self-understanding of the very person. Thus the biography of an identity takes the form more of a career and a sequence of uctuations. But of course an identity is not solipsistic; it is continuous, if even by opposition, with the organized social relationships found in the individual’s social world. More will be said about identity below. We understand vocation as adding a self-aware sense of identity as linked to what we shall term a transcendent aspect of human existence (see Taylor 1992, for a discussion of self as open to “hyper-goods”). Within our perspective, transcendent refers to phenomenologically and empirically evaluated experiences or possibilites within the mundane world of each person’s culture. We say phenomenologically and empirically because the sensed value is in the experience itself and not contingent upon some extrinsic conceptualization. It is analogous to an aesthetic experience, not to an idea of an aesthetic principle. Again, it is analogous to the idea of a million, without having counted to a million. Vocation, then, answers the three core self-motives of esteem, worth, and authenticity, especially the latter, the linchpin of self-as-authentic. Within a pragmatic social constructionist perspective, “good” is a meaning for self and others that is relative to the situation and context within which it is experienced, expressed, responded to, and validated. A sociological perspective brackets the issue of objective, universalist, a priori, genetic, or revealed renditions of the good. It is important to continue this bracketing of ontological aspects of good and the ethical, for interpreting the discussion of vocation. It is assumed, for instance, that vocation carries an explicit or implicit positive evaluation and cathexis in everyday and institutional usages. In religious contexts, this posi-

2 Given the discovery of Mead’s book manuscript, published in 2001, we have access to his own formulation of his sociological psychology.

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tive cathexis is clear in prayers for “an increase in vocations” that are issued, for example, in Roman Catholic churches that are undergoing an historical drop in priestly and religious “vocations,” i.e., members who decide to join the clergy or religious orders of men and women, monks, brothers, sisters, and nuns (see Schoenherr 2002). In the secular realm, an analogous positive evaluation follows, for example, from the German understanding of a professional as someone who follows a Beruf, an occupation, profession, or career (ScholzeStubenrecht et al. 2001: 158), or again, “profession, calling, vocation, occupation, pursuit, business, trade, employ, walk of life” (Betteridge et al. 1965: 70). Similar nuances arise within English from the cognates of professing one’s faith, one’s love for another, or one’s commitment to a cause. Such professing is supposedly a feature of age-old institutional arrangements of autonomously competent, self-regulating, and duciary experts who are marked by an ethical obligation to work for the good of a client or of society in general.3 Frequently an obligation to keep consultations with a client condential exists so that people needing help can be free to bring all relevant facts and considerations to the professional so that the latter’s judgment will be as informed as possible. Where the good of society rather than of a client is in question, as for example in the case of journalists, many states have laws protecting the condentiality of reporters’ sources, so that people privy to what should be public information would be able to “leak” insider information to the press without being discovered and retaliated against. Max Weber found the vocation or Beruf to be an important theme for his sociology of religion. The peculiar idea that making money can be an expression of virtue, he writes (1998: 54; cf. 1978: 556), is what is most characteristic of the social ethic of capitalistic culture, and is in a sense the fundamental basis of it. It is an obligation which the individual is supposed to feel and does feel towards the content of his professional activity, no matter in what it consists, in particular no matter whether it appears on the surface as a utilization of his personal powers, or only of his material possessions (as capital).

Weber’s controversial thesis was that the Reformation made the vocation in this sense “the highest form which the moral activity of the individual 3 See the two opening paragraphs of the “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” formulated by the American Association of University Professors and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (in American Association of University Professors 1995: 3).

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could assume” (1998: 80). He describes an inner-worldly asceticism in which “the order of the world in which the ascetic is situated becomes for him a vocation which he must fulll rationally” (1978: 543). Even the other-worldly mystic has a vocation requiring “the maintenance of a state of grace against every pressure of the mundane order” (Weber 1978: 548). Weber also spoke of vocations quite apart from religious contexts. He implicitly described what he saw as his own two vocations in the celebrated essays, “Politics as a Vocation” (1946: 77ff.) and “Science as a Vocation” (1946: 129ff.). He speaks of “politicians by virtue of a ‘calling’” (1946: 80), who receive charisma from a following and exercise leadership. There are also “professional politicians” who serve a dominant ruler as underlings. Thus there are politicians who live for politics and functionaries who live off of politics (1946: 83–84).4 Three qualities, according to Weber, are decisive for the former, the politicians—passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of proportion (1946: 115). He goes on to describe these qualities, in what is tantamount to a social psychology of the politician. The scholar, quite in contrast to the politician, is not interested in being in the public eye and gaining a personal following. He participates in the discourse of a small community of specialists and strains to achieve something that is of little concern to most people. Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, that he has achieved something that will endure. A really denitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized accomplishment. And whoever lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to speak, and to come up to the idea that the fate of his soul depends upon whether or not he makes the correct conjecture at this passage of this manuscript may as well stay away from science. (Weber 1946: 135)

An enthusiasm for such work, according to Weber, is essential to the scientic vocation. The professions range historically from Medieval theologians, philosophers, and lawyers to today’s proliferation of so-called “profession-

4 Giuseppe Garibaldi was a personage who brought living for politics to such an extreme that he declined to live off of politics at all. His calling was to oppose authoritarian government and establish representative government (see Trevelyan 1907).

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als” as pest exterminators, insurance brokers, and hair stylists—a sign that the autonomous duciary status of professions is now part of a wide-ranging service sector in a global market economy. C. Wright Mills described the paradox of the “salaried professional,” that is, a supposedly autonomous self-regulating body of duciary experts who are now employed in a bureaucracy to serve the prot-making logic of employing institutions (1956: 113–15). Thus lawyers join stables of legal rms and physicians work for health maintenance organizations. The historical paradox to which this brief delineation of professionas-vocation points is the institutional situation of secular vocations as co-opted within the prot logic of hierarchical bureaucracies, even as the privileged young and value-oriented adults seek to discern the sources of their sense of vocation—i.e., of a call to an identity that denes self as good. From its etymological and historical origin as a call from Divinity, a transcendental vocation, in contrast to a job, is in essence a call to be a self-as-good. A mundane vocation would be a subjectively experienced call to be a self-as-good. Included in a mundane vocation is a sense that following it in pursuit of the goals it implies is putting the self on track toward some kind of self-fulllment. This sense of self-fulllment follows in part for the dening feature of vocation as a call from a greater reality to live in pursuit of self-as-good. Mundane and secular vocations, then, are subjective goods that inform the three core self values of esteem, worth, and authenticity. Vocation should be contrasted with the sociological terms of status, identity, and role. Status refers to individuals’ locations within social structures and institutional organizations. The classic sociological dimensions are power, wealth, and prestige (Weber 1978: 926ff.), and an individual’s access to these dimensions locates that individual within the structures of generalizable resources for evaluating self and others and providing a range of action in the context of one’s interactions with others. Note that from a social psychological perspective, status refers to the individual-as-located within social structures, not to the locations themselves or the structural categories or components themselves. Thus, status in this sense refers to social categories as referenced to the individual who is placed within them, not to the structures or institutions themselves. Within sociological discourse, status is sometimes used to refer to individual characteristics and sometimes to structural positions. Here it simply refers to the individual dened according to placements within structures (see Linton 1936: 113). The individual, then, carries,

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akin to Weber’s sense of a “cultural carrier,” the status placements as individually dening features attributed to one as a social self. Identity as a construct also applies directly to the embodied individual who is perceived as placed within overlapping statuses. Thus, identity takes the social references derived from an individual’s statuses and adds their aggregation and particular placement as those of a single embodied individual. An identity includes the total social realities of the statuses with the, as it were, applied social realities of a particular individual. Thus identity connotes a particular biographical experience that status does not bring to mind. The embodied individual adds remembered biographical particularities, affective experiences, recognition, and acknowledgement in the memories of signicant others. Thus it can be seen that personal identities are related to the actual motives involved in people’s actions, motives that may actually depart from public typied ones commonly associated with statuses. Such personal identities are different from what are sometimes termed social identities. A personal identity derives from the unique aspects of the individual—i.e., unique aggregations typical of the individual only, aggregations of such standard dimensions as age, gender, ethnicity, size, beauty, eloquence, etc. Social identities derive from attributing group membership to individuals and then interpreting them from the meanings that the viewer attributes to the group as such. A role is a construct that directs attention to the modalities of enactment of status and identity in relation to the expectations.5 A role is a package of regularized, routinized patterns of precedented and expected action. As with identity, role carries two interpretations with reference to structure and personal agency. Structurally, role refers to hierarchically organized expectations for action typically institutionalized and formal, as in a bureaucracy. Interactionally, role refers to situationally relevant expectations for action emerging from the expectations of self and other and their mutual and ongoing adjustments, as in a conversation or in informal teamwork. Linking vocation with each of these sociological constructs generates an ordering of the principal meanings attributed to the term. A religious vocation refers to a placement within a status in a directly religious institution, for example a member of the clergy or of a reli-

5

“A rôle represents the dynamic aspect of a status.” (Linton 1936: 114).

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gious order of monks or nuns.6 Entering any such religious status may or may not involve a tendency toward leaving what are now dened as “secular” statuses, depending on the degree of formalization and differentiation between the secular or “lay” statuses and the religious or clerical statuses. It is a matter of a “tendency” rather than an actual leaving, since some religious specialists can only pursue their vocations part-time, given economic constraints. Religious institutions differ on the degree of formalization and differentiation among statuses, and members’ sense of vocation will differ accordingly. For example, there are lay preachers or ministers who perform religiously institutionalized functions without entering a different status or leaving their familiar or occupational statuses. Sometimes there is a differentiation from occupational but not familial statuses, as with the married and parental oriental rite Catholic priests found, for example, in the Ukranian and Maronite sectors of the Roman Church. Many religious vocations are interpreted as allowing occupational careers in compatible statuses, such as therapists, professors, and occasionally physicians and politicians; Fichter (1974: 37ff.) refers to these as “hyphenated clergy.” In a different but relevant sense, vocation relates to role as a modality of performance, as with the person who becomes a bus driver and strives to be the best bus driver one can be. Echoing the stoicism of Epictetus, it is up to others to tell us which roles to play and if we wish to be happy and free within those roles, we should perform them to the best of our abilities. If one were a slave, Epictetus would have one be the best slave one can possibly be. Given the limitations of embodied life, such as time, space, energy, resources, and place, role demands in complex contexts and plural identities and statuses are a central source of tension both for prioritizing, deciding and acting out one’s relationships (Absalom 1971; Blizzard 1956). Living a vocation implicates a self in the acting resolution of these tensions, and always and only “for the time being.” Since the tensions are socially real and structurally generated, no “mental health” or “personal life plan” ever eliminates them.

6 Referring to the “call” to ordained ministry in the Free Churches of Great Britain, Carlton (1968: 108) notes that some “described it as an inner restraint, a mounting and inescapable conviction that their future lies with the Church.” He goes on to note that some people struggle with the idea for some time and try to resist it before responding favorably to a call.

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Vocation, furthermore, may refer to another identity enactment that is nested within “vocation” as a category of work. Everyday English takes the original Latinate roots and has a construct that denies vocationas-work in order to refer to an aspect of one’s life that is meaningful, perhaps more meaningful than work, as a source of one’s authentic identity. What a person yearns for, then, is time free from work, even named “free time,” in order to spend it at one’s “avocation.” An avocation is a valued identity enacted in time freed from one’s work vocation. Within one’s vocation, a person may live for that time which is not spent at it but fullled through it. Time is “spent” at a work vocation. Time is fullled at one’s avocation. This relationship of utilitarian work vocation to one’s person-fullling avocation is illustrated by the response of a college woman to the question about her academic major: “I’m majoring in accounting, but I’m a dancer.” Considering relationships between vocation and avocation claries further the subjective distinctions among such self-identifying discourses reecting perceptions of self as capability, skills, desires, envies, commitments, conformities, or whatever core cognitive-affective motivation drives the self through daily life. Consider such formulae as: I want to do what I’m good at. I want to do what I like to do. I want what I have to do to earn the money that I want. I want to do what will make me famous and further my career. I want to do what will make me powerful. I want to do what will make my family and neighbors envious of me. I want to live riotously! Any of these self-indications may underwrite a vocation and allow resources for pursuing an avocational self as well. In a word, a person may pursue a vocation in order to have the desired avocation. Each of these choices indicates a pursuit of self-authenticity, a central self motive, once the prior material needs are satised. Avocation itself, then, indicates that the self has a work vocation that underwrites leisure, options, or resources for pursuing a second, non-work vocation. Vocation as avocation is a perk for those who have met subsistence needs and thus free the self for additional identity quests. Differences between vocation and avocation highlight the rst relationship in developing a conceptual framework for describing and codifying identity-as-vocation, namely: cui bono. The rst round of responses to this question is self or other, the latter taken in the widest sense of signicant others, reference groups or relationships, institutional statuses, or the transcendent Other or mythical states such as the afterlife or national or ethnic historical fulllment. Vocation for

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self includes directly self-referenced goals and rewards, such as wealth, power, prestige, pride, being envied. Vocation for self motivates a life in pursuit of self-interests. Vocation for other, by contrast, includes directly other-referenced goals, rewards, and existential, institutional, or group statuses and conditions. Most directly, vocation for other is altruism and the action-for-the-good-of-others that altruistic perspectives motivate. Indirectly, of course, vocation for other includes a motivational interactional arc that is not reex but which provides the self with derived goods such as the self-satisfaction that follows from seeking the good as self sees it for the direct good of others. Motivational analysis may strive to locate the primacy of motive in the direct good for others or in the indirect arc of satisfaction informing self-understanding. In other words, I do not reduce all vocation for other to a selsh motive informed by the indirect good-for-self that emerges from doing goodfor-other. From a pragmatic perspective, the foundation of good lies in the empirical good done for other, whatever the intentional purpose or subjective payoff from doing good-for-other. Vocation implies action in response to a “call” from a larger social reality than a personal life qua individual, i.e., action for a “public,” group, or institutional, national, or ethnic/racial service. Such service always goes beyond personal interests aligned with self ’s gain qua individual gain, always goes beyond “what’s in it for ME.” Public service requires the self to undergo a process of discernment: read the signs of the times as in the Christian tradition; rise to the level of the times, as Ortega y Gasset urged (inter alia 1963: 23; see Weigert 1983); be engaged as existentialists stated;7 or simply commit to something greater than oneself as an individual (see Weiss et al. 2004: 195ff.). A self who believes that the source of the call is God thereby receives an invitation to a divinely initiated vocation. For such a believer, a call from God is the highest invitation to fulll oneself and serve one’s God and thus do what is best for one’s fellow believers and in so doing fulll one’s personal destiny. Responding to such an invitation answers the key question Max Weber (see 1978: 540) posited as the core of at least Christian religious virtuosity, namely a certain answer to the question, Am I saved? For a believer, answering God’s call is the royal road to salvation.

7 Sartre (1956: 536) speaks of experiencing one’s self “engaged” in a “we” when, along with a number of others, one observes an accident taking place on the street.

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Vocation as an experience points to the historical tension between the individual and society. A person who experiences a call to universalize a social value or formulate new social values that should then apply to all humans runs afoul of the institutional arrangements that dene the contemporaneous institutional order. Powerful historical exemplars of following vocations attributed to transcendent sources—e.g., Socrates and Jesus—have elicited the opposition of those who prot from and operate within the empirically given social arrangements. Such transcendent vocations, when turned into motives for social change, are utopian8 and hence revolutionary; they threaten the status quo. G.H. Mead (1934: 217–18) notes that Jesus generalized the simple idea of “neighbor” in the parable of the Good Samaritan and thus fueled the opposition of those who refused to include Samaritans in the same identity category as themselves. Mead goes on to note that the great charismatic persons in history are those who grasp an essential value of their society and take it to a deeper understanding and extend it to include all human persons. Indeed, Mead’s notion of moral action is that which is accepting of all those whom it affects, not to some a priori narrowed compass based on the contingencies of social life. Of course, the social meaning of such charismatic vocations, as for all social meanings, lies in the responses of selves and others that fashion the future that emerges from their acting upon their vocational sense. The Transcending Self and Vocation Identities give a mundane denition to selves. They answer the momentby-moment question, “Who am I in this world?” While identities tend toward mundaneity, the self tends to transcend its experiences of multiple social worlds and to form a general coherence for itself. The power of a vocation comes from its social psychological fusion of multiple identities into a transcending self. We might distinguish between a short-term but ultimate fusion of the self into one identity—for example, the soldier engaged in a suicide mission—and a long-term commitment around which many other identities are structured—e.g., the life-time

8 “The concept of utopian thinking reects the . . . discovery of the political struggle, namely that certain oppressed groups are intellectually so strongly interested in the destruction and transformation of a given condition of society that they unwittingly see only those elements in the situation which tend to negate it” (Mannheim 1936: 40).

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peace activist. In the former case, the individual is immersed in a set of immediate pressing activities; the horizon of consciousness is not unlike the loss of self in intensive athletic activity. Should death come, a life will have been torn out of the fabric of everyday life; the reciprocities out of which the social world is woven lose their two-way character and create a sense of loss. In the latter case, the individual sets out on a long-term course of action that may put off some people but attract others to an insight or cause, to the point where they appreciate if not engage it. A web of reciprocities accommodates the individual’s eccentricities so that the individual’s vocation has endearing ramications in the wider world. The calling to a suicide mission presents one with a grim necessity. The kamikaze pilot must come to terms with what is demanded of him, even amidst the Shinto and technical rituals of his airplane’s take off. The bomber crew setting out for one of seven prescribed missions, knowing that there is only about a 60% return rate for any one mission, appreciate the possibility that the accustomed going through time together with friends and family will be stopped; photographs and keepsakes are taken aboard as tokens for the times together that may well no longer be. Rituals and tokens mark what is absent or about to be absent; they are presences of absence that are symptomatic of impending social ruptures. They are part of “coming to terms” with the situation—i.e., they are concessions to social realities, and hence selfrealities, that need to be acknowledged but not dwelt upon too much. After all, the grim business must proceed. The individual may even allow an immediate authority to take over the function altogether, leaving to the individual only the responsibility of obeying unquestioningly. The calling to a life-time vocation, in contrast, needs to be dwelt upon. An inspiration that is to be “taken to its logical conclusion” presents the prospect of affecting every aspect of one’s social engagement, and hence every aspect of one’s social self. Is it a matter of rejecting the shallow and even numbing “enjoyment” of material gratications? What is involved in that? Does it entail taking up an occupation more marked by purpose than prot? Does it mean living off of others’ generosity?9 Does it mean seeking out materially marginalized people to live and 9 A college classmate of one of the authors comes to mind; he abandoned a career as a college professor in order to found a community of Catholic religious who live the primitive Franciscan lifestyle and beg on the streets of Mexico City, while deliberately living with the poor whom they catechize.

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work with? Must one forego having dependents, and hence a spouse? Would relatives and friends be disappointed? Are there other incipient identities—e.g., those associated with possible professional careers or expensive expressive pursuits—that would have to be abandoned? Such considerations require protracted discernment rather than rituals and tokens. The locus of control remains within the individual, who acts in pursuit of inclusivist and universalist values that have as an object the good of the other. In this sense a vocational identity is a spiritual quest that transcends institutional hierarchies and particularist group boundaries and social identities. Taking a vocational value seriously provides the associated identity with a vector or “mission.”10 A life-time campaigner for peace, such as Dorothy Day, does not simply inhabit the world but seeks to affect all other people. She may avoid excessive income in time of war in order to avoid paying taxes that support the war. She runs the risk of being labeled unpatriotic. She may be something of an embarrassment to a parent who served honorably in the military. She may make those who enjoy being around her reluctant to meet the usual social expectations that one earns as much as possible, “thinks patriotically,” and honors those serving in the military. So there are issues at the point of the vector. She may try to inspire her friends to work at what is intrinsically worth doing rather than at what provides an ample taxable income. Those who know and appreciate her may be reluctant to entertain nationalistic jingoism because of her. The parent must cultivate a more complicated psychological landscape; what one had done in one’s youth cannot be unthinkingly idealized as the highpoint of one’s life, when one’s own child in her youth chooses something inconsistent with what one did oneself. Such things require discernment. One needs to think it over before one sets out on a course that not only transforms oneself but also transforms either others or one’s relationships with those others. One of the features that a vocation adds to identities is a sense that the vocation is a call to a “good.” It is not just any good, but one that takes the form of self-authenticity. One would be doing what one wishes to do in a quest for personal fulllment. This complex of identity and

10 “Out of the call experience has grown a sense of mission or rather we might say that the ‘call’ experience is the culmination of his growing sense of mission. This ‘call’ experience is such a highly emotional one that often the persons future is dominated by it” (Kincheloe 1929: 225).

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vocation generates tensions across many dimensions, but primarily across the inherent tension within the self between an identity that ows from oneself as an embodied individual or person (personal identity) and one that ows onto an individual as a member of a social group or participant in an institution (social identity). Individuals feel, know of, and enact tensions between self-as-individual and self-as-member, between “I” and “we.” Vocation, then, is an expanded kind of identity. It is a call that one attributes to a superior source. A moral demand is made on the self by that superior source, but precisely because that source is “superior” it is not straightforwardly at hand. The only clue to the authenticity of the call is to be found in a sense of the authenticity of the moral demand on the self to which one must respond in order to maintain or enhance one’s self worth. One’s sense of self-esteem becomes tied up with such a call. Using an identity perspective for purposes of analysis leads one to understand vocation as a mode of experiencing identity as simultaneously a social and personal placement informed with socially relevant and powerful motivational narratives. It is a mode of authentic social identity that transforms the individual identity through a participation in a larger social reality. In a word, a vocation locates the individual as a social self in tune with what one believes are the powers moving the world, akin to Peter Berger’s depiction of religion as “sacred cosmization” (1967: 25). The person living out a sense of authentic vocation experiences the individual, social, and species identities as one, with all levels of identity fused into one sense of identity. Such fusion generates the strongest kind of commitment and motivational force that social psychological dynamics can elicit. To be called is to have one’s identity activated, and the called must then respond, and thereby maintain, enhance, or demean the activated identity. A dening aspect of a call is that the identity of the called is put into jeopardy. Even not responding takes on a signicance; not acting may be as meaningful as any course of action. Indeed, some municipalities have “good Samaritan” laws that legally dene someone else’s need as a challenge, a “call,” a demand on oneself to come to the needy person’s aid. One’s identity will be affected in some way by the response or failure to respond.

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andrew j. weigert and anthony j. blasi Receptiveness to Vocation

Being called is an experience and attribute of the self. It is an experience in the sense that it is directed to oneself; it cannot be thought of as a call unless there is one to receive it. One has the understanding that there is an intent of some kind that one be a recipient of the call. The grasp of such an intent and hence the interpretation of the circumstances of one’s life as a call is something that is subject-dependent—i.e. it depends to some extent on one’s own perspective. Just as the blue of a blue sky is not to be found “up” in the sky at all but is dependent on one looking at it, the experience of being called is to a great extent an experience. But the fact that it is subject-dependent does not make it a gment or an arbitrary conclusion; after all a host of other people can also see the blue of a blue sky; it is an objective circumstance. The subjective is aware of itself as subjective when engaging the objective, and the objective is known as an object by a subject. The dialogue of subject and object constitutes both in the human consciousness; each of the two is thereby intertwined with the other. In the case of a vocation, the awareness that one’s self comprises a dimension of objective circumstances is more thematic than in other aspects of the self, since one feels that one is most authentic in living out the vocation, that one is more fully actualized in it than in activities peripheral to it. That is why it can be said that being called is an attribute of the self. Vocation as a self-meaning is a function and shaper of self-forming institutional narratives. One’s self-story is intermingled into the narratives of social movements and group narratives. “Institutional narratives” may include group- or collective-based narratives, even culturally mythic and historically past or futuristically projected or dream-based ones—as long as the narrative is shared. Vocations have a “with” dimension; they involve others in some way. This is to be expected since the sense of self emerges as an aspect of one’s involvement with others, as Mead (1934) argues so persuasively; “I” become aware of myself when doing a, as it were, lm-maker’s “take” on myself from the perspective or vantage point of the other, when I “take the role of the other.” The collective narrative of the group from whose perspective I gain a consciousness of myself is in some sense my story too. I can grow beyond it, transcend it, even criticize and reject it, but it remains a dimension of my self-experience. As with all social meanings, vocation is distributed, validated, imposed, threatened, or denied in the course of social dynamics, group

vocation

29

memberships, and stratied structures of power, property, and prestige, weakness, want, and marginality. Analytically, the moral standing of any vocation derives from its social contextualization: the good or bad evaluation accorded it is an empirical question related to the social context in which one lives it out. To the person receiving the call, the context leads toward expanding beyond the connes of the small collectivity in which one rst becomes aware of oneself. The process of transcending the narrow collectivity and reaching out to embrace a wider one may involve a shifting of reference groups. Referential relationships are thus elements that inhere in the very processes of the vocational vector. They derive from the socio-mental communities that ground what we take to be real, the socio-mental communities that constitute the world in which we believe we live (Zerubavel 1997). The existence of differing socio-mental worlds is not a literary or semantic conceit but the actual material of what we take to be important and actual. We “frame”11 information as occurring within our world or between our world and another one that is in some way thought to be “outside.” The trajectory of a vocation is to expand what is in the “within” world and reduce what is deemed “outside”; it is a reframing process. Various social and personal identities populate positions “within” and “without,” so that such reframing involves a resituating not only of oneself but also of others. It is in this sense that one can pose the question, Who is my neighbor? Social and personal identities are lived out in role performances, and it is these that often elicit responses from one’s immediate others. Living out a vocation may well elicit resistance and even violence on the part of some, as history shows. A call may entail a “call to” a particular social status, such as that of a religious functionary; there would thus be two calls—one broad and one occupationally specic (see Fichter 1961: 3–8). Alternatively, it may involve a call to a mode of interaction within a status that one already occupies—e.g., to commit oneself totally to be the best in one’s occupation or to emphasize a particular theme such as peace or poverty within the role performances that one takes up. All this takes place within the framework of what George H. Mead identied as a foundational triadic 11 “I assume that denitions of a situation are built up in accordance with principles of organization which govern events—at least social ones—and our subjective involvement in them; frame is the word I use to refer to such of these basic elements as I am able to identify” (Goffman 1974: 10–11).

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framework in which meaning emerges for humans—gesture or initiating action, response by the other, and one’s own response to the other’s response. A vocation is a particular response to others’ responses. The power of human symbol-making leads to organizing these experiences into a caller, the called, and the relationship between those two—the vocation. The rst question, then, is the identity of the caller. The individual employs cultural resources to create an ideal source, which one may well personify as a deity or more mundanely as the better part of one’s self. A vocation is always a call from a social reality that is deemed greater than the mere individual self. Classical religious understandings of vocation related the call to service to the Mystical Body of the community of believers by entering a religious status, such as clergy or membership in a religious order, or removing oneself from secular society and living as an anchorite or holy hermit away from the temptations and eshpots of the secular world. Alternatively, a call may be to a course of action in a struggle for an inclusive social good, as in variants of the “activist” life. The call is to participate in social movements working to reconstruct society in a way that better serves its members. Or again, the call may be to a mode of daily life that enriches otherwise mundane activities. Discernment More needs to be said about the discernment process. People try to discern what they are about because they seek to understand what things in general “are about.” In their existence as social beings they come early in life to place value on taking over an objective view of things—i.e., a view from the perspective of the other. Such views are judged to “make sense” in terms of informal but nevertheless objective criteria. One’s self is an element of that which should make sense, and hence people engage in quests for “meaning.” Discerning one’s (and for that matter, others’) vocations is a particularly important case of that kind of quest. It is stimulated by ruptures in the everydayness of the life world, in breaks in routine. A sense of vocation begins when some rupture provokes an analysis of one’s society and one’s own place in that society. As Haughey (2004: 1, 3–4) suggests, a vocation begins with an intellectual conversion to seeing and comprehending the world in its own terms as well as possible.

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The content of the vocation does not consist of willful impulse but of taking in perspectives from the standpoint of the other. Consequently, in an age of philosophical non-foundationalism, perspectivism, and pluralism, the individual needs to begin by deciding whom to believe and trust in questions that concern the state of the world, particularly where one encounters ruptures, where personal, scientic, philosophical, psychological and social afrmations cease to be adequate. An implicit guide or compass in deciding whom to believe and trust is an underlying sense of truth-happiness. Following the insights of Plato and Aristotle, only the just person, the person who knows and embraces justice and then acts justly, is truly happy—i.e., fullled as a person. And to fulll one’s self in this sense, one must follow the call to be as fully human as one’s statuses and resources allow.12 Discernment may refer to others’ narratives as well as one’s own. A comparison of the respective narratives of self and other enters into all social judgments and highlights the plurality of meanings that cluster around any vocation. The goods that serve as intra-narrative justication of the vocation are not necessarily interpreted as good from the perspective of another narrative. One nds criteria for judging the legitimacy of one’s vocational discernment both within one’s own social world with its cultural apparatus and others’ social worlds with their cultural apparatus. This natural expansion of the universe from which criteria are sought itself promotes the individual’s vector toward more inclusive frameworks for the living out of one’s vocation. The adjudication of opposing interpretations leads to an examination of the internal claims of each narrative, compares them to the opposing claims of the competing narratives, and develops emergent criteria that can be reasonably applied to both. A key aspect of a call, in addition to the content of its challenge, is who else knows of the call.13 The degree of social announcement

12

“Plato articulated a myth at the end of . . . The Republic. The myth of ER is not as famous as Plato’s cave allegory, but in many ways it is more important. . . . In this myth Plato envisaged or intuited that each human being before being born is endowed with a daimon, a quintessential self, so to speak, that contains the image or pattern we are to lie out and function from in our days on earth” (Weiss et al. 2004: 191). 13 The prophet “has such a keen sense of his mission that nothing can swerve him from his goal. He may become disappointed and disheartened but usually says nothing to men about it. He may spend much time in prayer and brooding from which he comes with reassurance. When he emerges from these periods it is usually with a message” (Kincheloe 1929: 19).

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denes a range of calls from the personal awareness of someone who believes one has received a call, for example, from a transcendent source such as a deity or sense of absolute duty or subjectively sensed challenge that may even be a call or challenge by oneself to oneself. Rachel Carson’s vocation illustrates the latter kind of challenge; upon reading a letter telling of widespread bird deaths following a spraying of DDT in Connecticut, she realized that she must write the book about pesticides herself (Carson 1994: xiii). The very act of publishing on the subject broadened the conversation about her vocation as well as about pesticides. Recognizing a call, which involves what Haughey (2004) termed, as mentioned above, an intellectual conversion, is only the beginning of a vocation. It leads to a “moral conversion” of the self to live meaningfully, especially in meaningful communities. That in turn leads to an “affective conversion” to a process of seeking ever more goodness, to live a life affectively reveling in others. These latter two conversions also involve discernment; one needs to detect and recognize meaningfulness and affective fulllment. Change within Vocation Human consciousness, including the consciousness of vocation, occurs in the lived present (Mead 1932). Consequently as one lives through a stretch of time the past does not remain the same, nor does the anticipated future. For that matter, what had been experienced as “present” at some time in the past is no longer in the present. The content of a vocation—both the call perceived and the particular character, endowments, and position of the self receiving that call—change as the individual’s temporally-dened horizons change. The particulars of one’s course of daily life will thus change as one engages in discernment at different temporal points in one’s life. The experience is analogous to revisiting an aesthetic experience from the distant past. Maybe one comes across an old once favorite recording of a once favorite piece of music, but from a more developed aesthetic sensitivity one may nd it certainly good but not so sweepingly alluring any more. Or one may re-read a book that had changed one’s consciousness and life, and nd it not as powerful as it once was. This is not limited to the aesthetic; the book need not be a work of literature but of history or science. It can also occur that one renews an acquaintance with someone who

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was once a close friend and nds that, while still someone worthy of being a friend, is not the person one greatly enjoys being with any more. By analogy, the examined life, marked by discernment, will know of change in vocation. It is not necessarily a change from one vocation to another, though that can happen. More likely, it is a change in the modalities of a vocation. What does remain constant throughout the course of life is the “I”; what happened to one in the past happened to the person to whom things happen today. There is a continuity linking memories, present consciousness, and future possibilities together. “I” make promises, commitments, contracts. These bind me though the environing world while my relation to it changes. It is not surprising, then, that attempts at institutionalizing vocations involve promises, commitments, and contracts. One’s calling may be a teacher, and a school district tenders a contract for teaching under stipulated conditions. One’s calling may be religious, and a church requires vows, the details of which are contained in the rule of an order as implemented through by-laws (chapter legislation). Consequently vocations are typically characterized by tensions among various dimensions of temporality as the individual discovers fresh insights in discernment and yet lives within a more or less crystallized institutional world. References Absalom, Francis. 1971. “The Anglo-Catholic Priest: Aspects of Role Conict.” A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 4: 46–61. American Association of University Professors. 1995. Policy Documentations & Reports. Washington, DC: American Association of University Professors [the “Red Book”]. Berger, Peter L. 1967. The Sacred Canopy. Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Betteridge, Harold T., ed. 1965. The New Cassell’s German Dictionary. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. Blasi, Anthony J. 1972. “Symbolic Interactionism as Theory.” Sociology and Social Research 56: 453–65. Blizaard, Samuel W. 1956. “Role Conicts of the Urban Minister.” City Church 7(4): 13–15. Carlton, Eric. 1968. “ ‘The Call’: The Concept of Vocation in the Free Church Ministry.” A Sociological Yearbook of Religion in Britain 1: 106–14. Carson, Rachel. 1994 [1962]. Silent Spring. New York: Houghton Mifin. Fichter, Joseph H. 1961. Religion as an Occupation. A Study in the Sociology of Professions. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. ———. 1974. Organization Man in the Church. Cambridge, MA: Schenckman.

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Goffman, Erving. 1974. Frame Analysis. An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Haughey, John C. 2004. “The Three Conversions Embedded in Personal Calling.” Pp. 1–23 in Revisiting the Idea of Vocation: Theological Explorations, edited by John C. Haughey. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Kincheloe, Samuel Clarence. 1929. The Prophet: A Study in the Sociology of Leadership. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago. Linton, Ralph. 1936. The Study of Man. An Introduction. New York: Appleton-Century. Mannheim, Karl. 1936. Ideology and Utopia. An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. Mead, George Herbert. 1932. The Philosophy of the Present. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1934. Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 2001. Essays in Social Psychology. New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction. Mills, C. Wright. 1956. White Collar: The American Middle Class. New York: Oxford University Press. Ortega y Gasset, José. 1963. Man and People. New York: Norton. Placher, William C., ed. 2005. Callings: Twenty Centuries of Christian Wisdom on Vocation. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans. Reynolds, Larry T. and Nancy J. Herman-Kinney, eds. 2003. Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1956. Being and Nothingness. New York: Washington Square. Schoenherr, Richard A. 2002. Goodbye Father: The Celibate Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic Church. New York: Oxford University Press. Scholze-Stubenrecht, Werner, et al. 2001. Oxford-Duden German Dictionary, 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Taylor, Charles. 1992. The Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Trevelyan, George Macaulay. 1907. Garibaldi’s Defense of the Roman Republic 1848–9. London: Longman’s, Green. Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1978. Economy and Society. An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press. ———. 1998 [1904–05]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, 2nd ed. Los Angeles: Roxbury. Weigert, Andrew J. 1983. Life and Society: A Meditation on the Social Thought of Jose Ortega y Gasset. New York: Irvington Publishers. Weigert, Andrew J., J. Smith Teitge, and Dennis W. Teitge. 1986. Society and Identity: Toward a Sociological Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weiss, Joseph W., Michael F. Skelley, John C. Haughey, and Douglas Hall. 2004. Spiritual Intelligence at Work: Meaning, Metaphor, and Morals. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Zerubavel, Eviatar. 1997. Social Mindscapes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER TWO

ITALIAN YOUTH AND IDEAS OF VOCATION Franco Garelli What evokes in today’s young people the idea of “vocation”? How do they react to it and how do they interpret it? Is it a concept far away from their life, recalling ancient meanings hardly compatible with the emerging culture, or rather is it a term that can be used in new forms close to that “culture of the self ” that characterizes the present time? Is the idea that each individual has a vocation to accomplish widespread, or does a limited conception of vocation prevail, applying only to particular choices and life routes? Finally, what has happened to the religious vocation? How do the young evaluate this type of choice in relation to the many opportunities for self-realization that are available today? Which types of religious vocation do they appreciate most? Does the idea of a consecrated life appeal to today’s young people, and if so, with what conditions and in what circumstances? Around questions such as these—generally not considered in the many projects carried out about the younger generation—a survey has been recently planned and carried out on a representative sample of young Italian people between 16 and 29, chosen in order to mirror the distribution of the national population of that age according to the main sociodemographic, environmental and cultural variables.1 As for the theme and the associated questions, it is an utterly innovative research in the panorama of inquiries oriented toward monitoring the knowledge of the world of the young. In this case, the focus is to

1 The survey, translated as The Young and Vocation, has been carried out on a sample of 1,017 cases, by means of telephone interviews under the direction of Eurisko, the public opinion institute of Milan, on the basis of a closed-answer questionnaire expressly prepared for this research initiative. The inquiry has been developed in the rst months of 2006, and the main results and the information on the methodology employed are included in Garelli 2006a: 170. All phases of the research (planning, data processing and analysis, nal editing) are the product of team work in which the following scholars and researchers from the Department of Social Sciences of Torino University—coordinated by Franco Garelli—took part: Raffaella Ferrero Camoletto, Roberta Ricucci, Luigi Berzano, Stefania Palmisano, and Roberto Scalon.

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pick up the cultural traits emerging in the new generations, making use for this purpose of a new entry point that has not yet been investigated, that is just the way in which the young put themselves in relation to the idea of vocation. Even if it can lend itself to new and more accommodating interpretations, this idea maintains in itself a high ethic and normative appeal for the individuals, exploring the mental disposition that induces humans to making certain choices in the range of possible life styles. The idea of vocation is then closely connected with people’s aptitude to live their lives with some discernment, acknowledging the importance of a project, keeping their commitments or the missions they undertake over time; all these aspects seem to be particularly lacking in the new generations, who appear to be more oriented toward living intensely the opportunities of realization that are offered to them in everyday life rather than harmonizing their experiences around a distant project. In many respects the young experience a precarious way of living that prevents them from aiming at great goals, while it urges them to seek more immediate gratications. Do praxis and experience prevail far more than ideals and projects? Comparing the outcomes of the present survey with those predominating in the research concerning the young, many similarities emerge, but also not a few novelties. “To be Called” and “to Choose”: Two Dimensions of ‘Vocation’ A rst novelty tells us that the new generations do not appear to be refractory toward the vocation idea, meaning by it a project or a stronghold for anchoring one’s existence. When they think of vocation many young people most of all (52.9%) refer to an inclination, a natural quality, that characterizes a person and facilitates his or her success in a given profession or art or in the study of a particular discipline. But beside this, to these young people the idea of vocation at the same time recalls other meanings among non-mutually exclusive options, such as the commitment to an ideal or to a cause (51%), or to a project to realize (41%), or as “the call to the religious life” (41.9%). Among the young the majority (52%) believe that each individual has a vocation, while minorities believe that the term is applicable only to particular life choices in the professional or religious or social engagement eld (22%) or deny that people’s lives can be interpreted as a vocation, preferring to consider them as the summation of individual choices (26%).

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italian youth and ideas of vocation Table 2.1. What does the term “vocation” mostly recall to your mind? (two ranked responses; 1,017 cases – % values)

An inclination or a personal talent A project to realize The commitment to an ideal, to a cause A call to the religious life Not mentioned

First choice

Second choice

Total (sum)

31.8 16.8 24.5

21.1 24.2 26.5

52.9 41.0 51.0

26.9 — 100.0

15.0 13.2 100.0

41.9

Figure 2.1. Comparing different ideas of vocation (1,017 cases – % values). Only he who makes particularly demanding choice has a vocation 22%

Only individual life choices exist 27%

Each individual has his/her own vocation 51%

Furthermore, analysing a range of professional and life choices, most young people acknowledge they involve different levels of vocation. Thus, a higher level of vocational intensity is ascribed to those entering upon priesthood (this position is stated by 92% of the sample) and a lesser level to those choosing the professions of social workers (81%) or of writers (81%); while a mean level of “call” seems to be involved for an entrepreneur (50%), up to the point that the great majority of

38

franco garelli Figure 2.2. A vocation is needed in order to be . . . (1,017 cases – % values).

… a priest

92

… a welfare worker

81

… a writer

81

… an entrepreneur

50

… an employee

26

0

20

40

60

80

100

the young (74%) believe that it is not necessary to use the grand term “vocation” to account for the choice (or the necessity) to hold a whitecollar position in the society. In their understandings of different professions the young seem to point out the main criterion underlying the idea of vocation: to be called to undertake a certain life course (instead of being there by chance) and the possibility to choose a certain itinerary (that in the reported examples concerns the professional eld) for social and self-expressive aims compared to adopting an instrumental attitude (such as a routine job may be, in which one does not commit anything of one’s “self ” as such in the job). To be called and to choose: the two dimensions meet in the conviction that vocation responds to the deepest nature of the individual, to what allows one to be oneself to the greatest extent and to be able to offer a social contribution of some relevance. A Persisting “High” and Demanding Idea of Vocation More generally, then, we observe that the concept of vocation evokes in many young people positive feelings and evaluations. Contrary to what is commonly believed, the term vocation evokes in most young people more of the idea of realization than that of imposition (respectively 79% against 8%, with a 13% placed in an intermediate position). It evokes more the image of satisfaction than that of renunciation (71% against 13%), and this happens notwithstanding the fact that to many

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39

young people this idea is linked more to a denitive rather than to a temporary choice (58% vs. 21%) and more to a sacral than to a profane dimension (58% vs. 17%). That is to say that—at least in abstract and ideal terms—the young acknowledge the realizing and satisfying value that may be implied in vocations characterized by great commitment and strong orientation, things that may well seem to be difcult to realize in ordinary life. Most young people thus have no doubts in associating the term vocation rst of all with the ideas of satisfaction and realization, and secondly in associating it with the traits of the sacred and of denitive commitment. The former orientation is conrmed by the great prominence the new generations give to the values of authenticity, of free self-expression, and of the search for self-realization in their own biographies: these are all aspects making up that culture of self-realization that turns out to be typical of the post-materialistic society, within which, as Beck says (2000), each individual is pushed toward giving form and full meaning to his or her own life course. In addition, the call to the dimension of the sacred seems to point out that even for the new generations the idea of vocation is associated with a “religious call”—interpreted, however, not as a choice of the religious life associated with traditional institutions (mostly characterized by renunciation and imposition), but as a personal option that makes it possible to aim at a satisfactory self-realization. We may ask ourselves as well if the young do not extend the idea of the sacred to the search for an authentic existence that does not express itself only through a religious vocation; if this is true, we would face a kind of “sacralization” of our life choices, in as much as it is the expression of a request for meaning and fullment, of a humanly rich and stimulating life. Finally, there is a prevailing tendency among the young to attach to the term vocation more the character of a denitive choice than that of a temporary one. Although precariousness is a typical component of the present condition of our lives, many young people do not abandon the high idea of vocation, whose denitive options and lasting commitment are constitutive elements. A Minimal or “Working” Idea of Vocation These hints are sufcient to understand how the meaning horizon of the new generations is not closed to great perspectives with respect to

40

franco garelli Table 2.2. What are your reactions to the term “vocation”? What do you mostly associate it with? (1,017 cases – % values) 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Far

10 Close

34

28

38

34

27

39

17

25

58

13

16

71

8

13

79

21

20

58

Ancient

Modern

Profane

Sacred

Renunciation

Satisfaction

Imposition

Realization

Temporary

Denitive

commitment and realization, even if the possibility of implementing them in everyday life seem to be scarce and difcult. This is because, as is well known and as emerges from other research data (see Table 2.3), the young express themselves with a culture that assigns great importance to experimentation, which does not favor demanding options, being refractory to making denitive choices. The great majority of the young on the one hand acknowledge that it is important to have objectives and aims in life (85.3%), but on the other hand they believe that it is better to keep many possibilities and many roads open (75.6%). Moreover, many young people acknowledge that “success” in the different elds of existence depends on serious and constant commitment (64.8%), but at the same time they are convinced that even the most important choices are never “forever” but can be revised at any moment (57%). The young generations widely share the awareness that great projects are often mirages or utopias, since they do not have adequate resources and favorable conditions to be able to realize them. The society of uncertainty (Bauman 1999) clips the wings before any ights to great goals. It faces a culture that emphasizes experimentation to the utmost and that tends toward delaying one’s life choices over time. All these aspects are hardly compatible with demanding and constraining vocations.

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italian youth and ideas of vocation

Table 2.3. To which of the two statements do you feel closer? Confronting surveys. ( % values)2 Survey “Young and Vocation” 2006 (16–29)

Survey Iard 2002 (15–29)

Full of opportunities and surprises

67.6

66.1

Full of risks and unknown factors

32.4

33.9

It is important to have objects and goals

85.3

83.5

It is useless to make many plans because always something happens that prevents you from realizing them

14.7

16.5

Success depends on hard work and fortune counts little

64.8

67.7

It is not wise to plan one’s future because much depends on fortune

35.2

32.3

It is difcult to succeed if we don’t make precise choices as soon as possible

24.4

21.4

It is always better to keep many ways open

75.6

78.6

The most important choices are never made “forever,” they may be always corrected

57.0

62.7

The moment always comes when decisive choices cannot be “avoided”

43.0

37.3

1,017

2,297

When I think of my future I see it . . .

In life . . .

Valid cases

2 In this table are to found the opinions of the young about their future and their life plans, such as they emerge both in the research analysed in the present work and in a national survey about the young developed in 2002 by the Iard Institute (Buzzi et al. 2002). In both cases the same set of question has been used.

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Hence there is the tendency on part of many young people to cultivate a minimal idea of “vocation,” capable of providing meaning to the little choices of everyday life, from relations with friends to affective dynamics, from widening one’s expressive possibilities to recreation, from cultivating one’s human potential to researching distinctive lifestyles. In brief, a working idea of vocation is popular among the young, as an inventory of meanings aimed at ennobling the ordinary choices of their lives; but in addition to this orientation, a clear inclination can be perceived toward acknowledging the importance of the most demanding vocations, like a sort of longing for great horizons that occurs even in those who are obliged to live in the (involving but limiting) immense sea of daily life. At this point, one question arises: For the young, does vocation concern more the dimension of meaning or that of project? In other words, does acknowledging a vocational valence to the different existential choices (in the scholastic, professional, affective, relational elds, etc.) mean that the young interpret these different options in a project-like logic—that is, planning and building up their lives, or rather does it highlight their aspiration toward the global meaning of their biographies that, however, do not necessarily imply adopting a clearcut life project? Differences Among Young People What has emerged so far reects the expectations of the majority of the young interviewed on the theme of vocation, mirroring the prevailing cultural models among the new generations. Not all the young, however, express the same orientations about the matter since the situations they actually live in may condition their own way of considering vocation. The young who are most gifted with cultural and social resources are those who most support the idea that each one has one’s own vocation, that each individual has a life that allows one to express oneself. It is this group of people who most interpret vocation as a project to accomplish or as a commitment to a cause or to an ideal. It is the same subject group who most acknowledge an idea of vocation as satisfaction, as it suits those who perceive that they are facing not only more opportunities but also better conditions to make them their own and carry them out.

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By contrast, the young who belong to lower social classes and with a not very high educational level tend—more than the others—to think that life is mostly the result of individual choices, without a logic transcending the decisional power of the individual. They have more difculty looking at vocation in ideal terms or as a project to realize. They express an idea of vocation that is more conditioned, halfway between satisfaction and renunciation, between realization and imposition. It is easily predictable, then, a greater cultural endowment favors a more optimistic and more project-like vision of vocation, and this is the reason why life chances seem to prevail over the idea of sacrice, of renunciation, of “obligatory routes,” or of links that certain life conditions may impose on the individuals. Another discriminating factor is the religious orientation, insofar as the young whose faith is more active and strong are those who most interpret life as a vocation and who most believe that each individual has one, whereas among those “with no religion” the idea is more widespread that life is the summation of individual decisions, not necessarily connected to one another. A strongly project-like conception of existence is particularly voiced by young people participating in religious associations (and in those who are active at this level in voluntary social services), whose solid formative commitment appears then to be sustained by an ideal reference or by a project to realize, capable of ascribing meaning to existence. The young who attach more value to religious faith are also those who mostly associate the term vocation with the sphere of the sacred. This orientation appears to be even more widespread among young women than among their male contemporaries, among the young living in the South of Italy compared to those living in the Center or in the North, and among those living in small towns compared to those living in middling size or large towns. On the basis of this information we can then assert that ascribing sacrality to the concept of vocation is part of a more traditional vision of life, linked to contexts or to people who are less exposed to the modernization process, whose religious culture appears to be still very deeply rooted.

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franco garelli The Lack of Reference Figures Helping to Carry Out Life Choices

In this survey we also paid attention to the travelling companions of the young, as it were, in order to check the possible presence of relevant people at their side, capable of accompanying them in their process toward maturity and of representing a reference point as far as their life choices are concerned. Most young people have difculty in identifying gures around themselves who can evoke in them a high interpretation of vocation, whose lifestyles testify to a mission or a plan to accomplish. As a matter of fact a little less than 40% of the subjects state they have never met anybody whose life might be considered as an example of vocation, while 32% say they have met few of them; these are in contrast to 28% of the cases of people who, in this respect, boast of greater abundance of reference people. In addition, not few individuals (37%) state they have never been helped by anybody to understand their own aspirations or follow them better, even if most of them acknowledge the positive role developed at this level by their families (41%) or by their closest friends (14%). The picture that emerges concerning the reference gures of the new generations is not particularly reassuring. The gures who provide most support at this level are those belonging to the circle of friends and parents, who however often privilege relations more oriented toward support and reassurance than to stimulation and dialectical confrontation. Nevertheless, there are not a few among the young who cannot nd even in the ambit of closest socialization (inside the families and with friends) that basic support that may help them to orientate themselves better in the real world. More generally, the lack of reference points is very evident in the wider society because of the difculty on part of Table 2.4. Is there anybody who, in the course of your life, has helped you understand what were your aspirations encouraging you to follow them? (more answers are possible; 1,017 cases – % values) Parents Friends Relatives Teachers One’s partner Other people (religious people, psychologists, etc.)

41 14 7 7 6 3

Nobody

37

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the young to identify signicant “vocational” gures in the ordinary places where they spend their lives (at school, in work places, in association initiatives, etc.). A human and social picture emerges which is not particularly stimulating and engaging for young people who, only confronted with vocations for “success,” can hardly nd reasons for enriching their experiences and their life horizons. Among those who say they have received greater stimuli at this level there are in particular the young who take part in groups and associations in which formative activities are developed and/or offer social and humanitarian commitment (such as religious groups, charitable groups, or political groups). These seem to be the associative initiatives that can most expose the young to models of vocation successfully realized. The most “committed” forms of association, both because they are dedicated to the human and religious training of their members and because they are involved in services addressed to the weakest subjects or to society as a whole, prove themselves to be a mine of examples of vocation; they are then an ambience that can direct the young toward a conception of life devoted to personal realization not disjointed from social commitment. The Young and Religious Vocation Another unexpected outcome of the present research is the number of young people who declare that they have thought, in the course of their short lives, of embracing religious life, in one of the forms in which it is accomplished in the Italian society, where Catholicism, as everybody knows, is still the religion of the great majority of the population. Catholic feelings remain largely popular in the country, even in the postmodern era in which traditional faith is challenged by individualism in belief and in which religious pluralism is constantly growing.3 The idea of becoming a priest or a member of an order or of a religious congregation (of active or contemplative life) has involved around 11% of the young people interviewed, a very wide population share, that does not seem to conrm the position utterly prevailing in “public opinion” (both social and ecclesiastical) that the new generations are

3 On these themes see the monographic issue “The Church and Catholicism in Contemporary Italy” of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies (2007); in particular, Garelli 2007a, 2007b. See also Garelli 2006b and Garelli et al. 2003.

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franco garelli Figure 2.3. In your life, have you ever thought you had a religious vocation? (1,017 cases – % values) yes (10,7%)

no (89,3%)

indifferent to a call to religious life or that a cultural crisis is occurring with regard to this prospect. Or better, the crisis seems to be connected more to the response to this call than to its birth. Analysing the individuals included in the age range considered in the present survey taken as a whole, the data that have emerged suggest that about one million Italian young people whose age ranges between 16 and 29 have manifested during their lives at least a eeting idea of becoming priests or entering a religious order, whether male or female. If we take into account that today in Italy the young who are training for priesthood or for religious life are a few thousand, a great gap existing in this eld appears evident between the diffusion of an initial aspiration and the possibility of cultivating this choice or orientation in the course of time. For many of them it seems that this has been a passing intention, as something nurtured during childhood or in the pre-adolescent age, mostly reecting their narrow life surroundings when intentions have not yet been weighed up through a variety of experiences. Thus, many of these young people (about 40%) assert they had this idea in the catechism years or while associating with ecclesiastical groups, or that they had cherished this choice for less than a year (63%). But beside these cases there are others who have delayed acting on this intention. Almost 20% of the young who had been interested in this prospect reected on it more than ve years. Projecting these data to the whole of the Italian young population, we derive a sign of great relevance: to about 200,000 young people the option of a consecrated life seems

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to have been not just a eeting dream, a toccata and fugue with weak consequences on their own horizons of sense. The idea of religious vocation thus appears to be still quite widespread in the contemporary world of the young, even if then it is difcult to maintain it in time and to actualize it, because of the demanding and selective character of this type of choice. The surroundings and the religious gures still somehow fascinate a not insignicant share of youngsters and adolescents, while they have much more difculty in accompanying them through their process of growth and maturation. Who are the young who have considered, even if for a short time and without being able to carry it out, the idea of embracing religious life and priesthood? Contrary to many expectations, this call does not seem to have great appeal to girls (in the case of religious life) compared to boys, neither to subjects of lower social and education level as compared to those living in more favorable life conditions. The variables that appear to be more inuential on this respect instead are the geographic areas of residence and most of all—as is to be expected—the rm belief and the religious education of the subjects. The percentage of young people who in some period of their lives have conceived the idea of consecrating their existence to God is almost double among those who regularly attend religious rites compared to those who presently declare they do not belong to any religion or that they are not churchgoers. In the same way, the young who associate with religious groups and organizations are much more likely to feel the call compared to those who do not take part in them, and the same happens with the young who have constant relations with religious gures compared to the young of their age who have no familiarity with or proximity to consecrated people. Intensive religious socialization is then an important factor to enhance the presence in the young og the idea of dedicating their lives to God and to their fellow human beings through the modalities mostly in use in a country still strongly marked by Catholic culture. The Vocation of the Others A certain interest of the young for the condition of consecrated life is traceable even in the answers they give to the question of how the interviewees would react if a friend or a near relation chose to become a priest or a religious man/woman. Fully 95% of the subjects assert that they would accept this decision, but while 63% declare they are

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happy for the choice, 32% say they conne themselves to accepting it out of respect, although they do not approve of it. This is an answer that at rst sight would seem to point out the diffuse consent attributed by today’s young people to religious vocations, considered as objects of general acceptance and positive evaluation. Nevertheless, as we go deeper into the matter, it seems plausible to propose a different interpretation of this orientation, that it is due more to the atmosphere of consideration and respect that today surrounds everybody’s life choices than to sharing this specic vocational choice. Previously we have already observed how widespread among the young the idea is that each individual has a vocation “of one’s own,” a basic project to which to anchor one’s existence. In line with this conviction, many young people may evaluate positively a possible religious choice made by other people of their age not so much for the specic journey they have started but for the general acceptance and respect due to the decisions belonging to individual lives. In other words, respect for the options of individual people prevails over any other consideration about the validity or non-validity of the particular choices made by each person. It is an attitude that is conrmed by other data in the research. The greatest part of the young who react positively (claiming their happiness) for the possible choice of a friend of embracing consecrated life are subjects who do not assign a particular primacy to religious vocation, equalizing it to the commitment that may be undertaken by secular believers living in the world. The happiness reaction thus does not seem to show the acknowledgment of the superiority of this choice compared to other choices, but only “friendly” participation in a free life option that the friend has made or is going to make. In brief, a general acceptance of religious and consecrated life is widely shared by the young and is considered as one of the highest manifestations of vocation. However, this evaluation is to be seen in relation to a certain cultural sensitivity that adds value to all individual choices as manifestations of the right to self-assertion. Besides, we witness a growing equalization of the religious vocation to forms of secular vocation, as they can be interpreted by people living in the world. Among the young who show a more marked religious orientation, the possibility that someone in their circle of friends opts for a consecrated life is considered positively, but at the same time the conviction is widespread that an existential prole of high commitment is equally possible for a layman as it is for a vowed religious.

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Figure 2.4. If your best friend chose the priestly or religious life, how would you react? (1,017 cases – % values) I wouldn’t approve of it and I wouldn’t accept it 5% Although I wouldn’t approve of it I would accept it 32%

I would be happy for his choice 63%

In some way, then, the young testify to a silent cultural change in favor of the democratization of life choices: what marks an existence devoted to a call, to a cause, or to developing one’s talent is not the goal to which it is addressed (sacred or profane), but rather the intensity and the quality of the commitment it requires, its nature of radical and demanding choice. A priest and a social worker, a missionary nun and a doctor, live lives of equal value in terms of vocational level. Vocational Preferences as a Thermometer of our Times What kind of vocation attracts the young who have felt the call to religious life? A little less than half of them (40%) were oriented to an active consecrated life, joining one of the many orders or congregations, for men or for women, committed to giving witness of a particular charisma in the society (as Jesuits, Franciscans, Salesians, Dominicans, Benedictines etc.); while little less than 30% meant to become diocesan priests. Besides these people, 11.9% cultivated the idea of entering a monastery, showing an inclination for a consecrated contemplative life. In line with the results of previous research, even this survey seems to conrm the greater interest of the young for religious vocations to be realized in the world, to be spent in “normal” social relations, while particular consecrated conditions (concerning lives that are “separate from the world”) draw the attention of a narrower public. Obviously gender inuences the vocational choice, most of all because women are

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not allowed access to the priesthood in force in the Catholic Church. Among the males interested in an idea of vocation, the majority are attracted by a sacerdotal commitment in the dioceses and in the parishes, while the remaining ones are divided into those who wish to become members of a religious institute of active life and those who would like to enter a monastery. Among the girls, few—proportionate to the males of their age—are those who feel the call of the monastery; therefore a large majority are oriented toward making the proposal of life commitment coming from the women’s orders and religious congregations their own. Strangely enough, we see that a small share of young women (less than 10%) state that in the course of their lives they have thought of entering the priesthood, giving us a glimpse at that condition having a certain fascination for the new generations of women. Finally, we also see that a minority of the young people who have cultivated the idea of a vocation have been pushed toward it by their wish to be ministers of denominations and religious traditions different from the Catholic tradition. The presence of these subjects is then a sign of how the religious eld is differentiating in Italy (notwithstanding the prevalence of Catholic belonging) and a sign of the call in vocational terms that even the religious minorities are capable of making in a country in which Catholicism still represents the diffuse culture. Among the trends here exposed, one nding deserves deeper investigation. It is the weak appeal made by contemplative life, which emerges as a result with the active religious life having a greater attraction for the young who have thought at some time that they had a religious vocation. This different evaluation, however, is not typical of a specialized young public (that is to say sensitive to the idea of religious vocation), but it appears to be widely spread among the young as a whole and appears to be an emerging cultural trait. When asked a question about the condition of religious men and women living in cloisters, most young people seem not to be able to understand the reasons for a choice of the contemplative life. In particular, 49% believe it is better for religious people to live among ordinary people, while 14% believe that by now it is an obsolete or a meaningless form of life. On the other hand, the idea that “contemplative religious life is the highest religious evidence” is expressed by no more than 12.6% of the young, while another 25% consider it a form of the religious phenomenon in the same way as any other. The meaning of contemplative religious vocations is thus fading in the contemporary era, facing a culture that is disconnecting from life options that separate the subjects from the world and that is for the

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most part prone to value the religious people who commit themselves in society, especially in favor of the most marginalized groups. Understanding the contemplative life is a difculty that not only involves the young who are far away from the religious circles or whose religious socialization has been interrupted in the course of time. Even those who appear to be active and convinced from the religious point of view and who express their orientation through participating in the parish life and in the ecclesiastical associations, in their constant presence at the religious rites, in deepening questions of faith, etc.—the most religiously committed young people—have difculty in acknowledging the particular charisma of contemplative religious vocations, while they ascribe great importance to consecrated persons who spend their lives in broader social elds. Comparing Religious Vocations An echo of this cultural orientation emerges from the analysis of the choices of sacerdotal and religious life mostly appreciated by the young, which allows us to highlight better the reference points of the new generations. There are many ways of interpreting the sacerdotal ofce or the consecrated religious life, reecting the plurality of the charismas and the vocations that are recorded in the religious eld (Catholic and non-Catholic). The majority of the priests and of the consecrated religious people appear to be engaged in ordinary pastoral activities in the dioceses and in the parishes, but others are active in particular sectors (educating the young, assisting the sick in hospitals, supporting the most marginalized, teaching, communicating faith, etc.), or they set out for a mission in a Third World country, both for humanitarian reasons and to evangelize. Which of these different commitments and religious vocations are most considered and esteemed by the young? Contrary to some expectations, the religious gures the young hold in the highest esteem, for whom they feel the greatest admiration and sympathy, are those who operate in missions in the Third World, which is a condition that implies, for those who have chosen it, a downright detachment from their environment and from their own cultures of origin and a marked disposition to adapting to new contexts and new experiences. Indeed 73% of the young say that this is the choice of religious life that they appreciate most.

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franco garelli Figure 2.5. Which types of religious vocation do you like most? (1,017 cases – % values) who joins a mission in a poor country who commits oneself in favour of the young on the fringe of society who takes care of the sick

who commits oneself in parishes and in quarters who is engaged in teaching who commits oneself in communicating faith who lives in a monastery

0

10

20

30

favourable

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

contrary

Very high consideration, but a little less than the previous one, is attributed to sacerdotal and religious gures who spend their lives in the elds of charity and solidarity with the needy. About 60% of the young have a preference for the priests and the nuns who take care of the young in difculty or on the fringe of society (minors without a family and with problematic lives, young people exposed to various forms of addiction, subjects with no xed abode, immigrants with integration problems, etc.). In this case the appeal comes from people opting for a voluntary “marginalization” that is realized through struggles for legality and social justice and in the deeds aimed at coping with both the old and the new forms of poverty and hardship. In this perspective also the percentage of the young (57%) holding in great esteem the priests and the religious people who take care of the sick in hospitals and in nursing homes appears to be high, because they try to support people grappling with particular health problems. In general then it appears that the religious gures who are most valued by the young are those committed in particular social missions, requiring strong involvement and great motivation and that are not directly oriented toward conveying faith. The religious vocations that strike the young most favorably, as well as other people on the whole, are not those dedicated to the ordinary tasks of church life, but rather those offering a particular humanitarian and Christian witness in our society. Keeping this general background in mind, we see nevertheless that there are not a few subjects (49.8%) who acknowledge the

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importance of the commitment of the priests and of the religious people in the ordinary life of the parishes and of the neighborhoods of the towns, especially when they take care of the entertainment and the education of the young. Not few young people, then, hold in due consideration the educative action developed by the religious milieu and by religious gures in the contemporary society, even though it is already characterized by a great variety of formative opportunities and occasions for socialization. Minor importance, instead, is given to the religious gures who are dedicated to particular professions, such as teaching (30%) or who commit themselves in communicating faith or to their presence in the publishing eld or in newer media (21%). In line with the aforementioned scarce appeal of vocations to contemplative life, only 10% of the young have identied in the consecrated people who live in monasteries the type of religious vocation in which they recognize themselves the most. A More Profane than Religious Idea of Vocation? A last fundamental reection: We have seen that the young consider the demanding vocations valuable, but at the same time they are in search of “minimal” or “working” ideas to anchor their own experience of life. Advanced modernity seems to favor an idea of vocation or of call that is still around the corner, that reects the emerging cultural traits, that is to say the imperative of building up one’s biography, of avoiding barring one’s own chances and experiences, of moving in open spaces that are exible and not predetermined. In this picture, the young seem to recognize themselves in a “secularized” conception of vocation, not characterized by great calls and tensions, closer to the conditions of ordinary life, more compatible and consistent with one’s own personal aspirations and with one’s own meanings autonomously ascribed. In particular, what emerges is the distance of the majority of young people from a “religious” conception of vocation, meaning by that the acknowledgment that one’s project of life forms part of a wider design witnessed by the religious faith. Vocation to many young people rst of all means the need of asking oneself who one is and what one wants from life, what one is inclined to do or what one feels to be called to do. But the fading away of a “religious” horizon underneath the idea of vocation seems to deprive most young people of that basic trust that religious faith offers: the idea that

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one is not alone in building one’s life project, that one’s choices have a meaning that, even if it may escape us at the moment, is present in the background and refers to a global design. The most traditional idea of vocation was reassuring in many respects, because, as is the case of the pilgrim (Hervieu-Léger 1999), it tted existence inside a global horizon of meaning, characterizing it as a journey divided into stages but turned toward a certain and recognizable goal. In the present work, instead, it seems that a vision of vocation is prevailing mostly recalling the attitude of the researchers of meaning quoted by Bauman (1999): vocation is taking on a shape of continuous re-construction and re-negotiation of one’s biographical route, without the possibility of anchoring oneself to a universal meaning that is ultimate and transcendent. This is how the young now nd themselves grappling with the labor of having not only to shape the courses of their lives, but also to give global meaning to their actions. Perhaps one of the most innovative aspects of the whole research derives from the fact that inside the idea of vocation prevailing among the young of today two orientations coexist: on the one hand toward self-determination and self-building and on the other hand toward the reversibility of one’s choices. The conception of vocation of the young seems to express more a serial logic than a cumulative logic: if one doesn’t anchor oneself to a global horizon of meaning, such as that offered by the religious “sacred canopy,” then life becomes a question of choices producing an existential itinerary modiable each time. To be called to something does not mean to provide a univocal answer, once for all: the answers may be many, variable and revisable, according to the contexts and the opportunities that life offers to us. References Bauman, Zygmunt. 1999. La società dell’incertezza [The Society of Uncertainty]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Beck, Ulrich. 2000. I rischi della libertà [The Risks of Freedom]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Buzzi, Carlo, Alessandro Cavalli, and Antonio de Lillo, eds. 2002. Giovani del nuovo secolo [Youth in the New Century]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Garelli, Franco. 2006a. Chiamati a scegliere: I giovani italiani di fronte alla vocazione [Called to Choose: Italian Youth Facing Vocation]. Milano: San Paolo. ———. 2006b. L’Italia cattolica nell’epoca del pluralismo [Catholic Italy in the Age of Pluralism]. Bologna: Il Mulino. ———. 2007a. “Introduction.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 12: 2–7. ———. 2007b. “The Public Relevance of the Church and Catholicism in Italy.” Journal of Modern Italian Studies 12: 8–36.

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———, Gustavo Guizzardi, and Enzo Pace, eds. 2003. Un singolare pluralismo: Indagine sul pluralismo morale e religioso degli italiani [A Peculiar Pluralism: Research on the Moral and Religious Pluralism of Italian People]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Hervieu-Léger, Danièle. 1999. La religion en mouvement: Le pèlerin et le converti [Religion in Motion: Pilgrims and Converts]. Paris: Flammarion.

CHAPTER THREE

VOCATION AS A PERSONAL CHOICE Luigi Berzano The relation between the young and their biographic choices is today a particularly complex phenomenon, and even more complex is the relation between the young and religious vocations. In such elds all the elements of the world of the young, at times contradictory, intertwine, elements that, in these last decades, have fragmented and recomposed the religious eld too. All the most recent research carried out in Italy on the young and religion has stressed the existence of seemingly contrasting elements: dependence and autonomy, strong Catholic identity and feeble identication with the Catholic Church, continuity and discontinuity in religious duties, acknowledgement of the Church as a source of moral values and freedom in one’s own ethical choices. Therefore even in the Italian religious eld and in that of the choices of a religious life, the deep-seated complexity of our society in general is to be found. Among the signs of this new complexity there is also the dramatic recent decline of religious vocations in Italy, among both men and women. Concerning the sociological analysis of vocations, Rodney Stark and Roger Finke (2000), applying the theory of rational choice, have interpreted the decline of religious vocations in six countries (the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, the Netherlands) for the period 1965–1995.1 Their theory asserts that even religious choices, such as vocations, do not elude the normal dynamics of the estimate that the individual makes of the relation between costs and benets. In the context of contemporary societies the costs of the Catholic sacerdotal and religious choice have diminished in a marginal way, while the sacerdotal and religious choice benets have diminished in a sudden and dramatic way. As a matter of fact, while the discipline to which the religious people are subject has slackened, the fundamental

1 More sociological analysis about vocations are to be found in: Dilanni (1987, 1993) and Falk (1980).

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structure of the religious life marked with chastity, poverty and obedience has remained unchanged. Finke and Stark therefore conclude that the vocations decline is a consequence of this swift modication of the advantages and of the opportunities that religious life brought to religious people, both men and women. They conclude that, from the perspective of rational choice theory, Churches might get out of vocation crises in two ways: either lowering costs or bringing the traditional benets back.2 This chapter on “vocation as a personal choice” intends to analyse the problem of religious vocations in Italy and of their dramatic recent decline on the basis of recent research about the young and religious vocations carried out in January 2006, described in the preceding chapter (cf. Garelli 2006). Starting from the research ndings obtained there, we may identify three critical situations in which making religious choices is a puzzling problem, and a fourth situation in which, on the contrary, making religious choices appears to be easier. Young People and Religion in the Italian Context Before analysing the data from the survey, it is useful to present the general picture of the relations between religion and the young in Italy, as it emerges out of the main sociological investigations. As a matter of fact even the analysis of “vocation as a personal choice” nds numerous references in research carried out about the world of the young in general.3 An inquiry carried out in 2005 on Italian young people between the age of 25 and 39 highlighted three kinds of attitude toward the Catholic religion: active adaptation, passive adaptation, and estrangement.4 Under the appearance of a substantial stability of the attitudes in the majority of the young toward the Catholic religion, the research outlines a highly differentiated landscape: relatively stable links persist with the Catholic identity received since infancy, but at the

2 The two researchers cite, for example, the case of the Episcopal Church that has granted to its clergy “good salaries” and “virtually no restrictions” (open doors to divorced people, to practising homosexuals, ordination of women and so on). 3 The Italian sociological literature on these themes is abundant (cf. Garelli 1991; Cesareo et al. 1995; Pace 1997; Cipolla and Cipriani 2002; Garelli et al. 2003). 4 Cesareo (2005): the research was carried out by eight Italian universities in the Spring of 2003 on a sample of 3,500 individuals between the age of 25 and 39.

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same time the individuals develop manifold interests and identications with non-Catholic religious forms and traditions. Active adaptation is present in 18.4% of Italian young people. It is the adaptation of those who not only declare themselves to be Catholic but also strongly identify with the system of beliefs, moral duties, and rituals requested by their Church. These are the Catholics who are strongly involved in their own religious communities, who acknowledge themselves as belonging uniquely to a place or to a community. These believers adapt themselves actively, although actually they have to lead their lives without the traditional support of the community and family links that once tied the believers to the Church to which they belonged. As is easily noted, this great capacity for holding the Catholic identity is not, according to many, a sign of “choice” but rather of conforming oneself to a national age-old cultural tradition. The erosion of the religious world caused by modernity in these last decades seems to have had a greater and more lasting inuence on the identication of the individuals with Catholicism, rather than with the Catholic identity.5 Passive adaptation relates to 71.9% of Italian young people. It is just that kind of adaptation typical of those who declare themselves to be Catholic, but whose identication with the Catholic Church is feeble. This forms the majority of the Catholics who, although they recognize themselves in the national religious tradition, but do not develop the consequent identication processes. The religious prole of these young people is what might be dened with the wording “I am Catholic, but in my own way.” These are young people who participate in particular “passage rites” of the Church or who claim their belonging to the cultural-historical identity of Italian Catholicism, but who in their everyday life follow different life models, secular and free from the Church’s precepts. Passive adaptation is what best typies the new generations. These are the generations who have the long historical period of the centrality of Roman Catholicism behind their back and now witness the start of a culturally new phase, without any more great and unique ideological references. Being believers and participating in a Catholic

5 Here I employ the concept of “identity” in the meaning of the denition that the one gives of oneself referring to a collective identity in which one recognizes oneself and on the basis of which one establishes a noticeable difference between oneself and the others: “identication,” instead, is the inuence that this recognition has on one’s choices and behaviors.

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parish becomes a subjective choice for them. On the other hand, all the contexts of political and social life have similarly segmented, and even the world of work is becoming much more ephemeral than it was for the past generations. Among these young Catholics belonging to the passive adaptation area, representing the majority of the world of the young, the traditional religious links fade away. Their adhesion to the beliefs of the Catholic creed becomes more and more uncertain, their participation in the rites more and more discontinuous, selective and aimed only at celebrating the most important moments of life (rst Communions, weddings, funerals, etc.). Seldom is religion acknowledged as an “ethical guide” for everyday life, even if it is still acknowledged as a fundamental component of Italian culture and as a resource for allowing one to “live well with the others.” Finally, 8.9% of Italian young people are estranged from Catholicism. This estrangement is to be found among those who neither have a Catholic identity nor an identication with the Catholic Church.6 This share of the respondents includes rst of all the atheists, for whom the “atheist” identity seems to emerge as the result of a personal choice. Of these young people, about 25% consists of young people who were born and brought up inside a still Catholic family context. Second, this type of estrangement attitude includes “religious people without religion,” characterized by growing autonomy in their spiritual life: “believing without belonging and without participating.” This process of “autonomizing one’s own religious feelings” in practice and in the attitude emerges all over the whole sample of young respondents, both for what concerns passive adaptation and estrangement from religion. This process conrms the debated “religious identity crisis,” in reference to which it is not always possible to distinguish between identity as a dimension of religious belonging and identication as a whole set of attitudes, roles and consistent lifestyles (Dubar 2000). Religious identity, that is to say the denition that the individual gives of himself, is the result on the one hand of a readiness to acknowledge oneself as part of a collective entity, and on the other hand of an ability to establish a distinction between oneself and others. The choices and actions of the individual will then be inuenced in that way as much by the identication processes that one has developed, hence by one’s memberships, as by a desire to become autonomous from such

6

About this typology of relations with religion, see Hirschman (1982).

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memberships. What we want to evoke with the wording identity crisis is the weakening of the capacity of the young to nd their own stable and meaningful location within the main spheres of existence (family, school, work, religion, politics). If however the normative aspect of religion does not seem to be signicant to most young people, a diffuse “religious feeling” appears to still be present: the religion that helps us to live, to live well with other people, to give the individuals the sensation of being culturally united. The ties lose their ideological or ethic-formative function and acquire a new function as life supports, preguring a religion perceived as a beautiful, good, strong, safe, calm and pleasant experience, as a help to live well with others and look at the future with condence. All these issues seem to be particularly strong in the youngest band of the interviewees between the ages of 25 and 29. It seems then that a general weakening process is forming in the “ascribed reproduction” of the Catholic identication. For example, 86% of the interviewees present Catholic identities, but among these only 16.6% present a strong Catholic identication. In conclusion, the number is rising of those who, although they keep their Catholic identity, present feeble identication with the other dimensions of the Catholic Church, such as participation in the rites, with the ethical norms, and the acceptance of revealed truth. These results from past research, summarized above, are also conrmed by the research on vocation in Italy, which this chapter principally reports. In general we nd the same religious proles: 84.3% declare themselves to be Catholic; 22% can be considered to be believers with an active adaptation; 2.6% belong to a religion different from the Catholic one; and 13.1% declare they are without a religion. As to their attending religious rites, we have the following data (see Table 3.1): weekly attendance (20%), a few times a month (18%), a few times a year (41%), never (21%). Therefore, even the young of this research on vocation are by a large majority “believers in progress”: that is, believers in search of a religiousness that may recompose both the issues of the received Catholic education and the principle of the autonomy of believing. In harmony with recent national inquiries, even the present one points out that within a prevailing Catholic frame of reference, a plurality of ways exists of both feeling Catholic and of following its rules. Roman Catholicism, to which 84.3% of the respondents relate, is the religious universe from which they all originate: a system of sociolinguistic evidences on whose

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Table 3.1. Excluding weddings and funerals, how often do you take part in mass or, if you are not Catholic, in other religious rite? (1,017 cases – % values) Never 1–2 times a year Several times a year About once a month 2–3 times a month Every week Several times a week Total

20.9 24.5 16.2 10.4 7.5 18.9 1.6 100.0

basis the aspects of life that have to do with religion are classied. The other religions, still minority ones (together they reach 2.6%), remain in the background, either because their presence is not perceived (with the exception of Islam) or because they do not take part in the actual experience of life of the majority of the interviewees. In this context even the religious choices made by the young appear to be more and more personal and autonomous. Among these we nd vocation as a personal choice for one’s own life. The research reported below, concerning Italian young people facing vocation, has dwelt on these themes, and in particular upon that choice that so far is the greatest form of acceptance of and reliance on religion. Choosing is a Problem when Choices are Obligatory The rst situation in which choosing is a problem and an effort occurs when the chances of taking one’s choice are practically unlimited and hence one is unceasingly compelled to choose. Instead of being called to choosing, the young appear to be more and more compelled to choose out of too wide a range of choices. In advanced modern societies almost nothing has been predetermined since birth: work, identity, political and religious belonging, even identity of kind. In traditional societies, when a baby was born it was possible to guess what type of work, career, wedding, religious belonging, lifestyle and patterns of consumptions it would undertake. In the traditional societies ethnic, cultural and religious identity allowed also for the identication of the whole individual with a nation, a cultural community, and a religious group. Identity and identication then moved

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side by side: the former simultaneously produced the latter. For this reason the traditional societies were rich in strong connections, but poor in choices and options. They were relational systems without choices. The connections had the function of giving meaning to the position that the individual occupied in the society, of anchoring and safeguarding the individual from swift changes and the uctuations of history. The individual was at the center of a plurality of belongings, all deriving from a primary belonging: belonging to a territorial community simultaneously reproduced also the cultural, social, and religious belonging. And these belongings were often teeming with emotional connotations.7 Wherever identity and identication remain strong they still are important guides for individuals. Today social origin does not make choices for us any more. This is a trend not devoid of risks. As a matter of fact, if up to a certain point it has been necessary to loosen some connections in order to enable people to avail themselves of options and personal choices, reducing the connections has then proved to be a relentless process. It is a process that seems to refer, in its most extreme effects, to the idea of anomie crafted by Emile Durkheim (1999); that is to say, a situation in which every system of rules and ties shared by the members of a society vanishes. In this context, the identication of an individual in a society or in a religion or in a political party is no longer the mechanical result of a collective belonging of a social, religious or political nature. The ways through which individuals identify with their own communities of belonging are no longer dened by the social structure but by the convictions and the choices that each individual has autonomously developed. In this way the modern individual comes into being, who cannot choose any more, not even in the religious eld. As a matter of fact, identication with one religion is no longer the mechanical outcome of collective belonging but of a totality of continuous choices. Even in the religious eld the options, as chances of choice, have multiplied, while in parallel the intense connections held by one’s Church has diminished. But it is when the choices are more necessary and constraining that the individual perceives all the labor and the uncertainty. Actually, not always 7 According to Dahrendorf (1989), from whom the concepts of connection and option derive, religion is placed among the options offered by a wealthy life. In this perspective, religious choices are occasions for individual growth and for realizing capabilities. They are wishes and hopes made available by the social conditions that state to what extent the individuals can develop as members of society.

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and not for everybody do options also increase when the realizable choices increase. In other words, in the world of the young the choices are difcult when the ties that the young have do not go together with equally real options. But, more precisely, what are connections and options in the religious eld? Religious connections are structurally predetermined religious belongings and elds of religious acting. They are the strongest bonds anchoring people to their Church. If religious connections are important for individual choices, especially for the meaning and the anchoring they offer, religious options are important especially because they offer the individual real opportunities for making choices. However both connections and options have ambivalent implications: the religious connections certainly are values that “give meaning” to choices, but they can even become constraints and chains. So in the same way options offer possibilities for freedom and autonomy, but they may also weaken the ideal references of an individual. In Italy, the most relevant form of religious connection is the identity and identication with the Catholic Church. A Catholic has a situation on his back in which religion represented a quasi-monopoly over all that concerned morals, behaviors, and beliefs. Each individual conformed to this situation. Today, instead, the individual is found living in a context in which religion represents only one among many other sources of inspiration. And even in the cases in which the individuals accept principles, beliefs, and moral rules from their religion, they usually do so while modifying them and disputing their absolute validity. They seldom adopt them rigidly to orient their actions and judgments. In particular, the new generations nd it very difcult to rely on only one religious system for moral principles and values since, to be able to apply it effectively to the different contexts of everyday life, it would be necessary to know it in depth. It is much easier to place one’s trust in any secular thought proposing solutions and behavioral models immediately feasible in every single situation. This is the condition of the “religious market,” meant as a multiplication of offers and options in the religious environment. Actually, even within Italian Catholicism, the contemporary religious market has multiplied the chances of religious choices, at the cost of lacerating preexisting connections. Facing the multiplication of the options offered by religious markets we may outline different answers: on one side we may propagate a feeling of great freedom of religious choice, on the other the risk of an impasse may come about caused by the continuous necessity of

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making one’s choices among different alternatives. The results of all inquiries, however, point out that these modernization effects, favoring serial behaviors—that is to say consecutive and discontinuous—affect more identication than identity, as if the imprinting of primary socialization had a greater and more lasting inuence on the latter. The context itself of growing “religious offerings” in which the individual is situated does nothing but increase the solicitations to experiment with consecutive identications, and it is in that context that socialization processes have begun anticipating other religious universes, with all possible elements in tension. The results of our research on vocations also suggest that in most cases we face a tendency toward the enfeeblement of the identication processes with Roman Catholicism. In the present religious context of abundance of choices and possible alternatives our interviewees are divided into a minority of people totally involved in the Catholic Church and a majority who, although they are Catholic, seem instead to consider strong identication with the Catholic Church as a luxury they cannot afford unless they pay the excessive cost of abandoning their autonomy. Fading traditional religious connections and widening personal choices also affect vocations. As a matter of fact the latter are formed by the reciprocal relation between options and ties, and require autonomous individuals capable of facing more and more differentiated choices. The recent dramatic decline of vocations in the Catholic Church points out that it is not to be taken for granted that if the available alternatives increase vocations too increase in parallel. A rst factor strongly inuencing the choices that today’s young people have to make is the obligatory feature of such choices. Compulsion derives from the fading away of traditional predetermined “life routes” and from the unpredictability of the future and of the present, in relation to which new “life courses” should develop. Signicant factors emerge if we consider rst of all the present occupational statuses of the interviewees (see Table 3.2): 31.3% work; 49.9% are students; 7.7% combine study and work; 11.1% state they are both outside the school world and the work world. On the whole, then, it is a fact that 67.7% of the young are presently in an uncertain position from the occupational point of view. If actually being a student is a temporary and quite ordinary situation, all the same if combined with that of the student workers and of the unemployed, this situation shows great uncertainty both as regards one’s present and one’s future.

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luigi berzano Table 3.2. What are you doing at present? (1,017 cases – % values)

I only study I study and work I work I neither study nor work Total

49.9 7.7 31.3 11.1 100.0

With reference to the work situation an intersecting datum is appearing concerning the fact that the uncertainties of the present are closely connected with the uncertainties for the future. On the whole, as a matter of fact, among those who because of their older age nd themselves outside secondary school, one young individual out of two has not yet achieved a clear work position, and inside this sector of young people over 70% have no precise idea of the kind of work they will happen to have. The overall percentage of “uncertain young people” who are not working and have not completed a study cycle amounts to 79.8%. In this case the uncertainty of the present seems to turn into even greater uncertainty for the future. Equally signicant appear to be the data concerning the family situations, particularly referring to the families of choice that the young mean to set up.8 Among the “most grown-up” young people (25 to 29 years old), 73.3% still live with their parents, while only 22.9% live with their own partners. Only 11.9% have already married, and only 7.6% already have children. Thus the great majority of these young people, although they might have already started stable couple relationships, as a matter of fact are still far away from building their own autonomous and stable families. This condition appears to be still more widespread if we consider the younger age bands; it is not surprising then that on the whole among the young between the age of 16 and 29 only 4.6% are already married, and only 3.2% already have children. The most signicant element concerns the perspective for their future: 39% of these same young people see themselves surely married before the age of thirty, and 67.2% believe that this will probably happen. Similarly 55.6% are sure they will have children sooner or later, and this percentage reaches 82.1% if we consider also those who 8

The following data on the national context are taken from Cesareo 2005.

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deem it probable. At rst sight it looks as if we have found ourselves in front of young people with very clear ideas about their own family life future. However, if we compare their certainties about the future with the data concerning their present we cannot but perceive a sense of dissonance, considering how at the threshold of their thirties only one young individual out of ten is actually already married. We might then say that for these young people their certainties for their future family life are seldom accomplished in the present. Choosing is a Problem when the Future is Unpredictable A second context that does not facilitate vocation as a personal choice is the context in which both the socially predetermined “life courses” and the attitudes of great condence in the future fade away. Vocations develop with difculty if these two conditions are absent. On one hand there are the options, that is to say the different routes and alternatives to choose, on the other there are the connections, that is the supports, starting from which a choice is taken. In this sense the difculties and the supports one has in following one’s vocation are somehow connected with the way in which the different links combine with the available options. The research on vocations, besides asking what the young expect to realize in the different sectors of their affective, school and work lives, also sought to explore their vision of the future. Among the young 68% look at their future with optimism, considering it full of chances and surprises. The young reveal they have interiorized that typical trait of modern culture that Anthony Giddens (1999) calls “colonization of the future”: that is to say, to consider the future as plastic material that the individual is called to shape. The optimism of 68% of the interviewees, together with the conviction that in life one must have goals (85% of the interviewees) are foundational attitudes; one’s own life takes on the shape of a project to build up, making one’s choices, setting one’s objectives, and dening the strategies suitable to pursue them. Generally speaking, the prole that the interviewees have of their future is differentiated at the level of the objectives and at the level of the means. At the level of the objectives, the traits are strong and neatly cut: 67.6% of the young describe their own future as full of chances and surprises rather than full of risks and unknown factors. A rst factor characterizing the prole, then, is optimism. However, it is a kind of optimism closely connected with

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condence in one’s capabilities, with the conviction that the commitment of the individual will have great weight on the construction of that future. Thus, 85.3% of these same young people believe that in life it is important to have objectives and goals, apart from the difculties that may arise on the way. Accordingly 64.8% believe that success rst of all depends on one’s work, and that luck, in contrast, has lesser weight. A second characterizing factor, then, is a very self-directed image of one’s life, in which it is the individual entrepreneurial capability that plays the most important role. If instead we shift to the level of the means by which one can achieve one’s goals, and hence construct the future, the features are much vaguer and leave room for an explicit pragmatism. Hence, 75.6% of the young assert that in life it is better to keep many options and doors open, rather than taking early well-dened choices to which one then has constantly to refer. And even for what concerns the most important choices, 57% maintain that anyhow they must be temporary, subject to revision at any time. Here we see that, on the whole, the denition of the objectives, the condence in one’s capabilities, and the optimism regarding the future do not involve substantial certainties at the level of the tools and the strategies necessary to achieve one’s future goals. Yet there is a precise datum that differentiates the world of the young from the inside: that is the real capacity of pursuing one’s projects, of developing a vocation as a choice. If we consider together: (a) the importance or non-importance of having objectives and goals for the future (self-direction or fatalism); (b) the necessity of making precise choices to be successful, or to keep many doors (structuring or being exible), we obtain a typology of attitudes toward the future that we may identify in the following four types of young people (see Figure 3.1): selfdirected-structured, selfdirected-exible, fatalist-structured, fatalist-exible. The selfdirected-structured type includes 15% of the interviewees. It is the minority type who look at the future having a precise plan in mind and a unitary idea of life, with aspirations to carry out through a likewise precise route. In this share of self-structured young people their condence of fullling their vocation remains strong in spite of the fact that they know too well and experience all the components of the society of uncertainty and risk. To this type of people building their future is based both on the present, on their strong personal identity, and on their past experiences. But it is certain that any vocation they plan cannot but be carried out on the basis of the “denition of the situation” that these subjects give of the present. It is the present situ-

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Figure 3.1. The young interviewees divided according to their attitudes toward the future (1,017 cases – % values) Fatalist and structured 9% Self-directed Self-directedand and flexible exible 43% 43%

Self-directed and structured 15%

Fatalist and flexible 33%

ation that has a stimulating and initiating function for the realization of the future vocation. The selfdirected-exible type concerns 43% of the interviewees. It represents the plurality who have a precise project and precise aspirations, but know that to full them not only one route exists and that therefore it is necessary to realize them through different experiences, but always with commitment and determination. This is the young person who has precise objectives, but who is also signicantly open for what concerns the possible means to achieve them. The fatalist-structured type includes 9% of the interviewees. It is the type who face the future letting themselves be guided by chance both in identifying one only objective to make their own and in choosing a precise route to achieve it. This fatalist vision of the present and of the future is very much in tune with the fragmentation of contemporary society, analysed for a long time by Zygmunt Bauman (1999, 2000a, 2000b). The society in which social relations and common expectations have fragmented and in which conicts between groups and between individuals have increased, cannot but promote both the individual and the collective planning of the future. In turn individual and collective planning capacity is a relevant force when it comes to activating recomposition processes. Individual and collective projects form a “protective network” under which it is possible to recompose the relations between the individuals and the individual biographies themselves.

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The fatalist-exible type includes 33% of the interviewees. It is the most confused and disarmed type facing the future; for this reason they trust chance both as to what they will do in life and as to how they will do it. The girls are more numerous than the boys (respectively 35% and 29%) and look at the future with the sensation of being able to exert scarce inuence on it. Generally speaking this fatalist sensation shows that even a surplus of possibilities may generate the particular discomfort of feeling divided between the exigency of assuming the reins of one’s life and the awareness of the complexity of existence and of the many factors difcult to control. This fatalistic vision of the future promotes projects that are too exible, interchangeable, and partial as are the experiences of text messaging and the presence of the young in the chat rooms. Generally speaking, the new generations for the most part face the future with a “consciously supple” attitude, being aware of the fact that they cannot always anticipate rigid and precise rules and, for this reason, they always leave some “doors open” for their biographies. In all four analysed types we nd the two tendencies typical of advanced modernity: plasticity and self-construction. Most young people try hard to make themselves up together in order to be, as Bauman says (1999: 95ff.), “at the same time clay and sculptor.” This however requires that the idea of life as a predetermined and xed itinerary is refused in favor of an orientation toward experimentation and toward the continuous revision of one’s projects. Only the minority of selfdirected-structured ones (15%) try their best, at least ideally, to anchor themselves to great choices that direct their life courses. One might conclude that the labor of choosing one’s vocation is very similar to the discomfort of living within a society strongly connected by uncertainty. Whenever individuals nd themselves in front of many roads, they cannot orient themselves, hence neither decide whether to choose a road “for ever” or rather assume the attitude of the explorer who changes course continuously to discover new ones. Choosing is a Problem when Choices are Never Final Choices What seems to contrast most with the duration of choices, such as religious choices, is the “paradigm of precariousness.” Today precariousness, temporariness, and “making choices till further notice” are everywhere. Uncertainty seems to be the essence of everything, as

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was duration in traditional societies. Uncertainty and temporariness permeate the social, cultural, and religious life—and even biographies. When this precariousness paradigm dominates, the end of the value of the “duration of things” appears to be inevitable to the individuals. In this context, hardly propitious times begin for what concerns all the choices that are “denitive and for a lifetime” for all faiths and, more in general, for all far-reaching projects, such as religious vocations. Everything becomes a choice “until further notice,” susceptible to cancellation when it no longer seems to be interesting and pleasant, or when it is no longer useful for one’s individual growth, for success, or for self-improvement. Three contexts of temporariness are here perceived affecting individuals’ life (Bauman 2002). The rst context of temporariness is that of individual subsistence at work, economic, assistance level. Nobody feels assured forever. Temporariness and structural exibility reduce the attraction of delayed satisfaction and urge present experience. Life, perceived as fragmented biography, tends to be lived as a sequence of events and consecutive phases. The second context of temporariness is that of the perception of the world seen as a whole of replaceable and substitutable elements: belongings and social links, institutions, alliances, and public and private identities. Even art and its works do not evade the law of insignicant duration, when the preferred form of visual art is happening or installations organized as unique events lasting only for the time of the exhibition and bound to be dismantled that very night, after the conclusion of the artistic event. A third context of temporariness concerns the individual life in which connections also weaken nal choices. Everything is “a probationary period,” even that related to the project of one’s life. Nomadic lifestyles are shaped, in which the possible routes multiply and the individuals keep other alternatives always open. As to the dynamics of the success of choices, today the distinction is no longer clear between what is the cause and what is the effect; that is to say, whether the social atmosphere weakens the choices or whether the provisional choices contribute toward creating the social atmosphere. A world saturated with uncertainty and with lives fragmented in many ephemeral episodes cannot but strengthen the search for instant gratications. A typical feature of any faith, in contrast, consists in ascribing value to something that lasts longer than individual life, something sound, resisting the corrosive action of time, perhaps even immortal and eternal.

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In the perspective of deepening the difculty of developing a vocation as the nal choice for a life, we may consider the following statistical data: 10.7% of the interviewees state they have thought of becoming priests or nuns. It is a substantial datum, if we consider the dramatic decline of vocations in the Catholic Church. Which are the elements that intervene taking the young away from the actual choice of becoming priests or nuns? A rst factor is the problem of abandoning personal projects. The religious life choice implies distancing oneself from one’s current life (27.5%), as it also may imply breaking with one’s family and network of friends and the passage toward a more solitary life (16.5%). On the other side there is the problem of responsibilities: taking this choice means putting on oneself the responsibility of carrying it out and of enduring all the consequences (29.4%), and sometimes doing so against the expectations of the members of one’s family and friends (19.3%). Lastly there are the difculties deriving from living one’s life within a collective route, with the constraints of obedience (12.8%) and of community life (5.5%). A second discouraging element concerns the irrevocability of choosing religious life. 39.4% of the young believe that taking a choice for life is too costly. This attitude is homogeneous with the “elastic” vision that the majority of these young people have of their future. Thus, 61.5% say that even the most important choices of one’s life are never “forever” but can be revised at any moment, and 76.1% believe that in life it is always better to keep many doors open. If it is believed that any choice can be revisable so as to adapt it to the evolution of one’s existence, the idea of having to undertake a journey lasting “a lifetime” seems too demanding. A third element taking away from the choice of becoming a priest or a nun is the totalizing dimension. Here three types of vocation are identied, according to their more or less totalizing feature. (a) The rst type of vocations concerns those activities requiring the sacrice of some personal exigencies of the individual. According to 92.4%, a vocation is needed to be a priest; to 80.8% a vocation is needed to be a social worker; to 80.6% a vocation is needed to be a writer. It is evident that the greatest approval as regards the necessity of putting a vocation at their basis is then obtained by those activities in which the accomplishment of some individual exigencies is somehow sacriced. (b) Another type of vocation concerns those activities in which the fullment of one’s personal expectations and personal sacrices are balanced. For example, 63.0% of the interviewees believe that vocation is needed to be a parent, 53.5% to get married, and 49.8% to be an

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entrepreneur. In these choices, notwithstanding their differences, there seems to be a kind of balance between the required commitment and the satisfactions that one may derive from them. (c) One last type of vocation concerns the secretarial activities which, although they do not provide great economic gratications, nevertheless do not take away much space from one’s private existence. Only 26.0% of the interviewees think that a vocation is needed to undertake such activities. On the whole it emerges that the idea of vocation is mainly connected with those activities in which apparently a greater personal sacrice is required to accomplish the noblest tasks and missions, both at an individual and at a collective level. However, to get deep into this aspect of the balance between costs and benets related to the idea of vocation it may be useful to go back to the analysis of religious vocation explicitly and, in particular, to the analysis of that 10.7% of interviewees who said they had thought for a long time that they had a religious vocation and of that 62.7% who said they would be happy if a friend of theirs decided to become a priest or a nun. Choosing is Not a Problem When one has a Unitary Sense of Life Let us now analyse more closely how many in our sample of interviewees have thought of religious vocation as a possible choice for their own life. In the analytic model of the research this was the context that presumably would favor the personal choices of the individuals most. Life choices are no problem when individuals are aware of the fact that they have a personal project, that is to say when they consider their life a biography. This is the condition of the individual who, beside the many daily meanings, partial and temporary, also owns a unitary meaning for the future. In the research on vocations this condition is represented by the interviewees who have an image of vocation closer to the typical sensitivity of postmodernity: vocation as self-realization, as an enablement of one’s self, as a call to “make of one’s life a masterpiece.” The research points out that one interviewee out of two (51.5%) believes that all individuals have a vocation that unies their whole life. Only 26% believe that life does not have a unitary vocation, but that it is only a combination of partial and individual choices. The research moreover points out that the word vocation is not an extraneous term in the vocabulary of today’s young people: 58% believe that the term is associated with “sacred,” 71% with “satisfaction,” 79%

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luigi berzano Table 3.3. Vocation’s proles: religious, social, secular, personal. Vocation is . . . . . . for everybody

Vocation . . . inclination 18.9% as . . . or personal talent . . . project to 8.6% realize . . . commit12.7% ment to an ideal or a cause . . . religious 11.2% call

. . . only for some people

. . . non-inuential, there are only each one’s choices

5.9%

6.9%

2.9%

5.4%

5.2%

6.5%

8.1%

7.7%

with “accomplishment,” 58% with “denitive,” 39% with “modern.” Vocation is a propensity or a natural datum for 31.8%; it is a call to religious life for 26.9%; it is a commitment to an ideal or to a social cause for 24.5%; it is a project to realize in life for 16.8%. (see Table 3.3). These data conrm that the concept of vocation is getting secularized in the Catholic environment, both including all the spheres of social life and including, among the religious vocations, also the laymen’s religious vocations. Moreover, those young people who had for some time the idea of becoming priests or religious women or men belong to the category of those who have a unitary sense of life. One young individual out of ten, that is theoretically about one million of young Italians between the age 16 and 29, have conceived the idea of entering religious life and, among them, 43.1% have retained this thought from one to ve years. All these last percentages point out that religion still appears to be an organizing principle of social life and of morals, even to a great part of the young generations. To these young people, even if they are socialized in contexts of high social differentiation, having always to choose from a growing spectrum of alternatives does not necessarily produce particular discomfort (see Simmel 1995). Also the long-term Catholic identity, considered in a very personal sense, is a great factor of stability and continuity. It grants coherence to the manifold experiences,

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even to those interviewees who are characterized by strong Catholic identity and feeble Catholic identication. We noted above that 10.7% of the young interviewees have declared they perceived a religious vocation in themselves. However it was an idea that in 61.3% of those cases was developed for less than a year. Here there are two main questions we must now answer: What affects the fact that a young individual develops this type of sensitivity? And what then on the contrary affects the fact that this sensitivity is not developed? The elements which mostly affect the rise of religious vocation are those connected with faith and with religious experiences. Among those who have felt a religious vocation a more convinced and active adhesion to one’s faith prevails: 32.7% declare they accept it because of personal conviction and in an active way (compared with an overall average of 23.1%), while only 18.8% say they accept it because of tradition or education (compared with a overall average of 28.2%). It is not surprising then that, while attendance at religious rites weekly or even more frequently concerns 20.5% out of the total number of the interviewed young people, this percentage rises up to 39.5% among those who have felt such a vocation; and accordingly if among the young overall only 23.8% have participated in groups or religious movements and only 14.8% have participated in charity associations of religious inspiration, these percentages rise up to 37.6% and to 25.7% among the young who are closer to religious vocation. Beside this, some meetings and particular events seem to have had special inuence on the development of vocations (see Table 3.4). For example, 25.7% of the young who have perceived a religious vocation have declared they had a friend who chose to undertake a religious life course (compared to 16.7% among the young considered as a whole), while 22.0% have said that they knew very well the person who made that choice (compared to 11.2% out of the total number of young people). This means that while among the young as a whole only 27.9% have had the chance of confronting the choice of a person close to them of becoming a priest or a religious person, this percentage rises up to 47.7% among the young who have thought they had a religious vocation. In the same way if among the young in general 45.2% say they have met one or more religious gures who have been particularly signicant for their existence, this percentage rises up to 67% among the young who are close to religious vocation, and if among the former only 16.2% state they have met a religious gure who from their point of view was living an authentic vocation and was realizing himself

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Table 3.4. The young close to religious vocation and their friends of the same age.

Belonging to a religion Active adhesion to one’s religion Attending religious rites regularly Consecrated friend/ acquaintance Signicant religious gure

Total sample

The young close to vocation (10.7%)

86.9% 23.1%

92.7% 32.7%

20.5%

39.5%

27.0 %

47.7%

45.2%

67.0%

through a real mission, this experience instead is shared by 29.7% of those young people who have thought of undertaking a religious life route. We notice then in the world of the young that the rise of any religious vocation is always strongly inuenced by previous religious experiences or by meeting other people who are realizing themselves through an authentic religious vocation. The inuence of social factors, in contrast, appears to be less direct. Referring to the geographic context of residence it is possible to notice that the young who are closer to the religious vocation are more present in the South and in the Islands; and this strongly presents once again a nding that characterizes young Italian religiousness altogether. In conclusion, we may ask ourselves why even in this fourth situation in which “choosing is not a problem when one has a unitary sense of life” none of the interviewees have realized it, not even those who had perceived a religious vocation in themselves. Is it a sign of the decline of vocations or of the transformation that is taking place in the concept of vocation? Some of the results point out that a share of the interviewees who have felt the religious vocation in themselves, have not abandoned this vocation, but rather have realized it in secular ways. This conclusion can be accepted only considering a further element. Asking the interviewees which are the most appreciated religious vocations, we nd that the most appreciated forms are those characterized by strong and explicit commitment in the society. It is very clear then that the most highly esteemed forms of religious life are those closely linked to commitment and to social involvement. But when these same interviewees are asked whether a life committed to the others, to the

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Table 3.5. Vocation modes and commitment toward the others (data referred to young people close to vocation: 10.7%). A life of high commitment toward the others is . . .

Preference for a vocation . . .

. . . better as religious people . . . social . . . contemplative or communicative . . . balanced

. . . better as . . . equivalent secular people

16.5% 0.9%

22.0% 1.8%

52.4% 2.8%

0.9%

0.9%

1.8%

society, can be accomplished better by religious people or by secular people, 57.0% believe that the two routes are equivalent, and only 18.3% assert that an intervention performed by religious people is to be preferred (Table 3.5). This is the signicant transformation that is taking place in the Catholic vocation. From Table 3.5 we also infer that the interviewees on the one hand mostly appreciate the religious vocations characterized by direct commitment in the society, on the other hand they believe that a life of commitment in the society can be lived better, or at most with equal results (81.7%), “by laymen,” that is by individuals who do not make the choice of a religious life. The “costs” linked to a choice of religious kind appear to be on the whole too high. Following a religious vocation thoroughly seems then to the interviewees too difcult a choice because of the renunciations and the personal costs, especially if we consider that other forms of commitment in the society and in the Church are equally useful. Conclusions On the basis of the factors pointed out so far, it seems possible to put forward some conclusions related to the different contexts that, as indicated in the introductory part of this chapter, may favor or discourage the rise and most of all the implementation of religious vocations. A rst conclusion: the whole research points out that most young people are not refractory to the idea of vocation. As a matter of fact, the idea of vocation evokes positive evaluation, as if life, set in order by a vocation, turned from a vague indenite time into a biography endowed

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with sense. We nd then in the interviewees an admirable idea of vocation as a form of self-realization. To the interviewees the concept of “vocation” is richer that that of “project.” A project means “throwing intentions and ideas for the future forward.” Vocation means planning on the basis of an important value, on the basis of a religious conviction. The force of vocation for the future consists in basing oneself on signicant current situations on which the future is built. This is what Erik H. Erikson writes (1969: 309): “identication implies anticipating the future.” The idea that an individual has of the future is central to conceive his vocation, as if he identied more with his projects than with his nature. A share of the interviewees keep this idea of vocation unifying their own lives, even when they adapt themselves to everyday projects, that is to minimal vocations, temporary and partial. In this case the idea of vocation is more within reach, keeping other choices and future opportunities open. A wide range of vocations results from this: religious, social, cultural, artistic, entrepreneurial. It is as if vocation became secular, being no longer characterized only by religious calls and tensions, but embracing also secular professions and equalizing the religious vocation to the various forms of secular vocations. In this sense we said that the two concepts useful to describe what is happening in the Italian Catholic Church are, beside that of the religious vocations decline, also that of the revival of secular vocations. A second conclusion concerns the discouraging factors that induce the young who have perceived a religious vocation in themselves to fail actually to realize it. Although 84.3% of the young acknowledge themselves in the Catholic religion, and although among the young Catholic people 22.6% declare they accept their religion out of personal conviction and in an active way, only 10.7% of these young people have thought of turning this belonging into a religious life course; among these only 8.6% have cherished this idea for more than four years, but nobody, in the end, has decided to realize his or her vocation in the institutional Catholic Church. The specic costs that detract from religious life are those already pointed out by other researches: the complete renunciation of establishing one’s own family, the relinquishment of one’s own present life, the irrevocability of the choice, the responsibility implied in life as a priest or a as a religious. This is valid also for 57.8% of those young people who have felt a religious vocation in themselves. It is an understandable outcome if we consider that 66.1% of these same young people give

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as probable or certain the fact that they will get married before the age of thirty and even 81.7% consider probable or certain the fact of having children sooner or later. It is clear that the celibacy constraints presently connected with the religious life course within the Catholic Church cannot but appear highly problematical to them. On the one hand, then, the vocational choice is appreciated when it is considered in abstract terms, but on the other hand the choice is removed when its feasibility in the present context of Roman Catholicism is directly taken into account. These are the two characterizing traits—two traits seemingly in contrast, between which 10.7% of the interviewees who have had the vocation to a religious life, seem to have found some form establishing a balance. If for one reason the religious life choice actually appears to be an admirable route to these young people, it becomes most popular when it is implemented in routes of actual social interventions. But since the same interviewees believe that this type of intervention may be developed as effectively even remaining secular, that’s why the costs connected with a consecrated life as a priest or a nun are not sufciently balanced for what regards the outcomes that the choice seems liable to offer. A last conclusion concerns the religious vocation meant in restricted terms. Among the factors affecting the rise of the religious vocation there are those connected with one’s own Catholic identity and the religious experiences. In particular, the interviewees who have continued for some time in this phase of religious vocational statu nascenti, assert they have met other “important persons” who, in turn, have followed a religious vocation during their lives.9 Notwithstanding the inuence that these “important persons” have had, the actual valuations that the respondents give of the “other signicant factors” are less positive. When asked whether someone in the course of their lives has helped them pursuing their vocations, especially the religious ones, over one third of the respondents (36.6%) cannot identify any relevant gure in such sense. And even among those who can identify some signicant gures from this point of view, 41.2% indicate their parents as reference points and 14.5% indicate their friends, limiting then the context of

9 The concept of “signicant others” or of “important persons” derives from George Herbert Mead and then from Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1966). The developing human being not only interacts with a particular natural environment, but also with a specic cultural and social order, mediated by the persons who are signicant and important for him, who condition him.

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the other “signicant elements” to the most restricted group of one’s social circles. This share of the interviewees who complain of having hardly signicant people around them, for the fact that they can offer reassurance rather than stimuli and positive challenge, outlines a type of society and of Church lacking in fathers and mentors. All through this quest and realization process of one’s vocation, the young have difculty in identifying gures and “other signicant elements” around them, capable both of guiding them and of giving evidence of accomplished forms of vocation. The men of the Church themselves today would be excessively cautious in proposing to the young in an explicit way such demanding goals as those of consecrated life, being intimidated by the prevailing culture and by the countercultural character of the religious vocation. In this research the “other signicant elements” are the most important forms of connections, because they are the junction point between the objective and subjective worlds of the young and, as such, they are the main agents of the preservation of subjective reality, i.e., the identity of the individuals. This substantial insignicance of the “other signicant elements” in the life of the young generally speaking recalls the high social differentiation of the contemporary societies and its effects on the individuals too. Charles Taylor (1993: 131) describes this phenomenon in this way: The true danger is that of being in front of a population less and less capable of identifying a common goal and of achieving it. Fragmentation takes place when human beings go so far as to see themselves in more and more atomistic terms, in other words when they see themselves as individuals less and less connected to their fellow citizens through a community of projects and allegiance.

References Bauman, Zygmunt. 1999. La società dell’incertezza [The Society of Uncertainty]. Bologna: Il Mulino. ———. 2000a. La solitudine del cittadino globale [The Solitude of the Global Citizen]. Milano: Feltrinelli. ———. 2000b. La società del rischio [The Risk Society]. Roma: Carocci. ———. 2002. La società individualizzata [The Individualized Society]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Berger, Peter and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Cesareo, Vincenzo, ed. 2005. Ricomporre la vita. Gli adulti giovani in Italia [Remaking One’s Life: Young Adults in Italy]. Roma: Carocci. Cesareo, Vincenzo, Roberto Cipriani, Franco Garelli, Clemente Lanzetti, and Giancarlo Rovati. 1995. La religiosità in Italia [Religiosity in Italy]. Milano: Mondadori.

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Cipolla, Costantino and Roberto Cipriani, eds. 2002. Pellegrini del giubileo [Pilgrims of the Jubilee]. Milano: Franco Angeli. Dahrendorf, Ralf. 1989. Il conitto sociale nella modernità [Social Conict in Modernity]. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Dilanni, Albert. 1987. “Vocations and the Laicization of Religious Life.” America 14: 207–11. ———. 1993. “Religious Vocations: A New Sign of the Times.” Review for Religious 52: 745–63. Dubar, Claude. 2000. La crise des identités [The Crisis of Identities]. Paris: PUF. Durkheim, Emile. 1999. La divisione del lavoro sociale [The Division of Labor in Society]. Milano: Comunità. Erikson, Erik H. 1969. “Memorandum sulla gioventù” [“A Memorandum about Youth”]. Pp. 305–23 in Prospettive del XXI secolo, edited by Daniel Bell. Milano: Mondadori. Falk, M. Marcelline. 1980. “Vocations: Identity and Commitment.” Review for Religious 39: 357–65. Garelli, Franco. 1991. Religione e chiesa in Italia [Religion and Church in Italy]. Bologna: Il Mulino. ———, ed. 2006. Chiamati a scegliere: I giovani italiani di fronte alla vocazione [Called to Choose: Italian Youth Face Vocation]. Milano: San Paolo. Garelli, Franco, Gustavo Guizzardi, and Enzo Pace. 2003. Un singolare pluralismo [A Peculiar Pluralism: Research on the Moral and Religious Pluralism of Italian People]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Giddens, Anthony. 1999. Identità e società moderna [Identity and Modern Society]. Napoli: Ipemedium libri. Hirschman, Albert O. 1982. Lealtà, defezione, protesta: Rimedi alla crisi delle imprese, dei partiti e dello Stato [Loyalty, Defection, Protest: Remedies to the Crises of Business, Political Parties, and the State]. Milano: Bompiani. Pace, Enzo. 1997. Credere nel relativo [Believing in the Relative]. Torino: UTET. Simmel, Georg. 1995. La differenziazione sociale [Social Differentiation]. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke. 2000. “Catholic Religious Vocation: Decline and Revival.” Review of Religious Research 42: 125–45. Taylor, Charles. 1993. Le radici dell’io. [The Roots of the Self ]. Milano: Feltrinelli.

CHAPTER FOUR

VOCATION VERSUS VOCATIONAL STATUS IN THE LIVES OF CURRENT AND FORMER VOWED AMERICAN CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS Anthony J. Blasi As indicated in a Chapter 1, a vocation in the strict sense drives and lends character to a life trajectory.1 There are also statuses, “vocations” in a different sense of the word, which are institutionalized attempts to give form and recognition to a person’s responses to a sensed vocation. Avoiding a terminological tangle, Joseph Fichter (1961) referred to Religion as an Occupation in his study of vocations in the second sense; he was interested in systematizing the available information on occupational vocations in mid-twentieth century American Roman Catholicism. The intent in the present chapter is to trace the dialectic between vocation and vocational status in two American samples of current and former Roman Catholic members of religious communities (technically termed “orders” and “congregations” in the parlance of that church).2 There has been a tendency in the history of the sociology of religion to place vocation in the strict sense and vocation as a status in a historical relationship to one another, with the vocation as calling emerging at the beginning of a religious tradition and the vocation as status developing over time. Both are thus part of the routinization of a charisma, a devleopment around which a group forms. Thus Joachim Wach (1944: 139) spoke of a “circle” that develops around a prophet-founder, and upon the death of the prophet a “brotherhood” is left. [W]e may safely say that the condition for membership in the brotherhood is usually originally more spiritual than organizational. The tendency

1 In Max Weber’s terminology (1978: 440) it is a matter of the “calling” of a particular kind of religious virtuoso, the prophet. 2 The difference between an order and a congregation rests on a distinction in church regulations (“canon law”) between solemn and simple vows. Members of orders take solemn vows, which if violated render actions such as marriages not only illicit but invalid (null and void) while members of religious congregations take simple vows, which if violated render such actions simply illicit.

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anthony j. blasi toward organization, however, is never absent, being apparent to a certain degree, even in the “circles.” The brotherhood is similar to the circle in its spiritual and charismatic constitutions. The “protests” of reform groups frequently aim . . . at the restoration of this primitive state.

This, of course, is an extension of the line of thought with which Max Weber was preoccupied. Ouédraogo (2006: 91) notes that two implicit theses dominated Weber’s analyses: The rst emphasized the existence of a correlation between the process of routinizing the religious culture with a modication of its relationship with the world in general; the second emphasized that religious compromise is the expression of that correlation. Vocation as status is routinized, simultaneously preserving and circumscribing the effects of inspiration. “Charisma” would be an outside interpretation of inspiration; there is less of a “compromised” nature about it. Simmel noted a similar tension between religiosity and religion (Remy 2006: 153ff.). Apart from such a historical sequence, a vocation that operates more or less autonomously can be a threat to the stability of an organizational apparatus, and of course it is the latter that provides the stable context for the vocation as a status. As Simmel noted in his essay on the self-preservation of the group, autonomy on the part of the individual can co-exist only with a loose contextual organization (1908: 529). Gurvitch similarly speaks of tensions between different levels of society, such as organizational apparatus, the network of social roles, and creative collective activity (1958). For purposes of clarity, it is useful to distinguish between vocations and statuses on the one hand and the inspirations that are embodied in them on the other. Inspiration tends to reside in one’s sense of interiority and to engender external consequences. When those consequences comprise a trajectory of public social interventions by which others in a society or community typify the individual, the individual too may well tend to accept a self-characterization that gives form and presence to that inspiration. However, the fact that such a calling becomes an aspect of one’s self does not mean that it can simply be willed or be “turned on or off ” as desired, like a light switch. Kincheloe (1929: 59) likens it to the semi-autonomy of thought processes that work themselves out semi-consciously before dawning upon the individual: The process by which the prophet gets his message is called inspiration. A great many efforts have been made to analyze and describe this process in psychological terms. The welling up into the focus of attention (the personal consciousness) from the “general consciousness,” or the

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coming into the conscious from the subconscious, is the same problem. It is recognized that these experiences are not limited to prophets but that inspiration is a term which artists of many kinds, composers of music and poetry, inventers and thinkers, have used to describe the suddenness, completeness and the freshness with which their thoughts come.

Every vocation is unique and hence cannot be captured with thoroughness and adequacy by means of one or more questionnaire items. Such completeness is not necessary in the present study, however. Present purposes will be served adequately by tapping into one dimension common to a number of people’s personal vocations and examining the associations between that dimension and the institutional features of occupational vocations. The dimension of personal vocation that will be scrutinized here is a commitment to take up working class issues. As with dimensions of any kind of personal vocation, that is not something uniquely religious; avowed socialists, for example, may have such a commitment with or without religion. There is some overlap between that commitment and the commitment represented by the vow of poverty taken by members of Roman Catholic religious orders and congregations. The vow originated in circumstances that were quite different from those of the modern world with its class structure, but beginning with the medieval mendicant movement it took on the signicance of a distantiation of the individual from the business class and an identication with the working people of the medieval towns (Stark 1967: 280ff.). In the last century, with its full owering of capitalism and other forms of materialism, the social signicance of the vow of poverty came to be ofcially highlighted. According to the Second Vatican Council (1975), members of religious orders and congregations “should, each in his own assigned task, consider themselves bound by the common law of labor” (Decree on the Up-to-date Renewal of Religious Life, #13). Whereas beforehand members of congregations could neither use nor renounce inheritances but only bequeath them, the Council allowed congregations to change their rules so that their members could renounce inheritances. Moreover, members were not to be individually poor while collectively as organizations adopting a lifestyle of the rich: “The institutes themselves should endeavor, taking local conditions into account, to bear a quasi-collective witness to poverty . . . While institutes have the right, provided this is allowed by their rules and constitutions, to possess whatever they need for their temporal life and work, they should avoid any semblance of luxury, excessive wealth and accumulation

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of property” (#13). An “Apostolic Exhortation” by the Vatican ofce responsible for religious communities (the Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes) discouraged religious from participating in violent revolution, but it highlighted the class implications of the religious life with its vow of poverty: How then will the cry of the poor nd an echo in your lives? That cry must, rst of all, bar you from whatever would be a compromise with any form of social injustice. It obliges you also to awaken consciences to the drama of misery and to the demands of social justice made by the gospel and the Church. (Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes 1975, #18).

This dimension of a vocation to poverty would be shared under one form or another among those who in response to such a call take vows of poverty or prepare to do so in religious orders and congregations. It is not limited to members of religious communities; the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (Pontical Council for Justice and Peace 2005) sees work not as something odious but honorable (¶ 265), a share in the divine art and wisdom (¶ 266); and, citing the 1891 encyclical of Pope Leo XIII Rerum Novarum, it teaches that Christians are called to honor the dignity to which workers are entitled (¶ 268). An important operative term is “under one form or another.” The vow of poverty could be taken simply as a means of “leaving the world.” Such an approach to it would be more characteristic of monasticism than of the orders and congregations that carry on ministries in society. “Leaving the world” would also be more characteristic of the spirituality prevalent before the Second Vatican Council than after.3 In this study, the focus will be on two active orders rather than monastic ones, but the question of an earlier twentieth-century versus a later twentiethcentury spirituality remains a relevant one. It will be necessary to use an indicator of that earlier/later continuum in some way. It was also noted in Chapter 1 that the living out of a vocation is not automatic; the individual must engage in discernment. One way to engage in such discernment is to dwell upon religious and church issues through reading. Reading brings the external world into consciousness for consideration. By focusing on reading about religious and church issues, the reading in question is motivated reading, reading that is focused and bears some contextual relevance to the religious individual’s 3 In Weber’s terminology (1978: 541ff.) it is a matter of world-rejecting asceticism vs. inner-worldly asceticism.

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vocation. Reading about religious matters can be and usually is a behavioral manifestation of the cognitive dimension of religiosity. Religion is bound up with the satisfying of cognitive needs in childhood, but by adolescence it becomes a part of the subject’s comprehending the environing world (Elkind 1970: 41–42). Formal religious education and the cognitive perspectives related to it may (see Bibby and Brinkerhoff 1974) or may not further religious observance, but it does further a religious identity (Cohen 1974). Religious intellectuality is often a theme in personal conversion from one religious tradition to another (Loand and Skonovd 1981). Sometimes occupants of vocational statuses gain a cynical knowledge about religious organizations and the people who staff them (Goldner et al. 1977), and that fact may lead them to vacate a vocational status and seek to live out a vocation-as-calling in another way. Religious knowledge in general religiously-identied populations tends to correlate with scholastic aptitude and achievement, and thus is not unrelated to other kinds of knowledge (see Kosa and Schommer 1961). The actual dialectic between personal vocation and occupational vocations can be readily indicated in its temporal dimension by the number of years spent under vows in a religious order or congregation. The dialectic occurs between an external context in which the individual lives and the inner sensitivity and commitment on the part of that individual. A similar dialectic between the external and the internal occurs in education; education too is a motivated inquiry related to occupational vocations. Data and Methodology The data used in this inquiry are more fully reported, albeit in a nontechnical manner, in Blasi with Zimmerman (2004). Two sets of data used in that study, along with some others, are drawn from survey questionnaires completed by current and former members of two American Catholic religious communities—the Racine, Wisconsin, Dominican Sisters in 2003 and the Sacred Hart (central U.S.A.) Province of Franciscan friars (mostly priests, some brothers) in 2002.4

4 The reason for the selection of these two communities was that they both maintained contact with their former members in good numbers and that they were both large enough to allow for multivariate statistical analysis.

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Some 269 current (142) and former (127) Racine Dominican sisters returned usable questionnaires, from some 177 sent to current members and 200 to former members, for response rates of 80.2% and 63.5% respectively. The religious community formally known as the “Congregation of St. Catherine of Siena,” headquartered in Racine, Wisconsin, trace their spiritual origins to the medieval mendicant movement inspired by Saint Dominic and to the famous spiritual writer St. Catherine of Siena. In 1862 Mother Maria Benedicta Bauer, prioress of a cloistered Bavarian community, sent missionaries to America to teach immigrant children, and then came herself to the Untied States, founding the Racine Dominicans. The community engaged in educational and health care ministries through most of its history. Some 282 current (157) and former (125) Franciscan friars returned usable questionnaires, out of “some 300” current members given questionnaires and 211 former members who had been sent questionnaires, for response rates of about 52.3% and exactly 59.2% respectively.5 The names and home addresses of the former Franciscan friars came from an association of former members (“Fringe Friars”) of the Sacred Heart Province of Franciscans, a part of the order located in the central portion of the United States. The Provincial Ofce distributed the questionnaire to current members. The order, formally known as the “Order of Friars Minor,” traces its origins to the mendicant movement of Saint Francis of Assisi in medieval Europe. A small number of German Franciscans were invited to Quincy, Illinois, to minister to German Americans in the nineteenth Century. The Sacred Heart Province and Quincy University developed out of that small initiative. Among the 127 former Racine Dominican sisters, two had become religious in other communities, so that there was a total of 144 female religious in the sample, and 125 others, 91 of whom had married, 32 staying single, and one reporting a same-sex partner (see Table 4.1). Among the 125 former Franciscan friars, 5 had become diocesan priests, so that there was a total of 162 male religious in the sample, 104 of whom had married, 7 staying single, and 4 reporting same-sex partners (see Table 4.1). The former members are not only characterized by a high rate of marriage but by marital stability.

5

For further details, see Blasi with Zimmerman (2004: 17–22).

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vocation versus vocational status Table 4.1. Domestic Status of Respondents Racine Dominican Sample

Franciscan Sample

Total

Total

Former Members

Former Members

Celibate

53.5% (144)

1.6% (2)

57.4% (162)

4.0% (5)

Married

24.2% (65)

51.2% (65)

34.3% (95)

76.0% (95)

Single

11.9% (32)

25.2% (32)

2.5% (7)

5.6% (7)

Divorced/ Separated

3.7% (10)

7.9% (10)

1.8% (5)

4.0% (5)

Remarried

1.5% (4)

3.1% (4)

0.7% (2)

1.6% (2)

Widowed

4.5% (12)

9.4% (12)

0.7% (2)

1.6% (2)

Same-sex Partner

0.4% (1)

0.8% (1)

1.4% (4)

3.2% (4)

No answer

0.4% (1)

0.8% (1)

1.8% (5)

4.0% (5)

100% (127)

100% (282)

100% (125)

Total

100%

(268)

Table 4.2. Educational Attainment Means of Respondents

Level of Attainment

Racine Dominican Sample

Franciscan Sample

Current Members

Current Members

Former Members

Less than High School

1.4% (2)

0.8% (1)

2.5% (4)

High School

2.1% (3)

9.4% (12)

7.6% (12)

0.7% (1)

1.6% (2)

1.3% (2)

2-Year Degree

Former Members

0.8% (1)

Bachelor’s Degree

31.7% (45) 40.2% (51)

8.3% (13) 16.0% (20)

Master’s Degree

48.6% (69) 40.9% (52)

59.9% (94) 52.0% (65)

Ph.D., Law, M.D., etc.

12.7% (18)

5.5% (7)

14.6% (23) 21.6% (27)

No answer

2.8% (4)

1.6% (2)

9.6% (12)

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anthony j. blasi Five items from the questionnaire are used in regression models:

1) An eleven-step semantic differential item that asked the respondents to indicate how important “the concerns of working people in your political views” are, from “Unimportant” (scored 1) to “Very important” (scored 11). The 149 current Franciscan friars who answered this item had a mean score of 8.87; the corresponding mean for the 123 former Franciscans was 9.14. Because some elderly friars in an assisted living facility answered the questionnaire and no comparable access was gained for elderly former friars in such facilities, the difference between the two means may be an artifact rather than a real indicator of a difference. It is also important to note that this pertains to the perceived interests of the working class, not the perceived importance of charitable works. In any case, both gures represent a considerable level of importance being placed on the concerns of working people in the politics of both current and former friars. For the 135 current Racine Dominican sisters who answered the item, the mean score was 9.61; the comparable gure for the 122 former sisters was 9.05. Both gures represent a considerable level of importance being placed on the concerns of working people in the politics of both current and former sisters. 2) An eleven-step semantic differential item that asked the respondents to place themselves on a continuum from “Extremely conservative” (scored 1) to “Extremely modernist” (scored 11). The 148 current friars who answered this item had a mean score of 6.93; the comparable mean was 8.01 for the former friars. Aggiornamento or “updating” seems to have led many friars to leave the order, which they may have perceived as inadequately implementing the kinds of change Vatican Council II called for. The means for the Racine Dominican respondents fell between the two gures for the Franciscan respondents. The 134 current sisters who answered the item had a mean of 7.89, and the 125 former sisters had a mean of 7.45. 3) An eleven-step semantic differential item that asked respondents to indicate the importance of “Reading about religion, religious topics, and the church,” from “Unimportant” (scored 1) to “Important” (scored 11). The 151 current friars who answered this item had a mean score of 8.69; the comparable gure for the 120 former friars was 7.44. The means for the Racine Dominican respondents were quite similar. The mean score for the 134 current sisters who

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answered the item was 8.95, and that for the 119 former sisters who answered it was 7.85. The fact that former members placed less importance on such reading may possibly reect the fact that their waking hours are taken up with daily tasks and obligations that are taken care of institutionally in the religious communities. 4) The number of years in the community, beginning with a prenovitiate (postulancy) program. For the 155 current friars, the mean was 41.70 years. Understandably for the former friars, the mean was much smaller—11.88. Nevertheless 11.88 years represents a signicant portion of one’s life; the former friars in many cases were not merely “trying out” religious life. For the 141 current Racine Dominican sisters who answered this item, the mean was 53.81 years, a somewhat higher number than for the current friars. This may simply be a result of women having longer life spans. The number of years in the community for the 123 former sisters who answered the item was about the same as that of the former friars—11.56. Again, this represents a signicant portion of one’s life. 5) An ordinal scale, indicating the educational attainment of the respondents. The religious and former religious from both the Racine Dominican and the Franciscan samples have on the whole high levels of educational attainment. Given the relatively advanced ages of the samples (ages spanned 43 to 97 for the Dominican sisters and former sisters, with a mean age of 69.1 years, and spanned 38 to 88 for the Franciscan friars and former friars, with a mean age of 63.7 years), the educational attainments likely represent completed educational careers—i.e., the respondents will not likely be undertaking further studies. In both samples, and for both the current and former members, more than half of the respondents had graduate degrees (see Table 4.2). This is not surprising since the sisters worked for the most part as nurses and hospital administrators and as teachers, and the friars worked for the most part in parish ministry; most of these functions were associated with at least bachelor’s and master’s degrees in the nal decades of the twentieth century. The mid-century pope, Pius XII, encouraged members of religious communities to acquire appropriate professional preparations for the works that they undertook, an imperative followed-up for the female religious communities in the Untied States by the Sister Formation Conference movement of the mid-fties (Wittberg 1994: 210–12).

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In addition, a question eliciting information on the respondents’ domestic status was used in the analysis. Of the 277 current and former friars who answered the question about their present domestic status, some 58.5 per cent of the current and former friars were celibates, 2.5% were simply single, 1.4% were in long-term gay relationships, 34.3% were married, 0.7% were remarried, 1.8% were divorced or separated, and 0.7% were widowed. Of the 268 current and former sisters who answered the question, some 53.7% were celibates, 11.9% simply single, 24.3% were married, 3.7% divorced or separated, 1.5% remarried, 4.5% widowed, and 0.4% in long-term same sex relationships. Hypotheses Taking the importance respondents place on working people’s concerns in their politics as the dependent variable, given especially their general middle to upper-middle class level of educational attainment, suggests a dimension of a personal vocational trajectory that would be related to the other questionnaire items mentioned above. The modernist scale, operationalized in the form of a semantic differential item, involved the respondents assuming the perspective or role of others and comparing their own set of religious beliefs with those thought to be held by most others in their reference group.6 This is an instance of self-identication, of proactively dening oneself, as opposed to simply acknowledging a group membership or social category. To place oneself toward the “Extremely conservative” side of the “Extremely conservative” to “Extremely modernist” continuum is to suggest a personal biography that includes resisting, or at least resenting, such themes typical of the Second Vatican Council as the implications of vowed poverty cited above. To place oneself toward the “Extremely modernist” side is to suggest that one has embraced the general change embodied in the Conciliar and Post-conciliar texts and to have made it a dimension of one’s personal vocation. Of course, resisting the Conciliar changes can also be indicative of a vocation, but the particular vocation in question here is one that has embracing the concerns of the working class as an

6 “The concept of reference group may be used to designate that group, real or imaginary, whose standpoint is being used as the frame of reference by the actor” (Shibutani 1961: 257). The semantic differential form of questionnaire has been used to study reference groups (see Quarantelli and Cooper 1966).

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important dimension. My hypothesis would identify higher scores on the “modernist scale” as positively related to placing great importance on the concerns of working people. Note that the perspective adopted here assumes that the subject is proactive in developing a personal self-concept; this is theoretically and methodologically important in the symbolic interactionist tradition of sociological research (see Blumer 1969: 12ff.; Weigert and Gecas 2003). In the particular research technique used here, however, we cannot claim to capture the actual initiatives of the subjects under study; rather, their proactivity is implicit. As suggested above, placing importance on reading about religious and church topics could be an indicator of vocational discernment. Admittedly there could be discernment without reading and reading without discernment, but it would be odd to place importance on reading if the latter were irrelevant to one’s purpose in life or to have such a purpose in the modern world, saturated as it is with publications, and not read about that purpose. Consequently I hypothesize that placing great importance on reading about religious and church topics would be positively associated with the indicator of the important dimension of vocation, placing importance on the concerns of working people. A dialectic between a personal vocation and an institutional statusvocation suggests that for those respondents for whom the institutional status is a satisfactory embodiment of the personal vocation the number of years in a community would be a mere function of age; it would have no anticipated relationship with something such as placing importance on the concerns of working people. For those whose vocational trajectory takes then out of and beyond the institutional status, however, there may be a prolonged effort to make the institutional status “work” as a concretization of one’s life calling. Here too I hypothesize that the number of years spent in the religious institutional state will be positively associated with the indicator of the important dimension of vocation, placing importance on the concerns of working people. Finally, a vocation that would engage the world from the vantage point of a commitment to poverty rather than ee from it can be expected to drive one into acquiring cultural, as opposed to material, resources for exerting inuence in the world. In the present era this takes the form of formal education. Consequently, I hypothesize that the level of educational attainment would have a positive association with the indicator of the important dimension of vocation, placing importance on the concerns of working people.

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The regression models that are reported in Table 4.3, entering the predictor items in the order in which their associated hypotheses are given above, only really support the rst two hypotheses. The standardized regression coefcients indicating the association between the modernist scale and placing importance on working people’s concerns is consistently positive, achieving statistical signicance in ve of the seven columns. Since the samples are not random but simply total quantities of questionnaires returned by total known populations, statistical signicance levels cannot be taken as rm criteria for accepting or rejecting hypotheses; they are reported more as a convention. The smallest of the coefcients for this predictor appears in the column for current members of the Franciscan friars; since the theme of poverty is so central in the Franciscan tradition, the attendant focus on the concerns of working people may be as much an aspect of “traditionalism” for some of the friars as it would be of a modern concern. The coefcients are higher for married respondents than for celibates and for those former Racine Dominican sisters who are single.7 The modernist identity appears to be more strongly related to the poverty-dimension of vocation among the married than among the non-married. The standardized regression coefcients indicating the association between the importance placed on reading and on that placed on working people’s concerns is similarly positive across all of the columns, achieving statistical signicance in four of the seven columns. The coefcients are larger for the Franciscans than for the Racine Dominican sisters; only that for the total Racine Dominican sample has a sufcient number of cases for it to achieve statistical signicance. The coefcients are once more higher for the married respondents than for celibates and for those former Racine Dominican sisters who are single. Placing important on reading about religious and church issues, a particular kind of quest behavior, appears to be more strongly rated to the poverty-dimension of vocation among the married than among the non-married. The number of years lived in the religious communities appears to have little relationship with placing importance on the concerns

7 There were only seven single former Franciscan friars—too few for conducting a regression analysis.

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Table 4.3. Regression on Importance Respondents Placed on Concerns of Working People in their Politics (Beta coefcients) Married Vowed Former Celibates Members Racine OFM Racine OFM Modernist scale .188* .103

.317*

Importance reading

.114

.227* .256

Years in community

.036 –.066 –.175

Education

.138 –.024

N

126

143

Single Former Members Total Racine OFM Racine OFM

.328* .215

—

.245*

.232*

.405* .109

—

.139*

.298*

–.007

.418

—

.057

–.070

.016

.098

.472*

—

.059

–.026

60

71

27

7

236

231

*p < .05

of working people in respondents’ politics. The hypothesis is clearly disconrmed as a general statement. However, there is the curiously large positive coefcient for the single former Racine Dominican sisters, not statistically signicant simply because of the relative small number of respondents in that category. It is difcult to draw any conclusions from a regression model that is based on only 27 cases, but the single former sisters who had lived longer in the community may well have acquired a vocational dimension from their experiences there that did not come by way of modernist theology or reading about religious and church issues. Since the Racine Dominican community is a relatively “liberal” or progressive one, some of these former members may have felt out-of-place in the community because of more traditionalist identities, but may have acquired that one poverty-related dimension in a practical or experiential manner, despite their theologically traditionalist commitments. In a similar way, the respondents’ levels of educational attainment were an important predictor of placing importance on working people’s concerns only among the single former Racine Dominican sisters. That one positive standardized regression coefcient is the one statistically signicant one across the columns. In general, the hypothesis is disconrmed; there may well be many reasons to obtain advanced education quite apart from a vocation that includes a dimension of placing

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importance on working people’s concerns. However, some women who left the community, driven by a vocation of that kind rather than by a desire to marry, may well have pursued further education as part of their vocational quest. Discussion The data used in this analysis were not collected with a study of vocation, in contradistinction from status-vocations, in mind. Because of the generally advanced ages of former religious—suggested by the generally advanced ages of current religious—the original intent behind the data collection was social-historical. The questions asked were: What had become of the large numbers of people who left religious communities in the late 1960s and the 1970s? What impact did their formations in religious communities have on their life courses? What were their experiences in community and in the leaving process? In a secondary analysis, I have approached the data with a different question in mind: Are there traces of a dialectic between instances of personal vocation on the one hand and institutionalized status-vocations on the other? The results of the analysis are perhaps not denitive, but they are suggestive. The emergent narrative is one in which young men and women project their self-concepts into an avowedly altruistic service that had been presented to them institutionally as a more or less pre-packaged status-vocation. They may well have set out from the rst with an inchoate sense of a vocation in response to the cry of the working poor or with an even more formless sense of a call, but in the course of discernment they realized that the cry of the working poor and of those who experience injustice is important in their own lives. There is a resonance between the institutional status-vocation, with its vow of poverty, and their underlying personal vocation for a time, but there is much in the institutional religious life that is irrelevant to that quest or even opposed to the realization of the men and women’s underlying vocations. The “modernist” (perhaps a poor term) theology and what they read in their quests furthered their personal vocations, but carried them beyond the institutionalized status-vocations in the process. Married life provided an occasion for realizing the personal vocations for some, but for others, who had tried without success to make the institutional status-vocations work for a longer period of time, their

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Table 4.4. Mean Semantic Differential Scores: Importance of Working Class Issues in Personal Politics (Racine Dominican Respondents), by Occupation Occupation

Current and Former Sisters

Current Sisters

Former Sisters

Social work/service

10.17 (12)

10.00 (7)

10.40 (5)

Religious/pastoral

9.89 (27)

10.09 (23)

8.75 (4)

Education Admin.

9.57 (7)

9.33 (6)

— (1)

Nurse/medical

9.56 (16)

9.80 (5)

9.45 (11)

Medical Admin.

9.50 (2)

— (1)

— (1)

Teaching

9.29 (104)

9.55 (51)

9.04 (53)

Counseling

9.14 (7)

9.20 (5)

9.00 (2)

Other

8.96 (56)

9.38 (16)

8.80 (40)

Total

9.35 (231)

9.65 (114)

9.06 (117)

underlying calling led them to further education, either to develop further resources to commit to the general cause or as an occasion for further discernment. No doubt, further research is called for. What follows are a series of suggestions based on data that are too sketchy to be used for actually testing hypotheses. They rather raise questions for consideration. Table 4.4 shows mean scores of our dependent variable, the semantic differential item asking the respondents to indicate the importance of working class issues in their personal politics. The mean score for this item among the twelve current and former Racine Dominican sisters engaged in social work or social services was higher than for any other occupational category. The vocation may well have expressed itself in an occupation that involves serving as an advocate for people who have problems, but recipients of such service are often thought of as people marginal to society rather than those having the status of worker in as opposed to at the margins of society. One may well hypothesize a relationship between advocacy for the marginal and advocacy for the working class; that is to say, the underlying vocation need not be too particular about the category of society to which it is professionally oriented. Indeed the “values clarication” prospective social workers undergo during their training may sensitize them to class issues as well as the problems of marginal individuals.

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It should also be noted in Table 4 that “Religious/pastoral” category of occupation has a particularly high score mean for the twenty-three current sisters working in that eld, but a particularly low one for the four former sisters employed in that way. Four is too small a number to allow us to draw any conclusion, but one may well suspect that a “liberal” or “progressive” community of the Racine Dominican Sisters was simply too uncongenial an ecclesiastical environment for more conservative sisters, and that a small number still intending to work in ministry left and took up such work as laywomen. When using the term “conservative” in this context, it needs to be understood in only relative terms. Being only somewhat “conservative” in a liberal environment can make one a deviant in the very context in which one should be able to take acceptance for granted—one’s home community. What is of interest in the present discussion is the suggestion that the content of that “deviance” is the absence of a vocation dened in terms of a political sensitivity to the concerns of the working class. The low scores of the “other” category should also be noted; among the former sisters these may well be women in roles that are very conventional in terms of gender roles—home makers, for example. If a vocation implies anything, it is a willingness to break convention. The issue of conventionality and unconventionality arises in the data reported in Table 4.5 as well. Here it is apparent that those in, for Catholics, non-normative statuses, such as those divorced or separated and those remarried (presuming they are not widows who remarried), are the ones with the highest mean scores. Breaking with convention in one dimension of life may free one up to respond readily to a vocation in another dimension. The only really low mean scores appear for the celibates who no longer belong to the Racine Dominican community; there are only two such respondents, and they left that community to be celibates in a more conservative setting. Table 4.6 reports the mean scores on the importance of working class issues for personal politics, for the Franciscan population of respondents. On the whole, the scores are lower for the male Franciscan respondents than for the female Dominicans. This may simply be an artifact arising from gender response sets or of manners of expression that developed differently in the two communities. These data cannot settle that issue for us. As with the Dominican sisters, it is the respondents in social work or social service, among the Franciscan Friars, who have the highest mean scores. However, the current friars have higher scores than the former ones, reversing the pattern observable among

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Table 4.5. Mean Semantic Differential Scores: Importance of Working Class Issues in Personal Politics (Racine Dominican Respondents), by Domestic Status Occupation

Current and Former Sisters

Current Sisters

Celibate

9.57 (137)

Married

9.38 (63)

9.38 (63)

Single

8.28 (32)

8.28 (32)

Divorced/separated

10.00 (10)

10.00 (10)

Remarried

10.00 (4)

10.00 (4)

Widowed Same-sex partner Total

9.61 (135)

Former Sisters 6.50 (2)

8.50 (10)

8.50 (10)

— (1)

— (1)

9.35 (257)

9.61 (135)

9.05 (122)

Table 4.6. Mean Semantic Differential Scores: Importance of Working Class Issues in Personal Politics (Franciscan Friar Respondents), by Occupation Occupation

Current and Former Friars

Current Friars

Former Friars

Social work/service

9.15 (13)

9.75 (4)

8.89 (9)

Religion/pastoral

9.01 (85)

9.04 (78)

8.71 (7)

Education Admin.

8.00 (4)

Teaching

9.13 (45)

8.74 (19)

Teaching + other

8.88 (16)

8.88 (16)

Counseling

9.00 (13)

4.50 (2)

9.82 (11)

Other

8.92 (76)

8.36 (133)

9.05 (62)

Total

8.99 (252)

8.86 (133)

9.13 (119)

8.00 (4) 9.42 (26)

the sisters in Table 4.4. The former friars who work in education, but not as administrators, also have high scores. The two current Franciscans who work as counselor have notably low scores. The former friars as a whole have higher scores than the current friars. What the table does not reveal is that in the 1970s when many of the former friars left the Franciscans, the community authorities were perceived to be conservative and particularly opposed to involvement in social

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Table 4.7. Mean Semantic Differential Scores: Importance of Working Class Issues in Personal Politics (Franciscan Friar Respondents), by Domestic Status Domestic Status

Current and Former Friars

Current Friars

Celibate

8.88 (154)

Married

9.04 (95)

9.04 (95)

Single

9.43 (7)

9.43 (7)

10.00 (4)

10.00 (4)

— (1)

— (1)

Widowed

10.00 (2)

10.00 (2)

Same-sex partner

10.00 (4)

10.00 (4)

Divorced/separated Remarried

Total

8.99 (267)

8.87 (149)

Former Friars

8.87 (149)

9.40 (5)

9.14 (118)

movements. Consequently, it was not the relatively conservative friars who left but the more progressive ones. Later cohorts of authorities appeared who were and are much more progressive. Consequently the dialectic between community membership and a vocation dened in terms of a “liberal” or “progressive” issue is not as straightforwardly apparent in the data when organized in terms of occupation. In Table 4.7 the issue of conventionality and unconventionality arises again. Those in non-normative, for Catholics, domestic statuses have higher means on the semantic differential item about the importance of working class issues in personal politics—the divorced/separated and those with long-term same sex partners. The celibates have a lower mean score, as do the married. One can conclude that future research should not only highlight the dialectic between a vocational status as dened by membership in a religious community and a vocation as dened by a sensitivity to working class issues, but several other biographical dimensions of people’s lives as well. Thus, there is the whole question of a dialectic between occupational statuses as dened by “jobs” and vocations: Do the former further the latter, or are the latter expressed in the former? Is there a relationship between unconventional gender role occupations and expressions of vocations? Is there a relationship between unconventional domestic statuses and the unbridling of vocations? The data are clearly suggestive.

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References Bibby, Reginald W. and Merlin B. Brinkerhoff. 1974. “Sources of Religious Involvement: Issues for Future Empirical Investigation.” Review of Religious Research 15: 71–79. Blasi, Anthony J. with Joseph F. Zimmerman. 2004. Transition from Vowed to Lay Ministry in American Catholicism. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Blumer, Herbert. 1969. Symbolic Interactionism: Perspective and Method. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Cohen, Steven M. 1974. “The Impact of Jewish Education on Religious Identication and Practice.” Jewish Social Studies 36: 316–26. Elkind, David. 1970. “The Origins of Religion in the Child.” Review of Religious Research 12: 35–42. Fichter, Joseph H. 1961. Religion as an Occupation: A Study in the Sociology of Professions. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. Goldner, Fred H., Richard R. Ritti, and Thomas P. Ference. 1977. “The Production of Cynical Knowledge in Organizations.” American Sociological Review 42: 539–51. Gurvitch, Georges. 1958. “Sociologie en profondeur.” Pp. 157–171, in Traité de sociologie, vol 1. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Kincheloe, Samuel Clarence. 1929. The Prophet: A Study in the Sociology of Leadership. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago. Kosa, John and Cyril O. Schommer. 1961. “Religious Participation, Religious Knowledge, and Scholastic Aptitude: An Empirical Study.” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 1: 88–97. Loand, John and Norman Skonovd. 1981. “Conversion Motifs.” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 20: 373–85. Ouédraogo, Jean-Martin. 2006. “Virtuoses, lacs et compromise religieux chez Max Weber.” Pp. 91–131 in Médiations et compromis: institutions religieuses et symboliques sociales, edited by Paul-André Turcotte and Jean Remy. Paris: L’Harmattan. Pontical Council for Justice and Peace. 2005. Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference. Quarantelli, E.L. and Joseph Cooper. 1966. “Self-conceptions and others: A further test of Meadian hypotheses.” Sociological Quarterly 7: 281–297. Remy, Jean. 2006. “G. Simmel, tension entre religiosité et religion: une transaction permanente.” Pp. 153–185, in Médiations et compromis: institutions religieuses et symboliques sociales, edited by Paul-André Turcotte and Jean Remy. Paris: L’Harmattan. Sacred Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes. 1975. “Apostolic Exhortation on the Renewal of Religious Life.” Pp. 680–706, in Vatican Council II. The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, edited by Austin Flannery. Northport, NY: Costello. Second Vatican Council, 1975. “Decree on the Up-to-date Renewal of the Religious Life.” Pp. 624–633, in Vatican Council II. The Conciliar and Post Conciliar Documents, edited by Austin Flannery. Northport, NY: Costello. Shibutani, Tamotsu. 1961. Society and Personality: An Intractionist Approach to Social Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Simmel, Georg. 1908. “Die Selbsterhaltung der sozialen Gruppe.” Pp. 494–613 in Soziologie: Untersuchungen über die Formen der Vergesellschaftung. Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot. Stark, Werner. 1967. The Sociology of Religion: A Study of Christendom, vol. 3. New York: Fordham University Press. Wach, Joachim. 1944. Sociology of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

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Weigert, Andrew J. and Viktor Gecas. 2003. “Self.” Pp. 267–288, in Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism, edited by Larry T. Reynolds and Nancy J. Herman-Kinney. Lanham, MD: AltaMira. Wittberg, Patricia. 1994. The Rise and Decline of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective. Albany: State University of New York Press.

CHAPTER FIVE

VOCATION AND VOCATIONAL “CRISIS”: A STUDY OF ITALIAN FORMER PRIESTS Giuseppe Giordan However strange it may seem, there are no up-to-date scientic studies in Italy on the phenomenon of leaving the Catholic priesthood on part of men who had devoted themselves denitively to that ofce inside the church. This absence is all the more strange, and for certain aspects culturally intriguing, if we think that in this country there are about eight thousand former priests.1 The only contributions on this topic are by Silvano Burgalassi (1970a, 1970b). Burgalassi’s approach is strongly linked to a “religious sociology,” entirely centred on the institution of the Catholic hierarchy, and marked by normative theological concepts.2 The interest of researchers in Italy, in particular of historians and sociologists of religion in recent years has frequently dwelled upon the character of the Catholic priest, highlighting his particular role both in relation to the institution of the Catholic Church and to Italian society in general.3 In addition, there have been contributions that have analysed the perception the priest has of himself, highlighting both the elements of satisfaction and self-fullment and the more problematic aspects related to difculties and sometimes to suffering (Garelli 2003). While reecting on the priest’s identity, Enzo Pace (2003: 276) points out that there might be a tension, not always well integrated, between

1 As to precise data on former priests in Italy, there are no ofcial gures; however, according to estimates commonly reported as trustworthy, the most credited number is eight thousand (see, for example, the magazine Jesus, August 2006, p. 9). 2 Studies on this topic are not extensively developed even in other countries, although there are researches that have tackled the question scientically. Blasi with Zimmerman (2004) is particularly relevant, both for the data gathered and the detailed bibliography; see also the contributions by Oviedo (2004), Schoenherr (2002), and Louden and Francis (2003). 3 The Italian literature on this topic, both from the historical and the sociological points of view, is quite extensive; for the sociological approach, cf. Of (1998) where it is possible to nd the bibliographic references of the most interesting scientic contributions; for the historical aspect see Guasco (1986, 1990, 1997).

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the function he has to perform in agreement with the religious organization to which he belongs and his own personal charisma: “If it is taken for granted that a priest feels he is part of the Church and that out of this feeling he gets his sense of responsibility for the tasks he has to accomplish, it is not as evident how he tries to reconcile his personal, subjective spiritual expectations with the objective goals that the institution to which he belongs sets for him.” From a more strictly pastoral point of view, studies dealing with the thorny subject of the lack of priestly vocations have multiplied; hence the role of the priest is studied in accordance with more balanced programming on the part of the bishops and the hierarchy. Data on the quantitative consistency of the Italian staff have been available for many years (Brunetta 1991, Dalla Zuanna and Ronzoni 2003, Diotallevi 2005). The problem considered in this context concerns the possibility of ensuring the presence of a priest in all parish churches: considering on one hand the more and more reduced number of vocations to priesthood and on the other hand the progressive ageing of the in-service clergy, the trend is often to reduce the number of parish churches, closing some of them, or entrusting the care of more communities to the same priest. Although various difcult aspects typical of the role of the unmarried Catholic priest in the contemporary society are highlighted in the studies cited above, none has dwelt specically on the phenomenon of the Catholic priests themselves who leave their ministry. As it is easy to perceive, this silence reveals much of the peculiarity of a choice that, however marginal it may be, certainly is not irrelevant in the Italian Catholic clergy. The reasons for this silence, however, are manifold and are to be sought especially in the peculiarity of the character of the Catholic priest in relation to the role of the quasi-monopoly of the Catholic religion in the Italian social and cultural context. This silence is linked to the stigmatization process that still deeply marks the choice of leaving the Catholic priesthood, a choice that is perceived negatively by the religious institution as well as by a part, more or less extensive according to the different social and cultural contexts, of the society within which the subject happens to live. The Catholic priesthood is placed at the center of a complex net of relations that concern the individual and the organization to which he belongs, his personal identity and the role he is expected to play, his public and private life, the cognitive dimension and the emotional and affective aspects of his life, his relation with the sacred, and the

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organization of power. Precisely because of this interlacing of relations and dimensions it is not easy to investigate the deep reasons that urge a person to make such an “unbecoming” choice, particularly in a context such as the Italian one, where the Catholic Church’s evaluations are “diffuse” cultural references—and besides, it is not even easy to investigate how most people in the society feel about this choice. On the other hand, an in-depth study of leaving the priestly ofce certainly might offer important indications of the change that the Church and the society are experiencing in Italy, and it might show how the different perceptions of such behavior are indicative of the evolutionary trends that re-dene the relation between religion and culture inside that social context.4 The present contribution is presented as a rst step in a wider and more in-depth study of the phenomenon of leaving the ministry on part of the Catholic priests in Italy. My research is based on in-depth interviews with 25 diocesan priests who have left the ministry in the period from the beginning of the 1960s until today.5 The areas investigated are extensive and examine the most diverse contexts for the motivations that have caused this choice. One specic focus has been on whether the choice of leaving the priesthood could be explained by the impossibility of holding fast to celibacy, or if instead the cause was to be found in a more complex kind of uneasiness, linked to the new social and cultural context that redenes the role of the priest. Particular attention has also been directed to the relevancy of the training received in the seminary, especially in relation to the vision of the world that was offered and to the role that the priest was expected to play. A nal focus has been the redenition of the former priest’s identity, both on the personal and on the social side, after choosing to leave priesthood; his relation with the surrounding context, the

4 The peculiar function of the Catholic religion inside the Italian society has been closely examined by various sociologists; cf. Cipriani (1988), Garelli (1986, 2005), Nesti (1985), and Diotallevi (2001). Of particular interest is the contribution by Pace (2003), because it analyses the function of the priest inside the Italian social and cultural context. 5 It is not possible to report here in detail the content of the interviews; therefore I will conne myself to those aspects that seem most signicant to the problems that characterize the choice of abandoning priesthood. The sample of the 25 former priests has been chosen taking into account the different ages; hence eight have been ordained before Vatican II, with the remaining seventeen ordained after it; the interviews have took place in fall 2005 and are restricted to former priests now living in the north of Italy.

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management of the stigma and how he got over it, and the possible prospect of a new integration into the Christian community. The stories of these former priests are often stories of suffering, but at the same time they reveal also a new approach to the understanding of their “new” identities. The rst task of the research was to gain the condence of these men and create an appropriate space that allowed them to run again through a path that had cost them so much labor, especially at the psychological level. In addition, it took time to become attuned immediately to their experiences, which is also due to the particular reserve that characterizes their condition. Among the stories gathered, no two are identical; however there are common traits that recur quite regularly across the different experiences. The theme I have treated with particular attention concerns the idea of “vocation,” closely linked to the idea of “God’s will.” The choice of leaving the priesthood is marked by a “vocational crisis,” and this does not lead all the people interviewed to the simple negation of their “vocation,” but it may lead to “reinterpreting” it. In this passage this appears a rather interesting change between a traditional epoch, in which vocation was immutable and the contemporary epoch, in which vocation is the result of continuous reassessment, open to the many and various experiences of life. What has emerged undoubtedly sets up a track that can be used to investigate this phenomenon further: if on the one hand it is impossible to report all the pieces of the puzzle, on the other hand what follows seems to represent the most important trends in the “big picture.” The Priest and His Image Pace (1997: 542) denes priests as people who have specialized in dealing with the sphere of the sacred and are charged by the competent authorities and by the community with the task of performing a duty that not all ordinary mortals can legitimately perform; therefore priests share the same property that is characteristic of the sacred: the condition of being separate from the secular sphere. Just because they have to do with a context that is considered to be radically different from the wordly ambit, far from ordinary everyday life, they too participate in this separation state, emphasizing it with particular external signs.

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Within the Catholic priesthood, it is theology that denes the features of the role that characterizes this personage inside the ecclesial institution. It is interesting to observe the specicity of the “theological” characteristics of the role of the priest, because it is specically these that highlight quite a problematic gap between the “angelic” expectations of the role and the concreteness of everyday life. As a matter of fact, while the theological view outlines an image of the priest totally detached from the earthly occupations and preoccupations, almost paradoxically in the Italian social and cultural context his role is much more practical and factual; it is that of a personage one may turn to for all kinds of reasons, from religious questions in the strict sense of the word to much more mundane problems such as nding a job or getting a recommendation for a particular business. Marco, the oldest among the interviewees, ordained at the end of the 1950s when Mass was still celebrated in Latin and wearing a cassock was compulsory, illustrates this situation very clearly: At those times it was quite generally accepted that society was similar to a pyramid, and that the priests were at the top of it and the congregation was at the base in a subject position. Besides, we priests explained to the believers that this structure was by God’s will, and this couldn’t but increase our social prestige. When I was ordained, at the age of 24, I was as respected as the mayor of my village and as the doctor in the hospital. . . . Indeed, my opinions were more considered than were theirs.

More than with reasons of a theological and spiritual nature, Marco justies his choice of becoming a priest by referring to the excellent education imparted in the seminary, a level of education that, at that time, outside the seminary only the richest could afford. Beside education he adds the gratication deriving from being able to help others, both spiritually and materially. Certainly at the beginning he felt as if he had been called by God, and hence he had the “vocation,” but as years went by after being ordained, this role seemed to him as “clothes that didn’t t him any more.” Marco’s experience, from this point of view, is very similar to that of Enrico, who was ordained priest at the beginning of the 1960s. For Enrico too, the idea of being in a position of helping other people had been the motive that impelled him to devote himself to God, but for both of them this perspective had not been sufcient to keep their vocational choice sound and lasting. To procure other people’s happiness or the social recognition of one’s role, did not guarantee the accomplishment of personal fullment, and, on the contrary, it led to

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the need for something deeper than the state of being a priest could ensure. The question of the role, however, must not be simply connected with the social position or with “things to be done”: It touches more deeply the essence of being a priest. According to Catholic theology, the consecrated person acts, by means of the Holy Spirit, as if he were Christ himself; the priest, in his most intimate and deepest experience, completely belongs to Christ and is unceasingly urged to comply with him. Here is the foundation of the necessity of relinquishing one’s points of view, one’s expectations, of giving up living according to one’s feelings and emotions; this is a principle that has remained unaltered across time even if the training framework and the education strategies have changed (Guasco 1986, 1990). According to Giovanni’s, ordained at the end of the 1970s, this setting actually led to denying one’s liberty: At a certain point I realized I was living in a structure that places the group’s needs before the person’s needs, and before the necessity of meeting the legitimate requirements of free expression of one’s ideas and of one’s feelings: acting like an instrument of a supernatural call had caused me to lose my identity. . . . I no longer knew what I wanted, what I liked, what I believed to be right. Instead, I knew what had been taught to me to be right to think and want.

According to the theological view, giving up one’s subjectivity to conform to Christ more fully is counterbalanced with the certainty of the objectivity of the role that the priest is expected to play: a “transguration” that however, as we have just seen, is not always adequately interiorized.6 And the law of celibacy, crucial for the comprehension of Catholic priesthood, is founded exactly on this imitation of Christ: a form of identication that has often led to separating the bodily element from the spiritual, proposing models that, consciously or unconsciously, subordinated the physical dimension to mind and soul to the point of considering the body as a possible cause of temptation and sin.7 From the experiences reported by the interviewees about their training at seminary it is possible to trace a certain kind of evolution as far as the theme of celibacy is concerned. If in the 1950s the aspect of “ghting”

6 Obviously the question cannot be reduced to a simple interiorization, but it also concerns the social and cultural changes that re-dene the very role of the priest. 7 This, in spite of the fact that the ecclesiastical law of celibacy, obligatory for the Catholic priests in the Latin rite, is optional for the Catholic priests of Oriental rite; hence the Catholic Church already provides for the presence of married priests.

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against the temptations of the esh was emphasized, in the 1960s new rationalization strategies were proposed that are more respectful both of women (no longer seen tempting demons) and of one’s own body, to the point of utilizing, more and more often in later years, knowledge of a psychological nature in order to recognize the deep emotional dynamics and the most relevant needs of the subject. The difference between training in seminary and the concreteness of life in the world is a common trait to all the experiences we have gathered. In other words, all the interviewees have perceived the gap between the image of the priest somehow idealized during their training years and in that shared worldview, and the reality of everyday life, causing as a consequence a signicant number of shattered hopes. Andrea, one of the youngest interviewees, ordained in the middle 1990s, acknowledges that the training he had received in the seminary was “open” to the world; nevertheless he points out that even this type of training has been inadequate to face the actual problems of everyday life: When I went out from the seminary I thought I knew how to cope with my ofce: I had studied the Bible and morals, and this made me feel secure, ready to teach what to do to my congregation. The impact with reality, however, was very hard: the groups in the parish church were smaller and smaller, and often they were not willing to listen or to implement what I had learned. . . . The “clear and well dened” ideas I had studied in the seminary appeared to me to be unable to face the complexity of people’s life. Not to mention the old things to carry on even if nobody believes them any more: novena, processions to the saints, blessing everything, celebrating masses repeatedly.

For Giorgio, also ordained in the 1990s, the passage from the seminary to real life was marked by other problematic characteristics. The most problematic aspect of seminary training was the inability to live real relationships in depth: when we were together the atmosphere was always joyful, almost as if we were bosom friends or barracks pals, yet scarcely able to go deep into the most private aspects of life. Once out of the seminary, I found I was alone. Relations with the other priests were always formal, and when we met we always talked about pastoral problems and never about our life and our actual needs . . . Besides I realized that the attitude of obedience had actually kept me as a child, willing to say yes in order to have a little favor in exchange. The role that had been assigned to me was getting more and more inadequate, to the point that I often felt as if I were a puppet in the hands of other people.

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In other words, being educated to listening to other people’s needs and necessities, prior to one’s own needs and necessities: according to the interviewees, this “forgetting about oneself ” at a certain point makes one lose one’s identity and one does not know any more what is the meaning of one’s life; besides this, it leads to not being able to read inside oneself clearly, and to hiding one’s deep truth from oneself. A progressive crumbling process of the idealized image of the priest, as it had been inculcated during the seminary years and then defended more or less strongly during the rst years of priesthood, led all the interviewees to question themselves about the main issue that concerns the very meaning of their life inside the ecclesiastical structure. A personal question that, however, is part of the more complex dynamics of the modern epoch, is that of disputing all the authority gures who want to impose their command or their truth. If the context of the traditional world could support the mythical image of the priest in some way, the condition of the modern and postmodern epoch seems to emphasize its fragility and inconsistencies. That is, in the contemporary era the complex interconnection between conformity to a given role and the legitimate need of freely expressing one’s individuality often leads to a critical situation, which can nd the most diverse outcomes, from a new more creative form of awareness of one’s own vocation, to the decision for leaving priesthood. In any case it seems that what is at stake is the challenge to re-dene one’s identity in a social and cultural context that “de-mythologizes” the angelic role of a priest who seems not to understand or appreciate that much his radical choice of being unmarried. At a Certain Point All the interviewees, as they tell the story of their vocations, resort to an expression that is identical even in its lexical formulation in order to dene the moment when they seriously considered the possibility of leaving the priesthood: “at a certain point.” At a precise moment that each remembers clearly, even if recalling it takes effort and in some cases opens up an old wound not yet totally healed, the difculties were no longer faced as a reason to impart new vigor to their ght against the “temptations” threatening their consecrated lives, but much more realistically became an insurmountable obstacle with which he had to come to terms. Contrary to any other type of job, to move from the

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priestly profession involves difculties that are not conned to the search for a new job. What has been illustrated above highlights the different components, of a symbolic nature, associated with values that, besides being associated with both personal and social expectations, play a part in building up the priestly identity. Precisely these complex elements make the choice of leaving the priesthood particularly hard and deeply felt. What is radically debated is not simply a profession, but much more integrally, it is a person’s identity, his social acceptability, his relation with himself and with others, besides the obvious question of his material subsistence. To renounce one’s vows, for the Catholic priest, in a sense means to lose everything. Not only do the prestige and the recognition that directly or indirectly were accorded him vanish, but they even change sign, often becoming objects of exclusion and blame for a choice that is not accepted inside the ecclesiastical world. Before getting to “a certain point,” however, the priest in this critical position undergoes a period of internal turmoil in which the individual considerations can be valued as positive or negative according to the perspective one takes: either to leave priesthood or to pursue one’s loyalty to the choice of consecrating oneself. It is a period of extreme uncertainty, in which the rst reaction has been, for all the interviewees, “to resist, resist, resist!” In all the experiences, however, sooner or later the moment comes when the most intense prayer or simply taking one’s time are no longer sufcient. The priest “going through a crisis” usually confers with his seniors and with some trustworthy brothers, but the indications that are given to him are nearly always to persevere, to “hold out,” also to avoid the scandal that the choice of leaving would cause the Christian community. The feeling that all the interviewees have of this kind of “help” is that the institution tries to save itself, and that it is not able to understand how a person’s life can develop also “beyond the promises made at the age of 24” (Carlo, ordained in the late 1980s). Here the relation emerges between the ecclesiastical institution, whose basic principle is stability, and the ever-changing exigencies of the individual. If for the Church it is the reference to tradition that says what must be done and what instead must not be done, “for the people,” says Giovanni, ordained at the beginning of the 1970s, things go differently: it is not the past that regulates the present, but the events that happen everyday are the standards with which one has to measure and confront oneself. A real person, not a person tied to

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Another point in common with all the former priests who were interviewed is the search for God’s “true” will. At the moments of difculty and crisis, a mechanism comes out that has accompanied them all along their training years in the seminary (and even before entering seminary), by means of which they have worked out the little (or great) crises of their lives in their rst years as priests. But how can this criterion for judgment be made to work in the actual situation of a person who wants to give up being a priest? Once again, it is necessary to come to terms with the peculiarity of this “profession,” in which the sacred and the profane are tightly interwoven. There’s no doubt, or at least this is what is commonly believed, that becoming a priest means to follow “God’s will.” Consequently, to decide to leave the ordained ofce would automatically mean, logically speaking, to place oneself against that will. This type of reasoning was what the ecclesiastical hierarchy ofcially proposed until not many years ago. In the case of our interviewees, called to decide whether to leave or not to leave priesthood, it is clear that such an application of the principle of “God’s will” was and still is rather alarming and also ambiguous. Behind this search for the divine will hides all the pathos that accompanies the priests who wish to leave their ofces, a route that has brought them to experience severe internal turmoil, often dramatic, and that in various cases led them into depression (17 out of the 25 interviewees have experienced it).8 To be a priest means to be a person open to transcendence, and in the case of the Catholic priest this relation with God implies a dense network of precepts and rules of conduct pervading each smallest detail of the day, from praying to preparing sermons, from visiting the sick to celebrating daily mass, including all the various social and charitable activities. Leaving this condition opens up an empty space that needs to be supported and lled up with a source of legitimacy that, it nearly seems superuous to say, can be sought only in “God’s will.” The priests who left their ofces in the 1950s (none of whom is to be found in this group of interviewees) burdened their conscience with

8 With the former priests we have interviewed the period of “re-thinking” and of “insight” before abandoning their ofces has lasted two years and a half on the average, with a tendency to get longer in the case of younger priests; only among these depression is more frequent, and this, in all probability, is to be explained by the greater expenditure of psychic energies employed in the decisional process.

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the weight of having acted against God’s will, with the resultant sense of guilt and with all that this means in the complex relation with the sacred within Catholic morality. Among the persons interviewed here, however, we can still record some interesting attempts of “interpreting” this principle, which does not lose its validity provided that it is understood “correctly,” and then “updated.” Among the oldest of the interviewees, that is to say those ordained from the end of the 1950s to the 1970s, the view that it was God’s will that had asked them to stop being priests has gained ground. The choice of being consecrated thus appears in this reinterpretation of the experience as a mistake that was made for a wide variety reasons. However paradoxical this may seem, during their intimate turmoil, accomplishing God’s will no longer meant persevering in their choice of being priests, but rather to abandon that condition in which they had found themselves by mistake, in order to start a normal life that represented God’s “true” will. If it is commonly believed that being a priest means to accomplish “God’s will,” and to abandon this condition means to be out of it, according to this interpretation the opposite is true: if a man happens to be a priest “by mistake,” God’s will for him consists in leaving the ofce. But there is also another more recent interpretation that Matteo, the youngest of the interviewees, ordained priest at the end of the 1990s, expresses in this way: I honestly can’t understand why one period of our life must be contrasted to another . . . I can’t understand why when we were priests we lived inside God’s will and then when we leave we no longer do, or vice versa, before we did not and now we do . . . I think these views are too simplistic, narrow, scarcely respectful of the mysterious project that God designs for every human being . . . I would say that they are two Manichaean views, where all that’s good stands on one side and all that’s bad stands on the opposite side. Speaking in all sincerity I have always tried to accomplish God’s will, and this was true when I was a priest, and it is true now that I am no more. On the contrary, if I actually had to say how things went with me, I have had much more labor accomplishing God’s will after leaving priesthood than before leaving it.

During the interview Matteo underlined this point with particular emphasis, because according to him it would be much easier to make such choices as his own if people had a different representation of God—“younger,” “real,” and “less functional to the power of the institution and closer to those who pursue their way in life with labor.” These considerations on “God’s will” open up a dimension that should be investigated in depth through a specic research project on

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the relation between these people who decide to leave their sacred ofce. However strange it may seem, although all of them have experienced, even if at different degrees of intensity, the hardness and dryness of the ecclesiastic institution confronting their decision, it was an important point for all of them to feel they were “in God’s will.” Although those who ofcially held the power to discern that will did not agree, the personal judgment of the ex-priests supported and legitimated their decision to change their life. As a matter of fact, their personal relation with the sacred has removed any doubt or residual resistance. So, “at a certain point” all the interviewees say they understood that, however difcult their choice of leaving their ofce might be, it was the only possible choice for them at that moment. The reasons could be the most varied, but the conclusion was only one. Contrary to what is commonly believed, the problem of celibacy does not seem to be the most important cause. With all our interviewees, before the love for a woman, the most recurring reason to leave the priesthood was a lack of understanding by the ecclesiastical hierarchy (usually the bishop or the pastor at one’s parish) or difculties of a spiritual nature. With the youngest interviewees what is particularly relevant is the disappearance of the role of the priest, as it is articulated by Catholicism, both inside contemporary society and inside the church.9 For virtually all of the interviewees the crucial moment is identied with meeting one’s bishop, when he is informed about the choice of leaving the priesthood. Nearly all of the interviewees say they were treated in a cold impersonal manner, by means of a language that almost always included words such as “traitor,” “scandal,” “shame,” “injudicious,” “pagan.” In some cases even a certain aggressiveness has been reported on the part of the bishop, who showed he felt personally offended by a choice of this kind. In three cases, however, the bishop appeared open and sympathetic, respectful of the decision of leaving the ofce. All the former priests interviewed, however, report that the “farewell” meeting has been as liberating as, somehow, “a deliverance.” (This specic statement has been repeated by 16 interviewees, with

9 The reasons for leaving are, in many respects, similar to those pointed out by Burgalassi (1970b) nearly forty years ago: in decreasing order of importance are to be found difculties of a spiritual nature, difculties with the church, conicts with superiors, problems with celibacy, moral scandal, the vanishing of the role of the priest, and nally, however strange it may seem, lack of vocation.

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the same frequency among the young as among those who left in the 1960s). Matteo synthetically describes his exit from the bishop’s ofce with an image: “It was like a pin point making a soap bubble explode. I realized that the world in which I lived was completely isolated, a world outside the world.” None of the interviewees, however, says that he went away “slamming the door,” even if someone, having seen the narrow-minded attitude of the bishop, remembers having been strongly tempted to do so. Before analyzing what it means for a former priest to abandon the “protected world” of the church to enter into the “normal world,” it is important to examine carefully what works as a hinge between these “two worlds”: the affective dimension or, as is often said in a rather stereotyped way, the problem of the “loneliness of the priest.” Of the 25 interviewed people, 15 left the ofce to get married a few months after leaving, while the remaining ones married within the following ve years. If on the one hand it would be banal to reduce the problem of the priest’s crisis to the question of celibacy, hence to a problem of loneliness, on the other hand the affective dimension appears to be an element of primary importance playing a crucial role in the decision of leaving the ofce. As Pace (2003: 295–96) pointed out relative to a sample of in-service priests in Italian parish churches, the phenomenon of loneliness must not be overburdened with meanings, because it is something that includes different dimensions, of which Pace accurately evokes three: The rst type of loneliness is related to the possible uneasiness a priest may feel not only because, considering the celibacy bond, he could not marry and establish a home, but also, more simply, for the loss of his family ties, due either to living far away from his dear ones or to the disappearance of the members of the family who lived with him. With the second type we are in front of a form of unintentional loneliness that a priest lives because his pastoral action takes place in a social environment that is marked by indifference. The third type of loneliness puts the rst two types together, stressing signicantly the fact that for a part of the Italian priests the experience of loneliness is often global: it may concern the lack of affective relations and at the same time the lack of intense social relations.

To these types of we may add the loneliness “induced” in the seminary years: the priest is trained and educated not to grow fond of anybody, not to make lasting friends, and his training is centred on helping the others to refuse receiving anything in exchange.

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The affective dimension associated with the canon law of celibacy has played a very important role in the process that has led the 25 interviewees to leaving the priesthood. In all the interviews they complain about the inadequacy, if not the total lack, of affective education in their seminary years. This is a context in which all through the twentieth century, notwithstanding repeated attempts at reform, it was rationality, study, theoretical investigation, and the intellectual dimension that were privileged, and little space was left for deepening one’s knowledge of oneself, one’s emotions, and one’s feelings. In the various ratio studiorum and in the seminary regulations, the educators appear as gures who concentrate their educational efforts on “what must be” for the seminarians, more than in analysing their actually “being” young and quite similar to the young outside seminary. After all, today it is undeniable that no strong and reliable identities can be built up if the emotional part of the individual is not integrated, tackling the dynamics that are sometimes difcult to decode if not even contradictory. This difculty is even more evident in those interviewees (19) who entered seminary in the years of lower secondary school, at an age (from 11 to 14), in which the impulses of adolescence reactivate new identity dynamics, quite complex and scarcely prone to ascetic simplications. Mauro’s experience, ordained at the end of the 1980s, is paradigmatic in this respect: I entered Minor Seminary at the age of 11, when I was still a child, and I went out of it at 25, being a ripe man for what concerns my cultural formation, but unfortunately still a child at the affective and emotional level. Obviously at 11 I didn’t know the meaning of “celibacy,” and I didn’t actually understand what the meaning was of not being allowed to marry. Once I grew up and I could understand in theory what life as a bachelor meant, I started experiencing feelings that seemed to lead me toward a different direction . . . I opened my heart to my superiors, but I was answered vaguely, and I was invited to rationalize my needs that were becoming stronger and stronger with adolescence . . . I was repeatedly told that if God had a project for me these problems would work out all right . . . but this has not been my case.

As far as the spiritual and affective growth of the seminarians is concerned, an important gure inside Catholic seminaries is that of the “spiritual father,” with whom the youngsters in training check their maturation progression and discuss the difculties they meet. If the experiences of the older interviewees with their own spiritual guides in the seminary years was mainly negative, those of the younger ones

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appear to be more diversied. While the former met an almost total barrier concerning affective matters, those ordained in the 1990s had the possibility of discussing such problems overtly, even if the answers they obtained seemed to appeal more to volunteering and to good intentions rather than offering psychological help. It is a common notion among all the interviewees that they have been abandoned to themselves for what concerns their sentimental and affective education. The only directions they were offered in that area concerned the sins they should not commit and the thoughts they should avoid. “We were not allowed to feel what we actually felt,” states Mauro, “and it turned out easier for us to pretend there were no problems, rather than indeed facing them . . . but sooner or later problems come to the surface.” The term “alienation” or “de-personalization” often recurs in the interviews, and the decision to change life is interpreted as “allegiance to oneself,” in contrast with “what the others expect from you.” This allegiance in any case costs, more so if previously the individual invested, both substantially and symbolically, in another kind of allegiance which referred more to the directions and requests of an institution than to one’s needs. Stigma At the exact moment when the priest communicates to his superior, usually his bishop, the decision to leave his ofce, an existential journey starts that lasts several years if not even for his whole life, and that can be described as the effort of overcoming a stigmatization process. Although the word stigma overtly appears only four times in these interviews, the interviewees constantly refer to the actual situation linked to this concept. According to the well known denition by Erving Goffman (1963), the stigma is that situation in which the individual is excluded from full social acceptance, and this may happen for the most various reasons, from physical deformities to different types of deviant behavior, up to discriminations linked to race, to religion, or to the local customs of peoples. It is interesting to notice how the various dimensions and various characteristics of stigma as illustrated by Goffman may be found in the actual experience of those men who, from a “normal” situation of being Catholic priests (in an environment such as the Italian environment, with strong connotations from cultural Catholicism long before any such

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connotations from current religious Catholicism), decide to “deviate” and to leave such a socially acknowledged and legitimated position to turn into a path that is very costly in terms of social acceptance. To become an “ex” puts someone at the same level of those categories of people who are dened just according to a usually deviant trait that has characterized their past life: “ex-addict,” “ex-convict,” “ex-prostitute,” and even “ex-priest.” If being a priest, especially in the social and cultural Italian context, is associated with a series of characteristics socially accepted and often considerable, leaving that condition implies a disrepute that inevitably cannot but challenge the perception that the disreputable person has of himself. The rst reaction of those who have left their ofces is that of hiding their past, thinking that if it were revealed, it might have bad consequences. They fear they would no longer be treated as “normal” people, but rather as suspicious fellows to be avoided—maybe even dangerous. As Goffman asserts, if their past were disclosed, their life chances would be reduced. All twenty-ve interviewees, immediately after abandoning their ofces, tried to nd an accomodation in an area geographically different from where they had lived up to that moment. For seven of them it was sufcient to move a few dozen kilometres away, enough to get out of the diocese to which they had belonged; for others it was necessary to move a hundred or more kilometres away. “To tell the truth,” states Paolo, ordained at the end of the 1980s, it was not so much a matter of geographic distance but rather of psychological distance: to feel secure even a few kilometres away from where one had lived up to not a long time before could be enough . . . but in some cases two or three hundred kilometres were not enough! When I left my ofce I felt so ashamed that I wanted to escape to the moon. . . .

In the various interviews the recurrent expression describing this situation is “to break off ” with one’s past, with one’s previous life, in order to avoid meeting acquaintances or, better, to avoid being recognized. It was a kind of escape with the purpose of assuring anonymity, and hence the possibility of starting a new “normal” life. Nevertheless, as it is easily guessed, it is not so simple to get rid of one’s past, and the expenditure of energies required to avoid being unmasked appears to be high indeed. To be constantly compelled to check the information to give to people met in everyday life has been felt by all the interviewees as the most challenging issue in spite of their attempts to talk about other matters. As soon as some space for condential dialogue with a

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work-mate opened up, the references to the past emerged almost spontaneously. To control these references has meant for these interviewees to be compelled for many years to give up expressing themselves normally and spontaneously. Marco, the oldest of our interviewees, even if forty years have passed since that period, recalls with precision the sense of uneasiness, sometimes scarcely bearable, derived from this ambiguity in social relationships: When I met people I couldn’t remember exactly what I had told them concerning my past: to someone I had said that I had worked in the social services, but then when I started a discussion using some over-rened or uncommon term I specied that I had also studied, and even taught a little religion, and also . . . well, indeed at a certain point the terror of being taken for a liar began to weigh heavily on me and create strong confusion in me.

But if while looking for accommodation or relating with work-mates it is even possible to lie about one’s past, it appears to be more difcult for the former priest to do so with his employer. When one of these requested the former priest to state the previous working experiences, half of the interviewees recall they answered, lying, that they had tried different jobs, and that they had studied without achieving an educational qualication; the other half preferred not to lie, and this triggered off a process dividing the world in two, on one side those who were acquainted with “the secret” and on the other side those who were left in the dark about it. However, even in this latter case, ambiguity and uncertainty were high, since the individual could not state with precision who knew (and, even better, “what” he knew), and who did not know. This ambiguity in managing interpersonal relations shows how the embarrassment derived by the impossibility of saying who one really is was high but not to the point of justifying the consequences of an open declaration of identity. In the months immediately after leaving the ofce (but for some this has been true for a few years), the cost of declaring of having been a priest was deemed too high, hence unbearable. All the interviewees share the opinion that “it is right to be known and judged for what one is in the present, and not for what one was in the past . . . past is past!” As years pass, however, this attitude of keeping the “secret” gives way to a less rigid and more bearable attitude, following the principle

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“I do not feel I am obliged to reveal it and I don’t feel I am obliged to hide it.” The issue would even be pointless among the youngest former priests. Matteo testies to how, in about forty years, the perception that the former priests have of themselves has changed: I don’t say that having been a priest is something to boast of as having been a player in the national football team, but I don’t understand why it must be something to be ashamed of . . . it seems to me much more hypocritical to continue to be a priest even if you feel that you are lying to yourself, and then even to the others. No, I am proud of the choice I made.

Matteo’s perspective, however, has required years to accomplish, and is also the result of unexpected and often embarrassing unmaskings. Precisely these unmaskings have prompted nearly all the interviewees to avoid being rigid in keeping their “secret.” We no longer nd the embarrassment of the 1970s and 1980s, but nevertheless a certain resistance persists that, besides being rooted in the social and cultural context, has deeper origins—that is, in the acceptance of the “new” identity on the part of the former priests themselves. A proof of this latter aspect is the modality with which their children come to know about their fathers’ past. In none of the interviewees (all of them married and with children) has straightforward communication occurred.10 The children usually happen to know about the past nding photos in some family album, or nding “Father” written before their father’s name in some old book. Starting from these ndings a more or less frank dialogue opens up that, however, always masks a certain embarrassment. From what has been possible to understand during the interviews, the statement “but no, to my children this is absolutely no problem, on the contrary they have understood very well that there is nothing to be ashamed of ” most probably expresses more their wish than real experience. However successfully the stigma is overcome and does not represent any more a reason for censure or disrepute, a shadow remains that not even time succeeds in dissolving completely. If it is possible to cancel the negative approach to the fact of having left the priesthood, it is not possible to cancel the actual fact of having been a priest.

10 Studies on the families of married priests are totally missing, as are also studies on the wives of married priests. These could offer an interesting perspective helping to analyse the passage of their husbands from their ofce to married life; and also the perception that the children have of their own particular situation in relation to their different socialization moments should be carefully examined.

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Once the secret has been disclosed, that is to say after overcoming the shame of talking without too much embarrassment about one’s past, having accepted it somehow, the former priests are faced with the challenge of dealing with normal everyday life, interacting without inferiority complexes or without feeling excluded. It appears to be decisive in this respect that the social and cultural environment in which the former priest is located. The younger interviewees assert they have not been subject to any discrimination owing to their having been priests; the older ones recall that, looking for a job in the 1960s and 1970s, they met some employers who, just because of their past, refused to give them the job. For both groups, however, the strongest resistance seems to have come from the ecclesiastical world, even if in the later years the situation appears to be very different. The logic of the ofcial church up to the end of the 1980s as a matter of fact was that of “isolating the rotten apples,” hence of refusing to offer any space to former priests in the various activities carried on in parish churches, nor in social and welfare activities, in catechesis, or in the liturgy.11 Coming back Simply because being a priest is not an occupation as any other one, and then deciding to leave it is not simply a changing of jobs, it is quite predictable that the sensitivity and the interests that have accompanied the commitment from the years of youth do not suddenly disappear. Almost all the interviewees (22 out of 25) have manifested their wish to be allowed to participate in the life of the parish church in which they live, even if this requires a slow inclusion process and much depends on the local parish priest’s receptivity. The possibility of resuming a “normal” life inside the Christian community, that is to say to be able

11 I cannot in this chapter elaborate on the question of leaving the ofce from the perspective of the institutional church. As to the formal aspect, the Catholic Church provides for a denite process to follow in order to be able to leave the ofce: It consists rst of a request for a “dispensation,” a document that releases the person from the obligations of being a priest. The request for the “dispensation” is followed by a very specic canonical process involving the bishop of the diocese where the priest was ordained, the Congregation for the Divine Cult in Rome, and nally the Pope, who personally issues the document with the nal reply. As a routine procedure until not many years ago—and even today in many dioceses—the recurring attitude was that of passing over the departures in silence. The most widespread masking technique was that of medicalizing the priest’s crisis and his leave to “health problems” or to “fatigue.”

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to marry in the Church, to receive Holy Communion when participating in a mass, or to be able to be a witness at friends’ weddings, is linked to the concession of the “dispensation” on the part of the ecclesiastic authorities. This concession normally requires a period of waiting, varying, from the moment of the request, from one to several years, and is seldom refused.12 After an initial moment of surprise and embarrassment, generally the lay people do not manifest particular resistance to integrating former priests in the parish life. To Giovanni, ordained in the 1970s, resuming parish life as a “married priest,” obviously after receiving the “dispensation,” has been made easy by the welcome of the parish priest, who put him in charge of the catechesis; however he points out, I have been very lucky from this point of view, since generally it is just the priests who raise problems and refuse to receive those who have lived experiences such as mine . . . It almost seems there is an atmosphere of suspicion, of embarrassment. While for the laymen it is completely different: they are more open and available, and sometimes they even understand what it may have meant for our life passing through the trouble we have met.

All the interviewees have emphasized this particular aspect, that is to say how their condition as married priests is a problem for the people who represent the ecclesiastical institution—the active priests and nuns—more than for the general believers. The lay people are not only willing to understand, but they also are available for help in case

12

While with Pope Paul VI it was relatively simple and quick to obtain the “dispensation,” Pope John Paul II, in an attempt to restrain a haemorrhage that at the global level appeared to be irrepressible, imposed more severe rules, for example that of granting it personally only to those who were forty years old. The interviewees have been very critical and perplexed in the face of these rules and the canonical procedure. Marco, the oldest among the persons interviewed, speaking of the aspects of this process that according to him are the weakest and the most questionable, specied that “this procedure, obviously, is structured according to criteria dened by the institution itself, which often put those who apply to them in the category of ‘affective immaturity’ and this, to be sincere, is an absolutely absurd motivation. Evidently it is to demonstrate that he who leaves a bachelor condition to be able to marry really is an immature person from the affective point of view.” According to Antonio, the discrepancies of this process are diverse: “When I was in the seminary nobody had ever resorted to psychology, except in very limited situations, and now in order to demonstrate that I was not t to be a priest they resort solely to principles of a psychological nature . . . and then I can’t understand why the Church doesn’t give the ‘dispensation’ before forty years of age, assuming as a motivation the fact that before that age a former priest is not ready to marry, while they still ordain young people of twenty ve.”

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of difculty. The “ofcial” deputies of the institution, instead, at the beginning appear to be more closed, and this—“always,” according to the opinion of some of the interviewees—is because the choice of the married priests might be a possible “temptation” or at least some cause of “restlessness.” Andrea told us he goes on with his studies, to get upto-date in theological matters, especially on those linked to catechesis, even if in the diocese where he now lives nobody has asked him to do any service. Only a priest friend sometimes during the year asks him to run meetings for engaged couples. He would like very much to be allowed to do something in the parish, but according to him, our church is still very clerical both as to structures and to mentality . . . every aspect of the church life is led by a priest, even about economic questions, where it is not clear why there must be an ordained person. And where there is a priest one knows from the beginning who is right and who is wrong, who can command and who must obey.

The feeling of alienation experienced inside the church, that is to say inside that institution to which they have dedicated the involvement and enthusiasm of their youth, for the married priests is probably the most difcult aspect to accept: Although I did no harm to anyone, on the contrary having risked my skin out of loyalty to my conscience, I feel excluded at present by a church that denes itself as “mother” and that accepts drug addicts, prostitutes, AIDS patients, but which is closed to those who have dedicated the best years of their life to it . . . to me this is simply incomprehensible, and I think that it is so even for many Christians who live their faith according to the spirit of the Gospel and not according to the norms of the institution.

These remarks, made by Enrico, are repeated by all the people who have been interviewed, even if with different shades of meaning. Precisely out of this difculty of fully integrating into the Church, more or less marked according to the social and cultural contexts, and at the same time out of the need of the former priests to share the experiences and the difculties of everyday life, or maybe of helping those who are in the difcult situation of having to make the choice, various groups emerge, more or less legalized, that enable the former priests to meet together, even accompanied by their wives and children. Three-quarters of the people interviewed attend these group meetings. The rest do not attend because they prefer to live their lives “normally,” feeling the self-help groups are a way of putting themselves into ghettos and continue to rehearse the experiences of the past. In Italy practically

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each diocese has its little group of former priests, even if at the national level there are larger groups such as Vocatio, Hoc Facite, Amici del Cenacolo, and Fraternità, that assemble a few hundred people. Lately the question of the married priests has been ofcially reconsidered even inside the ofcial Church, following letters published in national magazines. A particular case is the diocese of Verona, which has inserted in its local 2002 synod an advisory on “the priests who have obtained dispensation.” This advisory has been the consequence of an “open letter” written to the bishop by a group of former priests in the Verona area, with the purpose of letting the hierarchy feel that the married priest is not a problem for the Christian community, but could be a resource to exploit in the various parochial and diocesan activities. In this letter they highlight the aspects that are usually considered with greater suspicion by the ecclesiastical institution, which can on the contrary become an enrichment for possible pastoral services. In other words, according to the authors of the letter, being married priests does not result in losing the competences and knowledge acquired during the priesthood years, but rather it enriches the individual with a new experience that can be very useful both to reinterpret the theological knowledge of the past, and for the various pastoral activities. Conclusion The experience of the former priests analysed through these in-depth interviews has disclosed various research tracks that can be investigated further. We have been concerned in this study with placing into evidence how this situation represents a challenge to the comprehension of the meaning of one’s life, decoded in terms of “vocation.” What is the meaning of the concept of “vocation” for the Catholic priests who have left their ofce inside the church? Is it to them a word that still has a meaning, or rather is it a dimension to be cancelled from their lives, having been such a cause of suffering and discrimination? Or does it still represent a meaningful category to interpret the meaning of their life? What has been reported to us by these former priests seems to provide directions that can offer, if not real answers, at least trend lines that will have to be further investigated in the future. First, the concept of “vocation” interpreted in terms of “God’s will” is still meaningful to those who have left the priesthood. If the ecclesiastical

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institution asserts that their choice has been a choice of “betrayal” of their vocation, the persuasion they share is that they have “gotten to the bottom” of God’s call: not a betrayal choice, then, but an assumption of responsibility even more demanding, against the stream, and even risky. According to the opinion of the interviewees, the passage from being priests to ceasing being priests does not represent a break, but rather a continuity of a quest that leads them to overcome the narrowness of the institutional rules. In this context we see a reinterpretation of the concept of “vocation,” according to which a dynamic force privileges the sense that the social actor gives to his actions rather than to the rules xed by the institution. In spite of the fact that, in order to obtain the “dispensation” several of them have declared “not to have the vocation” (which is what the institution wants them to say to grant the leave from the obligations of the priestly ordination), they are all persuaded that the path that has led them to being stigmatized outside and, even more so, inside the Catholic Church represents a “faithful sequence” of God’s plan for their lives. But there is another aspect that gets deeper than the previous one. If we can speak of a “change in vocation” this is possible because the new situation of the married priests is a “new vocation” that permits giving meaning to the sufferings they have had to go through inside the Catholic Church to shift from the condition of unmarried priests to that of married priests. This “new vocation” would promote better understanding of the excluded and the alienated, since they have directly experienced what marks their condition of shame and of concealing. What Matteo states is enlightening: If the church believes that to a priest leaving the ofce to get married is a cause of shame, to me instead it is a cause of pride, because that choice lets me understand better the condition of the people who live in various situations of discrimination . . . it almost seems to me to follow Jesus better, the least among the least.

From a cause of stigma to a source of privilege: this creative reinterpretation of their vocations is then what seems to characterize the relation between the former priests, especially the younger ones, and the allegiance to their vocations.

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Blasi, Anthony J. with Joseph F. Zimmerman. 2004. Transition from Vowed to Lay Ministry in American Catholicism. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Brunetta, Giuseppe. 1991. “Il clero in Italia dal 1888 al 1989” [“The Clergy in Italy from 1888 to 1989]. Polis 3: 423–50. Burgalassi, Silvano. 1970a. Preti in crisi? Tendenze sociologiche del clero italiano [Priests in Crisis? Sociological Trends of the Italian Clergy]. Fossano: Esperienze. ———. 1970b. Gli ex-preti: Fuga o profezia? [Former Priests: Flight or Prophecy?] Brescia: Queriniana. Cipriani, Roberto. 1988. La religione diffusa [Diffused Religion]. Roma: Borla. Dalla Zuanna, Gianpiero and Giorgio Ronzoni. 2003. Meno preti, quale chiesa? Per non abbandonare le parrocchie [Fewer Priests, Which Church? How to Avoid Abandoning Parishes]. Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane. Diotallevi, Luca. 2001. Il rompicapo della secolarizzazione italiana: Caso italiano, teorie americane e revisione del paradigma della secolarizzazione [The Puzzle of Italian Secularization: The Italian Case, American Theories, and a Revision of the Secularization Paradigm]. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino. ———, ed. 2005. La parabola del clero: Uno sguardo socio-demograco sui sacerdoti diocesani in Italia [The Parable of the Clergy: A Sociodemographic Look at Diocesan Priests in Italy]. Torino: Edizioni Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli. Garelli, Franco. 1986. La religione dello scenario [Religion of the Scene]. Bologna: Il Mulino. ———, ed. 2003. Sde per la chiesa del nuovo secolo: Indagine sul clero in Italia [Challenges for the Church of the New Century: An Inquiry on the Clergy in Italy]. Bologna: Il Mulino. ———. 2005. “Il pluralismo religioso in Italia” [“Religious Pluralism in Italy”]. Rassegna italiana di sociologia 4: 585–604. Goffman, Erving. 1963. Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Guasco, Maurilio. 1986. “Il modello del prete fra tradizione e innovazione” [“The Model of the Priest between Tradition and Modernity”]. Pp. 75–117 in Le chiese di Pio X, edited by Andrea Riccardi. Roma-Bari: Laterza. ———. 1990. Seminari e clero nel ’900 [Seminaries and Clergy in the Twentieth Century]. Milano: Paoline. ———. 1997. Storia del clero in Italia dall’Ottocento ad oggi [A History of the Clergy in Italy from the Ninetenth Century to the Present]. Roma-Bari: Laterza. Louden, Stephen and Leslie J. Francis. 2003. The Naked Parish Priest: What Priests Really Think They’re Doing. London: Continuum. Nesti, Arnaldo. 1985. Il religioso implicito [Implicit Religion]. Roma: Ianua. Of, Marcello. 1998. I preti. [Priests]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Oviedo, Lluis. 2004. “Perché lasciano la vita consacrata: Una indagine empirica” [“Why Do They Leave Consecrated Life? An Empirical Inquiry”]. Antonianum 2: 79–100. Pace, Enzo. 1997. “Sacerdoti” [“Clergy”]. Pp. 542–548, in Enciclopedia delle scienze sociali. Roma: Istituto dell’enciclopedia italiana. ———. 2003. “L’identità del prete fra carisma di funzione e primato della spiritualità” [“The Priest’s Identity between the Charisma of their Function and the Primacy of Spirituality”]. Pp. 273–302, in Sde per la chiesa del nuovo secolo: Indagine sul clero in Italia, edited by Franco Garelli. Bologna: Il Mulino. Schoenherr, Richard A. 2002. Goodbye Father: The Celibate Male Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

CHAPTER SIX

CIVIC ENGAGEMENT AND CHURCH POLICY IN THE MAKING OF RELIGIOUS VOCATIONS: CROSS-NATIONAL VARIATION IN THE EVOLUTION OF PRIESTLY ORDINATIONS Robert M. Fishman and Keely Jones The evolution—and, in some national cases, the sustained decline—of Roman Catholic priestly ordinations is a matter of enormous practical signicance and considerable relevance to scholars, yet the phenomenon has been insufciently studied and, we argue, inadequately understood. The broader issue of clerical vocations—or, in their relative absence, clerical shortages—is a theme of signicance across religious traditions, yet it takes on particular relevance within the Catholic Church given the decline in the population of priests in many (but not all) countries during recent decades (Froehle and Gautier 2003) and the assumption of signicant sacrices by those choosing to enter the Catholic clergy. For scholars, Roman Catholic clerical vocations pose several questions including most centrally the challenge of explaining this decline (where it indeed is to be found). Moreover, the Roman Catholic case is especially appropriate for cross-national analysis, the approach we take in this essay, given the broadly international character of the Catholic Church. In this chapter—the rst component of a larger comparative project on the evolution of priestly vocations—we (1) examine the signicance of this phenomenon, (2) offer a descriptive review of data we have assembled on changes in the national-level vocation rate in seventeen countries during the fty years following World War II, (3) introduce a theoretical perspective emphasizing the role of socially solidaristic and civic commitments in the broader set of factors leading to new vocations, (4) briey review other theoretical perspectives including the claim attributing to Vatican II reforms primary responsibility for the decrease in new ordinations, and (5) offer a partial assessment of our social solidarity/civic commitment approach and the Vatican II hypothesis.

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Although we do not attempt here a rigorous and exhaustive test of these theories, we do assess the evidence provided, and offer ndings showing that (1) if there was a Vatican II effect it was at most a small component of a much larger complex set of factors driving the cross-national pattern of change, and (2) political regime transitions, in contrast, are capable of inducing large changes in previously existing patterns of evolution in vocations. We take our regime transition nding as partial and indirect, yet important, evidence in favor of the theoretical approach emphasized here, and we argue that our broader ndings clearly establish the importance of identifying and explaining cross-national differences in the evolution of vocations. We provide illustrative support for the regime transitions argument in the form of graphs charting the evolution of vocations in four paired comparisons of national cases. In analyzing the evolution of priestly vocations we take the distinctiveness of the Roman Catholic case quite seriously, but we also take it to pose issues of signicantly broader practical and theoretical signicance. For reasons we elaborate below, we conceptualize the Catholic priesthood as an instance of a life-calling, or vocation, characterized not only by religious devotion but also (to a greater or lesser extent) by a socially solidaristic—or civic—set of commitments. Although we take as a given the religious core of the decision to become a priest, we also argue for the importance in many individual instances of a public-service and community oriented component of that decision. Indeed we argue below that some—but not all—of the factors shaping the evolution of priestly vocations are more or less akin to those inuencing the trajectory of civic engagement. In the existing literature, priestly vocations have been analysed from a primarily American and largely religion-oriented perspective yielding important, yet incomplete, ndings. We instead address cross-national patterns in the evolution of diocesan ordinations and on that basis we examine substantial differences across national cases and alternative explanations for the pattern of variation encountered. As elaborated below, we assume that changes in the rate of vocations may reect multiple factors differing among national societies including not only the intensity of religious devotion and other religion-centered variables, but also broadly social and political currents, as well as socially-rooted determinants of career choice. The most inuential work on the decline in numbers within the Catholic priesthood, that of Schoenherr and Young, focuses on data from the United States and assumes that the downward trend

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in America represents a broadly international phenomenon, albeit with some national exceptions. It deserves emphasis that the concrete operational focus of Schoenherr and Young centers on the population of priests, and the priest to lay person ratio. On this basis they “conclude from the available evidence that the priest shortage in the United States, though not the worst in the Catholic Church, is part of a steadily worsening worldwide phenomenon.” (Schoenherr and Young 1993: 13) With the American case taken to be representative of a broadly international process of severe decline, it appeared logical to attribute the clergy shortage almost exclusively to the limitation of the priesthood to celibate males, as Schoenherr was to argue in his posthumously published Goodbye Father (2002), made available through the generous and skilful editorial work of David Yamane. We take a different methodological approach in two crucial respects and reach substantially different conclusions. Most fundamentally, we focus not on the population of priests but on the number of new diocesan priests being ordained each year and secondly, we systematically examine cross-national differences in the evolution of diocesan ordinations. We prefer to focus on the annual level of new ordinations because this measure responds relatively quickly to changes in the factors rendering priestly vocations more—or less—likely. The overall population of priests within a country is, without question, a very meaningful datum but it responds quite slowly to changes in the conditions leading young Catholic males toward or away from the decision to commit their lives to the priesthood. The evolution in the population of priests also responds strongly to the replacement needs set down by the number of priests resigning, retiring, and dying. Clearly the number of retirees and deaths is largely determined by the number ordained decades earlier. Thus the overall priestly population is not a sensitive indicator of contemporary shifts in factors that will ultimately determine the makeup of the priesthood. The higher the replacement needs generated by large numbers of priestly recruits decades earlier, the greater the likelihood that the overall population will decline even if new vocations are on the rise. We also avoid an indicator that has been used by others, the population of seminarians. We prefer not to use this indicator in our cross-national analysis because, particularly in developing countries with inadequate educational systems, many seminary students may be primarily interested in the educational opportunity afforded by such institutions and thus may not actually intend to become priests. Thus from our perspective the annual ordinations rate is a preferable indicator

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of changes in the level of priestly vocations. We calculate the rate for national cases by dividing the number of annual diocesan ordinations by the total number of Catholics in ten-thousands as estimated in the Anuario Ponticio. It is not our intent to question the view that the restriction of the Catholic priesthood to celibate males plays a very signicant role in the evolution of vocations during a time of changing gender roles and sexual mores, but as our analysis suggests, other factors may accentuate, diminish or even reverse the downward trend in ordinations within certain national contexts. This limitation on accession to the Catholic priesthood is a constant across cases, yet as our most basic descriptive nding indicates, the evolution of new ordinations differs across national cases to a degree far greater than has been conventionally appreciated. This signicant cross-national and over time variation establishes an interesting puzzle requiring both analysis and explanation. In our view only cross-national work can distinguish effectively between determinants of the vocations rate that are internal to the Catholic Church and thus more or less equivalent in their effect throughout the Catholic world and others that are external to the Vatican-centered institutional sphere, thus taking on different values in each national case.1 Some factors widely assumed to be important—such as the limitation of the priesthood to celibate males, or shifts in Church policy approved in the 1960s during Vatican II—are, in this sense, rooted in the Church’s institutional structure and thus broadly international in scope (despite some national differences in interpreting and implementing Vaticancentered decisions), whereas many other potentially relevant factors are external to the Church and therefore vary quite substantially among national cases. In this study we systematically examine seventeen national cases with populations above ve million and in which Roman Catholics constitute at least ten per cent of the overall population.2 We include

1 We are indebted to Robert Rivera for suggesting the usefulness of formulating our analysis in these terms. 2 We include Ireland even though the population of the Republic of Ireland falls below our ve million threshold. We follow ofcial Catholic Church statistics, on which we must rely, in including Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic rather than the United Kingdom, and on this basis the Irish case narrowly meets our population criterion. The United Kingdom is a marginal case by this criterion, but for some periods of time it meets this threshold condition and thus we include it in our analysis.

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all European cases and the primarily English-speaking settler societies (i.e., the United States, Canada, and Australia) that meet these criteria. This set of cases is intended to provide signicant variation in political factors of theoretical interest to us while limiting the range of variation in level of development. From an American perspective, this universe provides an excellent basis for examining the United States’ experience in comparative perspective. In this study we attempt to capture effects induced by democratic regime transitions, but other large-scale political transformations provide instead an operational challenge: The recasting of the borders of sovereign states and above all processes of state fusion or fragmentation change the national units of analysis on which we focus. For practical purposes we treat Czechoslovakia and Germany as unied countries throughout the time span of our study, 1945–1995, even though Czechoslovakia was split in two and Germany was rst divided and later reunied during the years covered by our analysis. We offer fundamental descriptive ndings on variation across these seventeen national cases in the evolution of priestly vocations during the ve decades following the end of World War II, 1945–1995. We also introduce a theoretical perspective for the analysis of vocations and provide analysis offering a partial assessment of this approach as well as others that focus more on factors internal to the Catholic Church as an institution. Our empirical focus on the ve postwar decades is intended to allow us to examine three important explanatory hypotheses: (1) the theoretical case we develop that regime transitions should reorient established patterns of evolution in new ordinations, (2) the assumption that the limitation of the Catholic priesthood to celibate males is responsible for a more or less homogeneous cross-national process of decline in the priesthood, and (3) the argument that the liberalizing reforms of Vatican II—nalized in 1965—are largely responsible for the observed decline in new recruitment to the Catholic priesthood. We leave to future work the analysis of a larger number of cases and a greater number of potentially relevant explanatory variables. Theorizing Priestly Vocations We theorize that although priestly vocations typically reect profound religious devotion, such deeply felt devotion may be expressed in a variety of ways—not only through the decision to join the clergy. Thus we

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take religious commitment to be a (typically) necessary but thoroughly insufcient condition for vocations to emerge and lead to ordination. In the contemporary world, recruits to the Catholic priesthood make the multiple sacrices of renouncing family life and sexual intimacy as well as conventional career aspirations with their potentially large material rewards. Historically, in certain contexts the Catholic priesthood has instead been understood to offer access to some forms of privilege as is colourfully reected in the popular Italian saying boccon del prete (the priest’s cut) used to refer to premium quality cuts of meat that, according to national lore, were reserved for members of the clergy. Yet in the contemporary world, and especially within the more or less advanced societies on which we focus, we take the earmarking of substantial material privileges for the clergy to be highly exceptional and thus we understand the renunciation of conventional career and life aspirations to form a central component of the priestly vocations we seek to account for. Moreover, in addition to this broad renunciation of conventional life goals, clerical recruits also subject themselves to the discipline of a large and fundamentally hierarchical institution. We assume that multiple motivations, rather than just one, may underpin such sacrices among the segment of religiously committed Catholic males who feel called upon to become priests (Hall and Schneider 1973: 121). Some who pursue the clerical option may simply nd it to be a more deeply compelling reection of their religious devotion than career or life options in secular society. But we focus on several additional plausible motivations. Foremost among the motivations we believe potentially important is a socially solidaristic—or civic—commitment to serve the broader community, one that is strong enough to eclipse more conventional objectives such as the individual pursuit of material rewards. We take social solidarity and civic engagement to be variable over time and among societies (as well as among individuals within them), as much excellent scholarly work shows (Putnam 2000; Skocpol and Fiorina 1999; Wuthnow 1998).3 We see an individually-felt civic and solidaristic orientation as potentially constitutive—or at least supportive—of priestly vocations. In much the same vein, the actual ebbs and ows

3 Unlike some within this tradition, we do not nd it fruitful to conceive of civic engagement and diverse types of social connections as together constituting “social capital” (Fishman 2004: 93–109).

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of the more broadly shared societal propensity toward solidarity and civic commitment—or alternatively toward individual self-aggrandizement—may well inuence the evolution of vocations by providing social support and encouragement, or discouragement, for those choosing to forsake conventional individualized life goals in order to serve a larger community to which they belong. A good deal of evidence supports our claim that civic and socially solidaristic commitments play a fundamental and constitutive role in (many) priestly vocations. In their thorough review of the then available empirical ndings, Hoge et al. (1984: 24) reported that most American seminarians, when questioned, chose “being able to help other people” as their strongest motivation for pursuing a life in the priesthood—thus placing this alternative above other possibilities such as administering the Catholic Church’s sacraments. Also highly signicant is the nding of Anthony Blasi and Joseph Zimmerman (2004) that some priests who ultimately decided to leave the priesthood attributed that decision to frustrations they encountered in exercising their civic and socially solidaristic commitments within the clerical role. Religious denominations vary in their degree of commitment to social solidarity and civic commitment and, as the important new book of Mark Chaves (2004) shows, by some indicators Roman Catholics, at least in the contemporary United States, stand out as relatively high in civic engagement. There is reason to link not only clerical vocations but also other religious phenomena to civic behaviour; recent work has argued for the contribution of private prayer to the development of civic commitments (Loveland et al. 2005). Thus we nd ample basis in existing scholarship for elaborating this connection in theoretical terms and examining it through empirical work. We do not, however, take the afnity we wish to draw between priestly vocations and civic engagement to be a static, ahistorical or fully universal phenomenon. The important comparative theoretical study of José Casanova (1994) shows that the contemporary character of the Catholic Church as a “public religion” participating in national discussions on issues of collective social and political importance has been subject to major variation over time and among national societies. Indeed for Casanova, the form taken by Church participation in matters of broadly public importance is a function not simply of the (heterogeneous) theological and political perspectives found within Catholic institutional circles but also of the macrolevel placement of the Church in the nexus between political power and the society at

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large—a dimension on which national cases differ substantially, and change over time. In Casanova’s perspective, large macrolevel political changes—such as the regime transformations of Spain during the 1970s and Poland at the end of the 1980s—stand alongside shifts in thinking within the Church itself as determinants of the evolving (and nationally distinctive) nature of Catholicism as a public religion. Adapting Casanova’s argument to the problem we analyze, we assume that the dynamics guiding publicly minded individuals into the Catholic priesthood—or elsewhere—may be subject to fundamental change not only on the basis of theological or institutionally oriented evolution within the Catholic Church itself but also as a result of major macropolitical transformations within the society at large that hold consequences for the placement of the Church in the society-polity nexus. This is not to say that we view civic or political commitments as causally prior to religious devotion and vocations, or as more subject to causally meaningful variation than faith perspectives. Indeed, political differences among the devout may overlap with underlying dimensions of variation in their understandings of faith and religious practice (Leege and Welch 1989; Welch and Leege 1991). In the Weberian tradition, we view the religious, political and economic spheres as interconnected in multiple and complex ways. Before introducing alternatives to the approach we favor, we rst examine two important implications of our theoretical claim linking priestly vocations to socially solidaristic and civic commitments. Our aim in doing so is to specify phenomena and variables that are subject to observation and which should inuence the evolution of new ordinations if our perspective is indeed congruent with reality. If our approach is a useful tool for the understanding of reality, social solidarity and civic commitments should be generally supportive of priestly vocations (among males, when accompanied by religious devotion within the Roman Catholic Church), but many individuals feeling such community-oriented commitments must nonetheless express them in ways other than entering the priesthood. On this basis we further elaborate the theoretical approach introduced here, and argue that the evolution of new recruitment to the priesthood should be subject to variation on the basis of changes in the availability of alternative avenues of expression for solidaristic and civic commitments. Thus the evolution of vocations should be shaped not only by shifts in the underlying levels of religious devotion and socio-civic commitments,

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but also as a function of the transformation in institutional structures channelling such commitments toward the priesthood or elsewhere. Political and social activism as well as charitable work ( Jones 2005) may, in this logic, represent an alternative to the priesthood for Catholic males feeling a sense of civic commitment. If this is the case, the political opening or closing of alternative forms of expression for civic commitments—as occurs in times of regime transition to or from democracy—may be reected in changing numbers of priestly vocations. Nonetheless, we do not argue for a xed relationship between democratization and vocations—or any other manifestation of religious devotion and practice. Given the twentieth century’s numerous and highly dissimilar forms of non-democratic rule (Linz 2000) and the variation across national cases in the placement of religious institutions within the state-society nexus (Casanova), we simply assume that regime transitions to—or from—democracy hold the potential to thoroughly reorient the channels leading solidaristic and civic minded individuals toward or away from a life in the Catholic priesthood. Furthermore, major cross-national differences in the form taken by transitions to democracy (Stepan 1986) and in the extent to which such macropolitical transformations recongure state institutions and societal organization—or only the regime as such (Fishman 1990, 2005) serve to reinforce the case that macropolitical transformations such as transitions to democracy may exert highly dissimilar effects on the process channelling solidaristic commitments toward, or away from, the priesthood. For this reason, regime transitions should tend to disrupt previously observable patterns of evolution in new ordinations, but such disruptions—as well as the prior patterns of evolution in place during periods of anti-democratic rule—should vary widely across national cases. To simplify somewhat the alternative scenarios, where non-democratic regimes allowed the Catholic Church to offer a relatively safe organizational haven for socially solidaristic activism or even overtly political opposition, the move to democratic rule may reduce vocations by newly opening up alternative outlets and vehicles for the expression of community oriented commitments which were channelled, under authoritarianism, into the priesthood. But where anti-democratic regimes harshly repressed or actively discouraged institutionalized religious life, democratization may enhance vocations by opening up a previously closed channel for the expression of solidaristic and civic commitments. Finally, where the Church was politically

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associated with non-democratic rule as in many right-wing authoritarian regimes, democratization may remove an impediment to vocations by relegitimizing Catholic institutions in the eyes of democratically minded erstwhile critics. Thus, regime transitions may have widely divergent effects, but if vocations are indeed related to civic commitments, macropolitical transformations should exert some effect on the evolution of ordinations— whether in one direction or the other. This is not the place to propose a fully comprehensive framework on the impact of regime transitions on vocations. We simply wish to emphasize that a clear implication of our theoretical claim on the solidaristic basis of vocations is that regime transitions should be expected to often disrupt and reorient the process leading civically minded males toward—or away from—a life in the priesthood. To put the matter slightly differently, we view regime transitions as holding the ability to generate nationally specic “U-turns” in previously ongoing patterns of evolution in vocations. It is worth adding that any disruption in prior patterns of evolution in clerical vocations that is indeed exerted by regime transitions may—in our perspective—endure for some time after the initial moment of macropolitical change. The excellent scholarship on the consolidation of new democracies emphasizes that the process leading from regime democratization to the institutionalization and full acceptance of new representative institutions is variable in its duration and nature (Mainwaring et al. 1992; Linz and Stepan 1996; Morlino 1998). Moreover, given the length of the path to the priesthood, newly felt vocations cannot show up until several years have passed. A second but equally important implication of our claim on the civic or socially solidaristic component of priestly vocations concerns the dynamics inuencing career choices and the involvement of individuals in public service and other types of “giving” activities ( Jones 2005). We assume that vocations will be inuenced by underlying processes affecting the rise or fall of civic spirits and solidaristic commitments. More specically, we argue that the forces and conditions which establish the balance between the pursuit of individual material rewards and the determination to serve others (in ways entailing more or less personal sacrice) in the selection of a career, and other life-projects, should also prove important in shaping the evolution of new ordinations. There is a strong basis for understanding clerical vocations in a manner that draws on the broader scholarly effort to account for career choices, objectives—and sacrices. Indeed, the Catholic priesthood has been

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analyzed from the perspective of the sociology of careers and professions (Hall and Schneider 1973) with a focus on professional aspirations and expectations, but even an analyst primarily inclined to view the priestly calling in specically spiritual terms emphasizes that a life in the Catholic clergy involves forsaking “common social markers of maturity and success”, which is to say “the cultural symbols that dene achievement” for those engaged in professional life within the secular world. (Cozzens 2000: 73, 81) Thus the social pressures encouraging young persons to pursue or forsake conventional career goals (such as potentially large material rewards) are relevant to the problem here analyzed. To summarize, we argue that socially solidaristic or civic commitments—and an accompanying willingness to do without the material rewards provided by a secular professional career—typically form one of the components of priestly vocations in the contemporary developed world. From this basic claim we derive two related assumptions about the evolution of new clerical ordinations: that they will be inuenced by (1) the forces and institutions channelling socially solidaristic and civic commitments into the clerical life, or elsewhere such as secular socio-political action; and (2) variations in the overall societal propensity toward socially solidaristic and civically minded or ego-centered and materialistic life choices. On the basis of the data we have collected on priestly ordinations we will offer a partial assessment of this approach (focusing on the rst of these two assumptions) but rst we must examine alternative perspectives. A signicant alternative perspective on the sociological dynamics inuencing recruitment to the priesthood is provided in the most important existing comparative treatment of this subject, the analysis of Rodney Stark and Roger Finke (2000a, 2000b). Although their study does not focus on the evolution of new ordinations, as we advocate, their analysis and theorization offer an important contribution to the search for a social scientic understanding of vocations. Stark and Finke, as well as Ebaugh (1993; Ebaugh et al. 1996) in her work on religious vocations among women electing to become nuns, argue for the decisive importance of the economically-based availability of alternative careers. For these scholars, economic development, with its opening up of new career options, lowers the relative attractiveness of religious vocations in the priesthood or as sisters in orders made up of women. We take this approach very seriously, but in this study we prefer to limit our systematic investigation to relatively developed countries and thus we

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leave for future analysis the examination of a larger universe of cases including wide variation in the level of development. Yet, Stark and Finke present as their primary causal hypothesis the view that the liberalization of the Catholic Church following the reforms of Vatican II (nalized in 1965) has diminished the attractiveness of the priesthood by reducing its distinctiveness vis-à-vis lay life. The scholarship on Vatican II, of enormous and indisputable importance for the institutional life of the Catholic Church, is characterized by some points of consensus, others points of debate, and themes for ongoing investigation, such as the search for sociological explanations of the reform impetus (Wilde 2004). Most analysts agree in seeing Vatican II as a major watershed event that established the basis for profound transformations encompassing not only the clergy and Church hierarchy but also the Catholic laity (D’Antonio et al. 2001; Froehle and Gautier 2000, 2003). Nonetheless, there are those who argue that major transformations conventionally seen as consequences of the Council actually began earlier (Chinnici 2004). The view attributing to Vatican II primary responsibility for the decline in recruitment to the Catholic priesthood is congruent with the more general argument that liberalization within denominations leads to crisis and decline (Kelley 1972). Nonetheless, this view is open to dispute and the matter is far from resolved within the scholarship on the Catholic Church. Vatican II has its enthusiastic advocates and in the writings on the priesthood arguments are to be found on the positive contributions of Vatican II reforms (Cozzens 2000). The debate over the impact of Vatican II on new vocations can be seen as one of two controversies focusing on determinants internal to the institutional life of the Catholic Church. The other is, of course, disagreement over the restriction of the priesthood to celibate males. Whereas some analysts believe that 1960s reforms went too far to sustain an acceptable level of recruitment to the priesthood, others argue in effect that they did not go far enough. Yet these two highly dissimilar perspectives share an emphasis on factors internal to the Church which, if they are truly decisive, should have roughly similar effects across national cases—much as Schoenherr and Young argue. Our cross-national analysis allows us to examine these perspectives alongside our alternative theoretical perspective emphasizing factors which vary among countries and which may change over time, partially as a function of macropolitical developments. None of these theoretical perspectives need be seen as totalistic. They may well contribute

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in differing measure to explaining changes over time and across cases in the level of new vocations. But clearly it is only through empirical analysis that their relative explanatory power can be assessed. Empirical Analysis We examine the evolution of new ordinations to the diocesan priesthood in our seventeen cases through a straightforward and simple approach. After aggregating up to the national level the data on new ordinations provided by the Anuario Ponticio at the diocesan level, we divide by the estimated number of Catholics in each national case to derive the vocations rate.4 We examine below (1) the year, during our 1945–1995 period of study, in which each country attained its highest vocation rate; (2) the vocation rate for each national case at that postwar high point and at the end of our 50 year period of study; (3) the linear trend, or slope, of the line of growth—or decline—in new vocations for each of ve ten year periods constituting our overall 1945–1995 time frame;5 (4) a correlation matrix of national vocation rates at six historical points separated by ten-year intervals during the ve decades’ time span we examine. Except for 1945, which we treat as a unique one year snapshot of vocations at the end of World War II, we rely on three year averages, e.g. 1963–1965, to characterize the vocation rate at the ten-year intervals of interest to us and as the basis for calculating the linear relationships, or slopes, characterizing the evolution in new ordinations for ten-year time periods. One methodological point requires brief discussion. We make a somewhat unusual use of correlation coefcients to evaluate the relative weight of factors internal to the Catholic Church—and thus more or less equivalent across our seventeen cases—and other factors external to Catholic institutions and thus more subject to cross-national variation. We also introduce a distinction in our correlational analysis between two 4

The case of including Northern Ireland in Ireland is the sole exception to the literal use of the phrase “national level,” as explained in note 2. 5 Unless otherwise noted, we compute the slope using the following formula: [(3 year averaged Vocation Rate at Time 2 minus 3 year averaged Vocation Rate at Time 1)/ (Time 2 minus Time 1) *10000]. This measure represents the linear relationship from one year or set of years to another. The slope as we measure it represents the average increase or decrease per year for the time period being examined. As readers will see, our data may uctuate from year to year making it important to underscore that the slopes represent average changes or trends over multi-year periods.

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subsets of this population: eleven countries which have been continuous democracies since the post-World War II democratic restorations and six countries which have experienced political regime transitions more recently. When the correlation between the vocation rate at two time points, years apart, is high it signies that there is relatively little national level dispersion in the broadly international pattern of change from time1 to time2. This holds true regardless of whether the international pattern of change is one of increase or decrease. But when the correlation across national cases from any Time1 to any Time2 is low, this signies a signicant dispersion in the pattern of change experienced by different countries. Thus a high correlation between 1955 and 1965 indicates that our seventeen national cases were experiencing roughly similar processes of evolution in vocations during that ten-year period. When, on the other hand, a correlation coefcient between two timespecic readings of the vocation rate is low, this signies that the rate at one time cannot predict the rate at the other time due to substantial dispersion across cases in the pattern of change. We use this simple but telling approach to assess the explanatory hypotheses outlined in the previous section. Given the non-normal distribution of variation in vocation rates we use a conservative measure of association, Spearman’s Rho, which focuses on the rank ordering among cases rather than the actual magnitude of national vocation rates. Thus a high correlation between two time points indicates stability in the rank ordering of our national cases. A low correlation indicates a weak association between the rank order at time1 and time2. Our most fundamental and straightforward nding is that the evolution of vocations varies substantially among the national societies we study during the ve postwar decades. As the data in Table 6.1 show, there is substantial dispersion among the national cases on several crucial indicators. The year when countries attained their highest level of new ordinations extends from 1945 through 1962, a time span of 18 years. By 1995, the end of the time period examined, the vocations rate in Poland, the case with the highest level of new ordinations, was more than nine times greater than the level attained in France, the country with the lowest vocations rate. At the close of the period under study, countries differed not only in the prevalence of new vocations but also in the direction of ongoing change. During the nal ten-year period we have examined, 1985–1995, eight cases manifest a positive slope—indicating growth in new ordinations—whereas eight cases evidence negative

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Table 6.1. Diocesan Priest Vocation Rates and Slopes of Decline/Increase 1945–1995 Priestly Vocation Rates per 10,000 Catholics

Country Australia Austria Belgium Canada Czech France Germany Hungary Ireland Italy Netherlands Poland Portugal Spain Switzerland UK USA

Slopes 10 year Periods per 10,000 Catholics**

Yr. Highest Highest PV Rate 1945– 1955– 1965– PV Rate PV Rate 1995 1955 1965 1975 1954 1962 1949 1946 1956 1947 1959 1945 1959 1946 1945 1956 1945 1954 1948 1945 1954

0.505 0.231 0.819 0.620 0.268 0.483 0.265 0.190 0.978 0.333 0.956 0.290 0.265 0.361 0.482 0.454 0.390

0.049 0.054 0.030 0.046 0.123 0.022 0.067 0.041 0.148 0.081 0.029 0.197 0.064 0.055 0.081 0.174 0.075

0.000 0.015 –0.019 0.003 0.007 –0.012 0.020 –0.010 0.017 –0.007 –0.058 0.006 –0.011 0.023 –0.022 –0.002 0.005

–0.013 0.003 –0.036 –0.022 –0.004 –0.007 –0.005 0.003 –0.003 –0.004 –0.015 –0.002 –0.005 –0.009 –0.004 –0.008 –0.011

–0.013 –0.013 –0.013 –0.023 –0.006 –0.010 –0.010 –0.006 –0.056 –0.011 –0.021 –0.001 –0.009 –0.017 –0.014 –0.012 –0.010

1975– 1985– 1985 1995 –0.022 –0.002 –0.002 0.000 –0.004 –0.004 0.003 –0.003 –0.005 –0.004 0.000 0.005 0.002 –0.006 –0.001 –0.014 –0.013

–0.011 –0.002 –0.003 –0.014 0.027 0.002 –0.003 0.003 –0.025 0.006 0.004 0.022 0.008 0.010 0.000 –0.005 –0.013

** Slope Formula = [(Average of Vocation Rates 3 Years Prior to Time 2—Average of Vocation Rates 3 Years Prior to Time 1) / (Time 2–Time 1) * 10000]—except those including 1945, which is calculated using the rate at 1945 alone.

slopes reecting ongoing decline. One case was essentially at. Moreover, in several national instances these processes of increase or decrease were quite pronounced, as the data in Table 6.1 underscore. Nonetheless, there are some points of commonality in these seventeen national experiences. All cases attained their highest level of recruitment to the priesthood at one point or another during the rst two post war decades; in all cases the current level of new ordinations is meaningfully lower than the post-war peak and in some instances the magnitude of that decline has been very great. Thus the tendency toward decline in new vocations is to be found to some extent in all of our cases albeit in widely divergent degrees. These data offer us a solid basis for addressing the hypothesis attributing to the Vatican II reforms major responsibility for the decrease in vocations. The slopes we have calculated do show that all seventeen national cases experienced decline during the rst decade following the Council, but that does not necessarily represent empirical support for

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the Vatican II hypothesis. To assess the argument critical of Church reforms we compare the immediate post-Vatican II decade with the prior ten-year period—1953/5 averaged through 1963/5 averaged. These two decades ( just prior to and immediately following Vatican II) are in many respects similar; they represent the two most negative tenyear periods in our study. During the ten years prior to the Council’s completion, fteen of seventeen cases experienced a decrease in new ordinations. Two countries experienced increases. In contrast, the rst post-Vatican II decade was marginally more negative for vocations. All seventeen cases experienced decline and in most of them the rate of decline grew somewhat steeper than it had been in the prior decade, but the magnitude of this tendency was far from uniform. In three of our cases—the United States, Belgium and Poland—the rate of decline actually lessened in the wake of the Council’s reforms. Moreover, the rate of decline in Poland, following the Council, was so minor as to be virtually indistinguishable from stasis. Only one of our national cases, Ireland, experienced a truly dramatic amplication in the magnitude of decline after the Church reforms were nalized. Thus the post-Vatican II decade was a negative one for vocations but the variation across countries is far more pronounced than is the overall contrast with the prior decade—also one of decline. These data are consistent with the possibility of a relatively small cross-national Vatican II effect, but the evidence is less than completely clear. For whatever reason—or combination of reasons—a substantial tendency toward decline was already in place well in advance of the Council. One might ask whether this reected anticipation of the eventual outcome of a Council, which was convened late in 1962 and completed its work in 1965. The data we have examined do not offer strong support for such an interpretation. Only one national case, Austria, experienced its high point in new ordinations as late as 1962. All other cases experienced a peak in vocations—and following that a downward trend—in the 1950s or earlier. In fact, most countries experienced their highest vocation rate shortly after World War II; the median year for the highest level of new ordinations is 1949 when Belgian vocations reached their peak. The same national case, Belgium, is among those that experienced a steeper decline prior to the Council’s reforms than in their wake. Thus what appears to some as a Vatican II effect may well be simply the continuation of a post-war decline that was already underway when the Council was convened. Especially intriguing, in the search for an understanding of this post-war phenomenon, is the

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fact that the post-war peak in ordinations was experienced not only by countries which directly experienced the global conict of World War II but also by neutral states such as Portugal and Switzerland. Thus the experience of war itself may not be the crucial factor in generating a shared cross-national tendency for civic and social solidarity to peak in the years following the end of World War II. We take as a suggestive nding, underscoring the need for further study, the fact that this cross-national post-war peak in ordinations appears roughly, if imperfectly, congruent with Robert Putnam’s paradigm-creating nding that indicators of civic engagement reached their highest levels in the United States at the close of the 1950s and have since declined signicantly. The downward slope in new ordinations seems to have begun somewhat earlier than the decrease in Putnam’s civic engagement indicators, a measured contrast, which may be explained by the differing role of specic age cohorts in the vocations we have studied and in broad measures of civic participation. The ordination of a new priest is a once in a lifetime event occurring at one discrete time and the newly ordained priest is typically in his midto-late twenties or thirties. Civic engagement, on the other hand, is an ongoing activity, which involves sustained participation by people across a somewhat wide age range. Thus a decline in the forces generating civic engagement could take longer to manifest itself in indicators of ongoing participation than in the annual level of new ordinations. In any event, our argument is not that priestly vocations are strictly equivalent to civic engagement but instead that socially solidaristic and civic commitments form one of various components typically underpinning the decision to pursue a life in the priesthood. We now turn to an analysis of correlations in the vocations rate in our seventeen countries at six different times set apart by ten-year intervals. As we have explained, where the correlations are high this indicates that the trend of change from time1 to time2 was more or less homogeneous across national cases; where the correlations are low, this offers evidence of country-level dispersion in the evolution of vocations across the time elapsed. We view high correlations as supporting explanations focusing on factors essentially internal to the Catholic Church (although more or less universally experienced social phenomena external to religious institutions could also generate this effect) and low correlations as supporting explanations—such as our civic engagement approach—that identify relevant causal processes external to the institutionalized Church and tending to vary by country.

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Table 6.2. Spearman’s Rho Correlations of Averaged PV Rates between Multi-Year Periods (Sig. values below) 17 Countries rate1945 rate1945 y5355 y6365 y7375 y8385 y9395

1.000 0.779 (0.000) 0.532 (0.028) 0.042 (0.874) –0.005 (0.985) –0.304 (0.236)

y5355

y6365

y7375

y8385

y9395

1.000 0.814 (0.000) 0.444 (0.075) 0.353 (0.165) 0.025 (0.926)

1.000 0.718 (0.001) 0.564 (0.018) 0.228 (0.379)

0.885 (0.000) 0.723 (0.001)

0.703 (0.002)

1.00

y5355

y6365

y7375

y8385

y9395

1.000 1.000

11 Continuous Democracies rate1945 rate1945 y5355 y6365 y7375 y8385 y9395

1.000 0.691 (0.019) 0.264 (0.433) –0.191 (0.574) –0.064 (0.853) –0.236 (0.484)

1.000 0.600 (0.051) 0.400 (0.223) 0.491 (0.125) 0.191 (0.574)

1.000 0.800 (0.003) 0.873 (0.001) 0.646 (0.032)

0.964 (0.000) 0.891 (0.000)

0.864 (0.001)

1.00

y5355

y6365

y7375

y8385

y9395

1.000 1.000

6 Regime Transition Countries rate1945 rate1945 y5355 y6365 y7375 y8385 y9395

1.000 –0.543 (0.266) –0.600 (0.208) –0.371 (0.469) –0.257 (0.623) –0.771 (0.072)

1.000 0.943 (0.005) 0.657 (0.156) 0.257 (0.623) 0.429 (0.397)

1.000 0.771 (0.072) 0.371 (0.469) 0.486 (0.329)

1.000 0.771 (0.072) 0.600 (0.208)

1.000 0.371 (0.469)

1.00

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In this analysis we examine rst a matrix for all seventeen cases. We then examine separately the eleven cases which have been continuous democracies following the postwar restoration of democratic rule in much of Europe, and the six cases which experienced regime transitions during the years covered by our study. As the data in Table 6.2 show, the correlation between the rank order of vocation rates in 1963–1965, at the time of Vatican II, and the rank order ten years later is signicant, but it is not one of the highest correlations we observe between two dates separated by a ten-year span of time. Thus the rate at the end of Vatican II in 1965 was of lesser predictive value for the subsequent evolution of country outcomes in ordinations than the rate at some other times. For example, the rank ordering of the rates in 1953–1955 was more predictive of the outcome ten years later than was the case for the rank ordering of 1963–1965—when used to predict the national ordering of vocation rates ten years later. The correlation between 1973–1975 and 1983–1985 is also higher than the measure of association between the national rank ordering of rates at the time of the Council and ten years later. These ndings underscore the fact that the decade following the Council does not stand out as one of especially homogeneous cross-national tendencies in the evolution of vocations. If there was a Vatican II effect it appears to have been more heavily ltered through nation-specic realities than the shared effects in evidence for the decade prior to the Council and the decade beginning ten years after the Council. This can hardly be taken as evidence that Vatican II reforms represent the decisive element driving a worldwide decline in ordinations. We do not completely exclude the possibility of some effect of the Council on the decline in vocations but if there was such an impact it was only one relatively small part of a much larger complex pattern of factors inuencing vocations. The effort to attribute major responsibility for the decrease in new ordinations to the Council’s reforms is not supported by our analysis. Our data do provide clear evidence of a regime transition effect. The Spearman’s Rho correlations show signicantly more dispersion in the regime transition countries than in continuous democracies for all ten-year time spans following Vatican II.6 Clearly regime transitions

6 We include in the regime transition group Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia and also Germany because of the regime transition in Eastern Germany with the collapse of the communist regime there. If we code Italy as a regime transition country (not reported in Table 2) due to the crisis and reorganization of political institutions within democracy (Morlino 1998), thus yielding 7 regime transition countries and ten cases of democratic continuity, the contrast between the regime transition cases and continuous democracies is even greater than reported in Table 2.

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decrease the salience of cross-case similarities in patterns of change over time. Countries experiencing regime transitions were far more likely than continuous democracies to experience tangible U-turns in the pattern of evolution in new ordinations, thus shifting the national rank ordering. We take this to mean that the reorienting of political life and of the religion-polity nexus, which takes place in a regime transition, tends to disrupt ongoing tendencies—whether of growth or decline—in the evolution of new ordinations. Our theoretical approach emphasizing the civic component of vocations explains why this change in ongoing patterns of evolution takes place: the altering of institutional channels for engagement changes the dynamic of evolution in vocations. Yet the direction of this effect differs across cases—for reasons we have elaborated. Whereas the Polish transition marked the peak in a trend of growth in ordinations and the onset of a time of decline, the Portuguese and Spanish transitions followed periods of decline in ordinations and were followed by the renewal of growth—beginning earlier in Portugal than in Spain.7 Our argument on the impact of regime transitions on vocations can be best visualized by examining several graphs that chart the evolution of vocations for illustrative pairings of countries during the nal three decades of the twentieth century, the decades in which the regime transitions in question took place. For this purpose we have relied on data from the Statistical Yearbook of the Catholic Church, which we use to calculate vocation rates for each year from 1969–2000. For this period of time we do not systematically examine all potentially relevant cases but instead focus on eight national cases grouped in four pairings that prove useful to illustrate the sort of changes that regime transitions can produce. Poland and Chile, the two cases we rst examine, both experience increases in the vocation rate during their nal decade of authoritarian rule—in both instances in the 1980s—followed by a decline in vocations that began shortly after the return of democratic rule. In contrast, both Spain and Portugal experienced a decline in vocations during the nal decade of their authoritarian regimes followed by a revival of vocations in the wake of their mid-1970s regime transitions, a revival which was quite sudden in Portugal and which 7 The Polish data for the post-transition decade, 1990–2000, not reported in our tables, clearly demonstrate this pattern of change in direction. During the post transition decade what had previously been a strongly positive slope turned negative, reaching the level of –0.0053.

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0.025

Vocation Rate per 10,000 Catholics

0.02

0.015 Poland Chile 0.01

0.005

0 1969

1971

1973

1975

1977

1979

1981

1983

1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

Years

Figure 6.1. Vocation Rates in Poland and Chile 1969–2000

0.025

Vocation Rate per 10,000 Catholics

0.02

0.015 Spain Portugal 0.01

0.005

0 1969

1971

1973

1975

1977

1979

1981

1983

1985

1987

1989

1991

1993

1995

1997

1999

Years

Figure 6.2. Vocation Rates in Spain and Portugal 1969–2000

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occurred somewhat later, following a multi-year lag, in Spain. These four national cases are quite different yet in all of them the politics of regime transition and the reformulating of the religion/polity nexus led to a reorientation of ongoing patterns of evolution in new ordinations. The patterns to be observed in continuous democracies are somewhat different. In the United States and Canada the three decades from 1969–2000 were marked by essentially uninterrupted decline in the vocations rate. Some democracies, however, did experience disruptions in ongoing patterns as is illustrated by the cases of the Netherlands and Italy, both of which witnessed revivals in new vocations during the period in question. Although both countries were of course continuous democracies during this three-decade period, they did witness signicant disruption in the religion/polity nexus as a result of the eclipse of the verzuiling model of pillarization by religious (or ideological) tradition in Dutch society and the crisis of the Christian Democratic Party in Italy. From the standpoint of fundamental democratic freedoms, Italy and the Netherlands belong alongside Canada and the United States for the period in question but from the perspective of the opposition between continuity and change in the religion/polity nexus it can be argued that Italy and the Netherlands have some points in common with the regime transition countries for this period of time. Whether ongoing national patterns of evolution in vocations continue, or are reversed, appears strongly tied to the degree of transformation or stability characterizing the religion/polity nexus. Our analysis makes a strong case for the importance of major crossnational differences in the late twentieth century pattern of change in vocations—which some had seen as largely homogeneous across national cases—and it also offers suggestive (if partial) support for our theoretical claim that socially solidaristic and civic commitments represent one of the components typically contributing to clerical vocations. We show the existence of nationally specic disruptions in ongoing patterns of evolution in ordinations and we link those case-specic disruptions to political phenomena. Clearly this perspective and these ndings raise as many new questions as they answer. One obvious factor of signicance is the force of secularization—or enduring religious faith and practice—in the overall set of variables inuencing the evolution of ordinations. Despite the complex differences among the beliefs and behaviours understood to represent secularization, the contrasts among European cases (Greeley 2003) are by now well documented and they offer one important, if difcult to operationalize, explanatory hypothesis

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0.025

Vocation Rate per 10,000 Catholics

0.02

0.015 USA Canada 0.01

0.005

0 1969

1971

1973

1975

1977

1979

1981

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not examined in this paper. Multivariate work with a broader universe of cases is needed to carefully examine alternative explanations and to analyze possible determinants of change in the underlying propensity toward such non-individualistic life-commitments. We are currently engaged in this analysis.8 References Blasi, Anthony J. with Joseph F. Zimmerman. 2004. Transition from Vowed to Lay Ministry in American Catholicism. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press. Casanova, José. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chaves, Mark. 2004. Congregations in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Chinnici, Joseph P. 2004. “The Catholic Community at Prayer, 1926–1976.” Pp. 9–87, in Habits of Devotion: Catholic Religious Practice in Twentieth-Century America, edited by James M. O’Toole. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Cozzens, Donald B. 2000. The Changing Face of the Priesthood: A Reection on the Priest’s Crisis of Soul. Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press. D’Antonio, William V., James D. Davidson, Dean R. Hoge and Katherine Meyer. 2001. American Catholics: Gender, Generation and Commitment. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Ebaugh, Helen Rose. 1993. Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Ebaugh, Helen Rose, Jon Larence, and Janet Slatzman Chafetz. 1996. “The Growth and Decline of the Population of Catholic Nuns Cross Nationally, 1960–1990: A Case of Secularization as Social Structural Change.” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 35: 171–83. Fishman, Robert M. 1990. “Rethinking State and Regime: Southern Europe’s Transition to Democracy.” World Politics 42: 442–40. ———. 2004. Democracy’s Voices: Social Ties and the Quality of Public Life in Spain. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. ———. 2005. Legacies of Democratizing Reform and Revolution. WP1–2005. Lisbon: Instituto de Cienciais Sociais, Universidade de Lisboa (available at www.ics.ul.pt). Froehle, Bryan T. and Mary L. Gautier. 2000. Catholicism USA: A Portrait of the Catholic Church in the United States. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. ———. 2003. Global Catholicism: Portrait of a World Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books. Greeley, Andrew M. 2003. Religion in Europe at the End of the Second Millennium. London: Transaction Publishers.

8 We wish to thank the Kellogg Institute, University of Notre Dame for research funding that aided with data collection. For important suggestions in the course of this work and/or very useful comments on earlier drafts we are grateful to Anthony Blasi, Dave Campbell, José Casanova, Mark Chaves, Kevin Christano, Bob Dowd, Gosta Esping-Andersen, Mary Gautier, David Hachen, Nicholas Longford, Julia Lopez, Brian Miller, John Myles, Bob Pelton, Ben Radcliff, Robert Rivera, David Sikkink, Bob Sullivan, Samuel Valenzuela, and Melissa Wilde.

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Hall, Douglas T. and Benjamin Schneider. 1973. Organizational Climates and Careers: The Work Lives of Priests. New York: Seminar Press. Hoge, Dean, Raymond Potvin, and Kathleen Ferry. 1984. Research on Men’s Vocations to the Priesthood and the Religious Life. Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference. Jones, Keely. 2005. Patterns of Helping Structural Context and Cultural Systems in the United States Nonprot Sector. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Notre Dame. Kelley, Dean M. 1972. Why Conservative Churches are Growing: A Study in Sociology of Religion. New York: Harper & Row. Leege, David and Michael R. Welch. 1989. “The Religious Roots of Political Orientations: Variations among American Catholic Parishioners.” Journal of Politics 51: 137–62. Linz, Juan J. 2000. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes. Boulder CO: Lynne Rienner. Linz, Juan J. and Alfred Stepan. 1996. Problems of Democratic Transition and Consolidation: Southern Europe, South America and Post-Communist Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Loveland, Matthew T., David Sikkink, Daniel J. Myers, and Benjamin Radcliff. 2005. “Private Prayer and Civic Involvement.” Journal for the Scientic Study of Religion 44: 1–14. Mainwaring, Scott, Guillermo O’Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela, eds. 1992. Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New South American Democracies in Comparative Perspective. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press. Morlino, Leonardo. 1998. Democracy between Consolidation and Crisis: Parties, Groups and Citizens in Southern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Putnam, Robert. 2000. Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. New York: Simon and Schuster. Schoenherr, Richard and Laurence Young. 1993. Full Pews and Empty Altars: Demographics of the Priest Shortage in the United States Catholic Diocese. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Schoenherr, Richard. 2002. Goodbye Father: The Male Celibate Priesthood and the Future of the Catholic Church. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Skocpol, Theda and Morris Fiorina, eds. 1999. Civic Engagement in American Democracy. Washington, DC: Brookings Institute. Stark, Rodney and Roger Finke. 2000a. Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. ———. 2000b. “Catholic Religious Vocations: Decline and Revival.” Review of Religious Research 42: 125–45. Stepan, Alfred. 1986. “Paths toward Redemocratization: Theoretical and Comparative Considerations.” Pp. 64–84, in Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Comparative Perspective, edited by Guillermo O’Donnell, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Laurence Whitehead. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Wilde, Melissa. 2004. “How Culture Mattered at Vatican II: Collegiality Trumps Authority in the Council’s Social Movement Organizations.” American Sociological Review 69: 576–602. Welch, Michael R. and David Leege. 1991. “Dual Reference Groups and Political Orientations: An Examination of Evangelically Oriented Catholics.” American Journal of Political Science 35: 28–56. Wuthnow, Robert. 1998. Loose Connections: Joining Together in America’s Fragmented Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

CHAPTER SEVEN

WOMEN, RELIGIOUS AGENCY AND THE POLITICS OF VOCATION Laura M. Leming Listen, Bishop. Listen well. Altogether, here in this area, more than one hundred women now and then tell to one another, to me, to anyone who has ears for hearing, their expectations, disappointments, indescribable humiliations, their hesitations, lack of cooperation and participation . . . and many times, of the misunderstanding of most of our clerics. That is why the majority of the women folk have asked me to write to you with these thoughts.—Liwwat Boke, August 25, 1844 Your Eminence: I am a thirteen year old girl. I’ve been an altar server for four years at my Parish and I think that it is unfair that I and other girls can no longer serve on the altar. Why am I being deprived of that opportunity? It is disturbing me to think that I am not equal in the Church. I’ve started a petition to try to allow girl altar servers. I’ve collected 220 signatures. . . .—Sincerely, Lilia, November 30, 1991 Once I questioned an archbishop. I said, ‘Our Lord came through the womb of a woman. And how is it that a married woman is not allowed to give the Lord to people as communion?’ He didn’t give me an answer!—Rose, a south Indian Catholic, 2003 My daughter has opinions about everything, and she is absolutely unabashed in her willingness to share them. Even when I disagree with her, I admire the color that rises in her cheeks, the strength that grows in the volume of her voice, the emphasis of her strong hands, and the magic she works with words when she feels erce and right.—Martha Manning, 1996, from Chasing Grace

Four Voices/Four Vocations Despite the almost 150 year spread and half a world geographically between them, Lilia, a 20 year-old Catholic young adult, Liwwat Boke, a Midwestern US farming woman, and Rose, a South Indian Catholic grandmother, all exhibit the “strength of voice” that Catholic author Martha Manning admires in her daughter. Woman-conscious Catholics across generations and around the globe have devised in different

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times and spaces, a variety of ways to live out their sense of vocation by exercising their voice and carving out space for women. The stories of Lilia and Rose come from two branches of a research agenda that focuses on Catholic women’s negotiation of their dual identities as women and as Catholics. Their stories and those of other Indian and US women form the foundation for this exploration of the politics of vocation. The “politics” of vocation refers to the ways in which people negotiate the conicts between identity claims that are salient to them and the constraints they encounter within social institutions of various kinds. This understanding is in keeping with Max Weber’s denition: “politics” . . . “means striving to share power or striving to inuence the distribution of power . . . among groups” (1946: 78). Unlike the context of the state that Weber addressed, the sites of the politics of vocation may be small, as in a family, or quite large, as in the setting considered here, Roman Catholicism. Weber’s notion of vocation was action which “nourishes . . . inner balance and self-feeling by the consciousness that . . . life has meaning [italics his] in the service of ‘a cause’ ” (1946: 84). In this chapter, I argue that many Roman Catholic women are engaged in a struggle to inuence the distribution of power within their church so that their treasured identities of both woman and Catholic can be fully claimed, expressed and ultimately valued within the wider institution. Their “cause” is to live their vocation in the concrete ways they feel called, for Rose, to be a communion minister, for Lilia to restore the presence of females in the sanctuary as altar servers, and for Liwwat, that the bishop seriously listen to women’s concerns about the roles of women within marriage and child-bearing.1 The strategies these and other women use to claim ownership of Catholicism and to both transmit and transform their religious tradition are interpreted here as a form of religious agency. Religious agency means a personal and collective claiming and enacting of dynamic religious identity. As religious identity, it may include, but is not limited to, a received or an acquired identity, whether passed on by family, religious group or other social entity such as an educational community, or actively sought. To constitute religious agency, this identity is claimed and lived as one’s own, with an insistence on active owner-

1 “Rose” and all other respondent names are aliases, which in most cases were chosen by the respondents themselves.

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ship. McAdams (1997) gives the name “agential I” to the “I” engaged in making a life, in this case, making a religious or spiritual life, whether in concert or in conict with religious institutions. This valued identity is experienced as meaningful, claimed as one’s own, and directed toward chosen or adopted goals. Essentially, when religious agency is operative, religion is performed as well as practiced, consciously enacted, not simply rote repetition.2 As a designation, “woman-conscious” is rooted in the lens of “class consciousness.” Woman-conscious individuals who are women, the focus of this analysis, hold their female identity salient. Woman-conscious men are attune to the disparities of privilege afforded men and women in their societies. All have some reective awareness of the objective conditions of women’s social positioning in church, particularly as they see it differentiated from men’s positioning. Secondly, they have a subjective awareness of the signicance of women’s position in terms of the limits and possibilities it poses. Additionally, they have an emergent awareness that others share this position, that the possibility of a shared group identity exists, and see potential for collective efforts at desired change. By looking at the practices, that is, the strategies that woman-conscious women use, not only to stay engaged in church but also to inuence the shape of Catholicism, we see them enacting religious agency. A full explication of religious agency requires a look at the social psychological dimensions of how an individual becomes agentic. Catholic and other Christian women interviewees often stress a “sense of urgency” about their need to nd ways to be both women and Christian despite the dilemma they experience in enacting both identities with integrity. Often, as women, they feel constraints imposed by their religious tradition on what they can do or say. As Christians who value their respective religious traditions as a heartfelt and salient identity, they experience an expectation to suppress their “woman-consciousness.” Louise, a 67-year-old retired professional and US Catholic, gives an example: “the Church has just turned their back on a rich resource and then bemoaned that they don’t have the vocations, or they don’t have this, or they don’t have that,” but “this is my tradition and this is what I know . . . that it is a way of moving toward and understanding the mysteries of God . . . and therefore this is the tradition that I will

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work to try to improve.” Louise and others “work to try to improve” Roman Catholicism by nding ways, sometimes even very subtle ways, to navigate an alignment within Catholicism that frees them to live their vocations, makes their voices heard, helps to create spaces they perceive as more woman-friendly, and pushes toward structural change. The concept of “woman-consciousness” demarcates church members for whom female gender identity is salient and/or valued. It is not intended to suggest an essentialist ideal type for those who carry that identity. Just as there is no single “women’s” perspective, there is not a narrowly dened perspective among the various women who identify as being woman-conscious. While a shared consciousness can be drawn out of their stories, these women offer a variety of perspectives and experiences. The intentional avoidance of the phrase “feminist-consciousness” (Bartky 1990) must also be claried. Within Catholic studies the use of the word “feminist” is, by some, immediately identied with doctrinal controversy like taking a “pro-choice” stance, whether or not that is the case (e.g., the organization Feminists for Life who take an antiabortion position). I propose the concept of woman-consciousness as a tool which enables us to look at this dynamic of raised consciousness without the layers of negative meaning that have accumulated with the use of “feminist” consciousness. Schneiders (2000) makes a case for the term “Gospel feminism” as she outlines the resonance between feminist inclusion and Christian values. Using “woman-conscious” as a heuristic tool gives an alternative that can be more widely employed. It allows us to identify a group of women (and, potentially, men who share concern for issues of women’s inclusion) in church (or society) without prejudice to their various individual positions with regard to specic Catholic doctrinal matters. Furthermore, I believe that this concept has potential to be the conceptual bridge that we need to represent the reality that feminist ideas have become diffused in church and in the broader society even though for some the label has acquired stigma. Using woman-consciousness is also a deliberate methodological decision. The study sample was designed to include women who might not necessarily identify themselves as “feminist,” but who nevertheless have a somewhat heightened awareness of being women within church contexts. This broadened the target group and allowed for the inclusion of a wider range of voices. This is particularly helpful in that other studies (cf. Katzenstein 1998; Dillon 1999) circumscribed all or part of their samples by a clear commitment to feminism per se.

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Theoretical Underpinnings: Vocation, Voice and Claiming Sacred Space The reexive process of constructing one’s religious identity is tied in traditional religious understandings to vocation. Weber offered a key insight when he insisted that ideas, including religious ideas like “calling” or vocation, can shape social action and organization. By doing so, he guided sociology to recognize a connection between vocation and strategic action constituting agency. Judeo-Christian understanding of vocation (from the Latin vocare, “to call”) entails hearing a divine call (sometimes embodied in a human voice) to go somewhere, do something, or be someone in the context of a relationship with the divine. The Hebrew Psalmist sings “Deep is calling unto deep” (Psalms 42:7). Vocation doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Rather, it is a social interaction, a relationship of mutuality where call is both heard and responded to. Voice in this case is elicited by another voice. I contend that this sense of vocation is at the root of why the woman-conscious Catholics and other Christians express pain and hope around issues of speaking and silence. The ignoring, mufing or silencing of women’s voices becomes a barrier to their ability to live their vocation as church women. But the interview data suggest that it also leads them to strategic and creative uses of voice and silence as they negotiate lives as Christian women.3 A classic approach to the options available to people in their situation is laid out in Albert Hirschman’s book Exit, Voice and Loyalty. Hirschman’s work was directed primarily toward naming a process in relation to dissatisfaction in the business arena, but he suggested that his categories could be applied more widely. To be sure, Hirschman’s ideas are employed in a diversity of contexts (Stocks 1997; Ebaugh 1987). He understood exit as an “economic” or relatively clear-cut concept. From his perspective, exit is neat; one chooses to leave or not. On the other hand, voice, as a “political” concept, exists along a broad continuum “from faint grumbling to violent protest” (1970: 16). Both exit and voice serve to notify management that something is amiss. If exit is not overwhelming, that is, not involving a majority of stakeholders, there is still time for the organization to make the necessary changes to keep

3 This study focuses on Catholic women who are woman conscious but does not preclude the fact that many Catholic men are also woman-conscious and may also enact religious agency around this issue.

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demand high. By exercising voice, members notify management of their dissatisfaction hoping to initiate change from within the organization. “Voice is essentially an art, constantly evolving in new directions.” (1970: 43) These studies uncovered how women use the art of voice strategically in asserting their vocation as female Christians. The early feminist Christian theologian Nelle Morton (1985) is best remembered for her articulation of “hearing into speech.” She maintained that women are empowered to speak their own religious experience only in the presence of a listening other. Thus she acknowledged the interactive social relations within which voice occurs and is engendered. By contrast we can also examine the social relations wherein voice is mufed or silenced. Where religious practices marginalize the words, insight, and experience of women, discursive space must be opened which welcomes and afrms their contributions. Schüssler-Fiorenza (1998: 49) calls for this “transformation of religious practices” (as well as academic disciplines), but she also recognizes the existing agency of women despite repressive practices. Wo/men’s [sic] theological silencing and exclusion from the academy is only one side of the story. The other side is the “dangerous memory” of wo/men’s religious agency as prophets, teachers, and wise wo/men . . . Both sides of the story—that of women’s dehumanization, co-optation and silencing and that of their courage and agency—must be held together if wo/men are to nd their intellectual theological voices today.

Hirschman conceptualizes voice as an art prompted by loyalty and the refusal to exit. For Hirschman, voice serves as a “disruption” by serving as a warning to organizational leaders that decline is occurring. The three challenges issued to Catholic bishops cited in the opening of this chapter call for leaders who listen to women’s (and children’s) voices and are willing to adjust their course of action. My study also showed that women frame their dilemma as Christian women and respond to it by making claims on place and space. Positions, places, and directional indicators (e.g., who’s up, down, in or out) gured prominently in women’s narratives. They frequently used spatial imagery to describe their encounters with various aspects of church, from concrete buildings to church representatives and from parish communities to small gatherings of people who have a claim on Catholicism or their Protestant congregations. One of the persistent questions asked was “Where is there space for women who are Catholics?” Ultimately, they seek closeness to God, which is what “real

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church,” as they see it, is supposed to be about. But they rail against church putting limits and boundaries on that closeness. They discuss the impact of not being allowed “up on the altar,” and not being admitted to “circles of inuence.” Why the emphasis on place and space? On the surface, clearly, one root of spatial imagery is that we are embodied human beings. Space and place are a fact of our existential reality. We are someplace when we are at all. Whether we t or not or whether we are enabled or constrained by the place we occupy becomes a meaningful aspect of our psychological existence and an important part of our narrative. The women in this study, both Indian and American, describe their experience of nding a sense of sacred and profane in the same church spaces, sometimes simultaneously and sometimes sequentially. They sense they have a “rightful place” and feel their belonging and yet their experiences of church sometimes communicate that they have “no place” or else, they have a clearly dened place that does not seem to t their sense of call. The sacred sense of their connection and belonging and the profanity of not belonging and separation co-exist. Their sense of sanctuary is sometimes crowded out by the pain of how “tortured” their relations with church can be. Opposing feelings, memories and choices occupy the same varied spaces they name “church,” whether those spaces are buildings or the communities they house. Church space is both liberating and limiting, familiar and foreign, congruent and conicting. Depending on the individual and the time of the telling, the story of being a church woman may highlight one or another aspect or the contradiction itself. These woman-conscious Christians hold this experience in some degree of tension. The task for those who do not choose exit is to maximize space which is sanctuary and to minimize space that connes or is conictual. They try to enlarge the spaces where connection to the sacred is felt or produced and to diminish or avoid spaces where connection is cut off. They continue to value their birthright as Christian women while transgressing boundaries set for them and devising spaces within existing church space that are more hospitable to their experience as embodied women. In these new or re-formed spaces, they play with new language, images, rituals and directions for church women, not limiting themselves to the dichotomous paths of “the virgin or the whore” which Susan saw as the only choices set forth for Catholic women. Attention to geography (Vitek and Jackson 1996), “placeways” (Walter 1988), borders (Anzaldua 1987; Giroux 1992; Giroux and McLaren

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1994) and the politics of space (Moss 1997; Luke 1994; Clark 1990) has gained momentum with the advent of the postmodern, or as Giddens prefers, the late-modern, mind. In fact, Giddens points out the importance of space (and time) understood as the container or context of interaction (1984: 110–26), which he terms a “locale.” Depending on how a given locale is “regionalized,” that is, associated with specic social practices, it has a major effect on the kind of interaction and the range of activities that typically can occur there. Giddens doesn’t see locale or region as strictly determining behavior but as an important aspect of contextualization. Certain locales may be either central or peripheral. With reference to Weber’s (1968: 341–44) understanding of closed and open groupings, Giddens makes an important statement about how elites occupy space and distance themselves from “outsiders” which has relevance to women in churches: “Those who occupy centres ‘establish’ themselves as having control over resources which allow them to maintain differentiations between themselves and those in peripheral regions. The established may employ a variety of forms of social closure to sustain distance from others who are effectively treated as inferiors or outsiders” (1984: 131). Having “control over resources” is, for Giddens (as well as for Sewell 1992), equivalent to having power. “Sequestering” is a notion that Giddens uses in his early work on structuration (1984) and later in his consideration of identity (1991), relevant here as women speak of being sequestered from the literal sanctuary of churches. Some church rules (e.g., the incorporation of female altar servers, lectors and Eucharistic ministers) and also the practices of women’s groups have made that traditional boundary more uid. However, it is reasonable to relate “forms of social closure” to hierarchical prohibitions of women in roles of priest and deacon, or even from sanctuary space. John D’Mello is a priest sociologist and advisor to the national board of one of the women’s groups whose members I interviewed as part of the South India study. In a column in the group’s newsletter, D’Mello consistently encourages them to create “an autonomous ground from which to critique patriarchy” much as the Mahila Mandals that is, local women’s groups, were meant to do in wider Indian society: “Women have to withdraw from male-dominated spaces so that they can gather and dene their own experiences. They need separate spaces to develop this critical culture.” (2003: 129) Even so, D’Mello hopes that in the Asian reality, a solidarity that recognizes the interconnection of “the issues of peasants, workers, dalits, tribals and ecology” is maintained.

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He pushes for an interface between “sexism, racism, casteism, colonialism, militarism, fundamentalism and environmental destruction” and for collaboration between Christian women’s groups and other oppressed groups. The spaces negotiated through woman-conscious religious agency are meant to be more inclusive of all. For the women in these studies presented in tandem here, vocation is a cherished identity which intertwines their identities of woman and Christian. By their accounts, to fully respond to this experience of calling, their voices need to be raised and heard and open space that is woman friendly and welcoming of women’s ministerial gifts needs to be created in churches. Studies of Woman-Conscious Catholic Women in the United States and India This consideration of vocation and social theory nds its empirical base in two qualitative studies of Catholic women, one conducted in the United States in 1999–2000, and one spanning two research trips to India in 2002 and 2003. Both studies involved individual in-depth interviews as well as observations and interviews with Catholic and other Christian women’s identity groups in their respective countries. The US study includes 33 individual interviews and the Indian study represents 24 women, about half of whom were interviewed in various group contexts due to constraints on the women’s time and availability of transportation. These studies initially were conceived as explorations of how womanconscious church women negotiate their dual identities as women and as church members. In the course of the research, a strong theme that emerged as respondents told their stories was a sense of urgency, represented by many of the women by their choice of the words “vocation” or “call,” signifying that something impels them. These women’s stories revealed their strategic use of voice and the ways they carve out woman-friendly spaces in church contexts, in order to respond to that felt sense of vocation or call. Sara said it simply as she described her own experience: it “sounds like a call to me.” She and others want to speak and be heard. They feel that they themselves and other women have something crucial and efcacious to say and yet live with the dilemma that their speech is not fully welcomed or their words are not being heard. As Deanne declared, “It’s our church too—and we deserve to have a voice in it.” Their sense of urgency moves them to agency.

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Field activities in the Indian study included observations and interviews at women’s groups, participant observations at four social justice forums with a variety of sponsors, and visits to ve alternative educational centers, all having religious sponsorship, in addition to theology departments at two universities. While the Indian sample I report on here is certainly not representative of all South Indian Christian women, these women share important experiences and perspectives illustrating their religious agency and that of many others. All the Indian interviewees have been active for some years, in a few cases over many decades, in social work, women’s organizing, or direct ministry. Interviews took place in two of the four southern states but included women from a third state as well. The foci of their involvements are quite varied, including ministry with women in the sex trade, Dalits and tribal women, slum dwellers, and domestic workers. Four of them are breaking ground as feminist theologians in both Catholic and Protestant traditions. Others are middle class mothers and grandmothers who belong to mainstream women’s groups in three different southern cities. While their circumstances and strategies differ, they all are working to challenge the situation that, as one woman expressed it, being a woman “doesn’t allow you to occupy public space.” A word on the meaning of “strategic voice” and the claim that women use “strategies” to negotiate dual identity of woman and Christian is needed here. A felt sense of urgency gives rise to practices that address the need to act within a social context. The interview analysis delineated an array of the strategies that the women devised, discovered and used to deal creatively with the dilemma they experience in being women and Christian. These strategies give shape to their own practice and to the production of Christianity within their respective churches. In other words, the strategies help them respond to their sense of vocation even when they experience barriers to doing so. The strategies they use are the visible signs of their religious agency. Strategy is used in sociology to represent action that navigates between desired ends and constraints. Schervish (1999) develops this concept as a simultaneous “mode of consciousness and mode of engagement,” by which an “individual agent organizes a series of discrete events into an ordered trajectory . . . to accomplish a goal.” Woman-conscious individuals, albeit with different degrees of reexivity and ability to be discursive about their agency, focus their intellectual, emotional and behavioral strivings toward constructing church space that is inclusive of women and facilitates their ability to respond fully to their call. Strategy, therefore,

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is the work of head, heart and hands. It is a way of making sense of one’s situation, processing and in some cases expressing the feelings associated with the position one nds oneself in, and acting in a way that is expressive of one’s identity. The thirty-three women in the US based study were all Catholic and ranged in age from 20 to 89 at the time of their interviews. They lived in seven different Catholic dioceses in the East, Midwest and Southwest US and represented Anglo, Latina and African American cultural backgrounds. Like the Indian women, the US sample had fairly high levels of education. All had nished at least high-school (two in the US through the GED process), but women in both groups had college educations, a fair number at the Master’s level, and some had terminal degrees. There were two main differences between the two groups, aside from citizenship and cultural backgrounds and the resulting life experience and world-view differences. The Indian group included a number of Catholic sisters and also a few Christian women who were not Catholic but very active in promoting women’s capacity to fully live their Christian vocations, whether Catholic or Protestant. The US sample was intentionally designed as a sample of Catholic lay women, following the reasoning that Catholic sisters in the US could be expected to have built in supports for woman-consciousness. In India, gathering a strong sample of Catholic women was more challenging and by necessity needed to rely to a greater extent on convenience.4 Moreover, a much greater proportion of Catholic women choose to join religious life, so the sample of Catholic women included lay women and sisters alike. Early in the Indian eld research I was cautioned by the director of an NGO not to make distinctions between Catholics and Protestants in India. In his view such distinctions contribute to communalism, a practice and discourse which divides people according to religious traditions and assumes those differences are necessarily in conict (see Patel 2006; Jodhka 2002).5 Heeding this practical wisdom, I pursued

4

Catholics represent only 1.9% of the Indian population. Social scientists in India are engaged in a debate about whether the concept of communalism is adequate to carry the reality of the ways that identity politics and community mobilization are currently in force. This debate takes us beyond the scope of this chapter but reinforces its premise in it’s call for a “new language of politics” ( Jodhka 2002: 29) that captures the reality of identity formation in the 21st century. 5

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interviews with woman-conscious Christian women in India. As a result, four of the 24 women in the Indian study were Protestants. The rst interview with an Indian woman demonstrated striking parallels between what she was saying and a sentiment I had heard so clearly from US Catholics: “Women are invisible in church matters— there’s a slight awareness—we are trying to create such an awareness. The Church in India has been impoverished because of that lack of women’s participation.” Her image of impoverishment was remarkably similar to Louse’s assertion that Catholicism has not tapped the “rich resource” of women’s gifts even while complaining about what it lacks. These two studies are woven together here for the purpose of exploring how social analysis can address the issue of vocation in a broader context than only a single country. As will be seen in the following sections, evidence of women’s religious agency can be gathered on both sides of the globe. While their contexts and some of their strategies differ, their similarities provide a compelling argument that Christian women around the world are negotiating their social positions in churches, and in fact are working to transform their churches, by enacting their religious agency. Christian Women’s “Political” Strategies As stated at the outset, “politics” is about power relations. Ammerman (1997: 28) encouraged sociologists of religion to see a religious organization as “a shifting collection of persons, engaged in a complex set of actions and rhetorics, actions that are supported by and indeed dene the collectivity they inhabit.” This description challenges a view of institutional religion as dynamic rather than static. The tendency of Catholics and other Christians to speak about “the” church, despite the fact that the entity they reference is one among many and has a wide variety of incarnations in different cultures and even neighborhoods, gives evidence of the dominance of a monolithic view of church. If we take seriously a competing frame of church as more uid in the variety of interactions that comprise it, we see that religious agency can serve as an entry point to institutional change for ordinary people. People use power to exert their own force within religious relations as well as relations of state or family relations. They use both ascribed and achieved resources (see Sewell 1992), those available to them by virtue of their social positioning and those accumulated through effort.

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And they also use the resources of Christian tradition (Dillon 1999) to offer a Gospel tradition of women called by Jesus to spread the news of Resurrection with his apostles. As people make creative use of these resources, as well as emotional resources which energize and motivate for action (Turner 1988), they can become agents of change within religious institutions and communities. Investigating the multiple points of religious agency, especially as they are revealed in the strategies people use to enact agency, helps us detect the varied potential “transformation points” (Giddens 1984: xxxi) in religious structural relations. As women construct opportunities to inuence church practice and to create spaces within churches that are more woman-friendly, they open up new vistas for themselves and others of what Catholicism and, more broadly, Christianity can be. Religious elites may reserve judgment on the most formal actions and creedal statements, but lived religion, which is religion, is “by denition, uid, mobile and incompletely structured” (see Hervieu-Léger 1997: 22). Indian Christian historian Rowena Robinson (2003) applies this notion of uidity: Indian Christianity appears to be characterized by considerable uidity. It is in the process of transforming itself through negotiation with a rapidly changing post-colonial society situated in a globalizing world . . . Her challenge to social scientists is . . . to analyze the manner in which different groups make sense of the shifts, using ritual and religion in novel and often radical ways, to crystallize and articulate social experience. . . .

US Catholic and Indian Christian women, in their local contexts, are working to create opportunities for women to live out their vocations, especially through exercising voice and creating spaces where those voices are heard, attended to and can effect change in praxis and attitude. They are searching for and creating “transformation points.” In what follows is a selection of the strategies they shared through interview data. Here I highlight strategies that were common or contrasting across the two countries and those that best illustrate exercising voice and claiming (sacred) space. One of the primary ways of exercising voice for both groups of women was accessing educational, that is, theological, resources. Deanne is 25 year-old US community organizer, who remarks on how troubling it is to her that women’s voices are excluded in church. For Deanne, not allowing women to speak “from the altar,” which symbolizes a place of privilege, is equal to not giving them “a voice at all.” Deanne relays

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this as if it seems unbelievable to her not only that women’s stories are discounted in church, but also that women, in their large numbers as church participants, don’t revolt. I just think that women aren’t given a voice at all, that to me is just right there [gesturing with her hand in front of her face]. To me that’s a huge insult. And that’s just claiming that . . . it’s not an important voice . . . to hear, that there’s not, something there that’s important to say . . . important enough to be, you know, preached from the altar, which is very disturbing . . . It’s very, very disturbing (pause) for me as a woman in the church. And especially when I’m sitting in the church and I look around . . . There’s women everywhere! You know? And I think, like, more and more, women are the people who are lling the pews in the churches . . . so . . . I sometimes I just can’t understand why there hasn’t already been like an uprising. [Both laugh] You know, like I look around and I’m like . . . come on, women!

Deanne notes the contradiction she sees in the fact that women appear to her to make up the majority of the Roman Catholic congregations she’s attended and yet their voices are not “important enough to be preached.” For her, this exclusion of women’s voices is blatant and requires a response from women. Her own response centers on her intention to study pastoral ministry at the masters’ level in order to gather resources. Her very question, stated earlier, “where is there a place for women?” also “prompted” her “to go back to school and get a degree . . . so that I do have the background and the education to formulate my own answers to some of the questions I have.” Others like Susan showed how having access to educational and informational resources have helped them take a stance as woman-conscious Catholics. Susan said that “this course I took at [college] was so helpful for me in being able to articulate, being given the language with which to speak about my experience [her emphasis].” Comments like these reinforce the argument that these women link voice with having a sense of power and agency. Anne’s story emphasizes how she uses educational resources in her teaching, a means of gaining voice that was also prominent in the Indian study. Teaching is a major way that women work at change in church (Wessinger 1996; Wallace 1992). American Catholic women’s long-standing leadership of and contributions to both general and religious education, and their more recent involvement in ministries of all kinds, other than those reserved to the ordained, forms a platform from which they exercise agency. They position themselves to be pri-

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mary agents of socialization within church by taking up teaching roles in all sorts of contexts. Likewise, a main strategy of the Indian women is to gain access to theological teaching and writing roles in India that are just beginning to open up to contemporary Christian women. This is actually paradoxical in that Indian Christian women in earlier centuries were “more likely to be educated and literate in English than their non Christian sisters” (Flemming 1994). The women I interviewed are breaking ground and doing it thoughtfully and consciously. One clear focus is to nd their voice specically as Asian women, founding a women’s theological society that they describe as “doing feminist theology separately from west—rooted in Asian cultural traditions and women’s movements.”6 Establishing space that cultivates women’s voices and is both truly Asian and truly Christian is an innovative way of promoting women’s ability to live their vocations freely. I should point out that among the Catholics, most of the women with higher theological training are vowed religious sisters. It is my conjecture that the nancial and emotional support of a community allows them to pursue these non-traditional roles that would be harder to access for lay women without such backing. One scholar described the Indian Catholic church as still very closed to laity: “Lay women won’t be invited to theological meetings,” she said, and continued, “The vast majority is excluded. You can’t theologize without connections in theological centers.” So she and other sister theologians are very conscious of their role in trying to be “in touch with women, both rich and poor, and sharing their stories.” An Indian Protestant theologian who writes on Dalit Christology told me that as a teacher, when she sees herself “sowing the seeds of doubt, I am happy.” This is a woman who speaks a clear Christian message but wants her students to question existing social structures both in India and in their various Christian denominations. In fact, three women independently emphasized that they accept any invitation “to teach groups of men,” seeing these opportunities as a chance to shape attitudes in the churches. They emphasized the need for more interaction between men and women, believing that greater exchange will bring about greater appreciation for women’s capacities. Even while these women with theological training seem to have some, albeit 6 Gabriele Dietrich, in the report of the proceedings of the Ekklesia of Women in Asia, Fall 2002.

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limited, access to gatherings that can inuence Church perspectives, they are calling their own churches to more accountability on justice issues of all kinds. Examples that surfaced were when Christian groups tended to remain silent in the face of communal violence or when the Indian churches reject “the empowering kind of feminism,” in favor of an “ideal woman.” Julia, a theology student and Catholic sister, described the “disturbance in my heart” when she came home to pray with her community after walking through the pavement community where she had earlier introduced me to a couple living on the street with their three year old daughter. She uses this “disturbance” as a stepping off point for her theological work. She and other Christian women recognize the varied constraints in Indian women’s lives but are exploring the possibilities that religious agency affords. They are using the theological and practical resources of Christianity, its tradition and its commitment to justice as well as the web of afliations it affords, to raise the voice of women and to create space by building new church communities in Indian society. We are talking about challenging the institution of church, we are talking about building another kind of church . . . This other kind of church can only come from the people. And I think that is something that is creeping more and more into people’s minds, people’s awareness. And the context of the church will be the context of the lives of the struggles of these women. And I think that is why it is important that women start articulating their stories.

Julia’s choice of words highlight her agency: “challenging . . . building . . . struggles . . . articulating.” Her vision is one of capitalizing on the “uidity” of the Indian church to renegotiate church and its theology to include the voices and life experiences of Indian women. She speaks with and for women living in pavement communities when she teaches, writes and does workshops for local clergy. Maruxa, a US Hispanic woman, and Rose, the South Indian woman quoted in the introduction to this chapter, shared almost identical instances of raising their voices to church elites. These women are of similar age, in their early 60s, and are both active in parish life as well as other church groups. Rose had a leadership role in a women’s group while Maruxa was more active in retreat and renewal programs. It is important to note that Maruxa doesn’t argue for the right to speak per se but, rather, for church to acknowledge “the callings” of women: “We have callings too—and nobody ever listens to what the callings

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are. You know, they just look at you, you’re a female, and therefore you can not !” From her European immigrant mother, Maruxa learned that “there’s a way,” of dealing with the place assigned to women in the family. And she transferred that knowledge to how she acted in church settings. Like Rose, Maruxa described a key scene when she wanted to be involved in a ministry in the church while that role was still being assigned only to men in her parish. I said to him [the pastor], “Father who’s the backbone of the church? Who does all the work for you?” He says, “The women.” I said, “Well here I am!” And then he gave a nice little homily about women being lectors. It wasn’t a hard thing cause see I’m used to bantering with a man—with my father with my brothers—it’s a bantering that you have to do with these men who are in charge of the church! Until you can get—soften them up a little bit to see kind of a different point of view. . . .

Maruxa used her voice and claimed her place by using humor while asserting the contribution that women make. Stories of confronting priests were frequently recounted by Indian as well as US women. The women attempted to call their attention either to a specic situation where a woman’s perspective had been discounted or to a generic absence of women in the “circles of inuence,” as Adele called them. Maruxa reminded the priest responsible for her sequestration from the sanctuary that women are integral to the structure of church that is referred to in scriptures as the body of Christ. She proclaims women to be “the backbone” and she invites him to change his position and see the situation from “a different point of view.” By using the examples of what she did, she claims it as a strategy for others as well, telling me that it’s what “you have to do with these men.” Rose confronted the Indian archbishop about implementing the option of having women serve as extraordinary Eucharistic ministers. Her emphasis on the bishop’s silence made it clear that it was important to her that she had had the last word in this interchange. The bishop’s voice was silenced in response to her assertion that women’s bodies are sacred and capable of carrying Eucharist to the people. Indian and US women also expressed a desire for inclusive language in church gatherings. But inclusion in language is symbolic of other kinds of inclusion and concern for recognition of women’s contributions. Pandita, an Indian women’s group member connects inclusive language in church with women’s ability to speak openly about other dimensions of their lives.

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laura m. leming What they’re [Indian Catholic women] asking for—what language is it called?—to get rid of sexist language . . . inclusive languages and things like that. Women are coming into their own, understanding their own legal rights, becoming articulate. We were under what was labelled the culture of silence. Women wouldn’t speak about what happens in their homes but now the women are speaking more and more about the way they are treated in their homes, the denial of property rights. Before these were big secrets in India—it is not open like it is in the States.

The “culture of silence” is challenged as women nd and raise their voices, not only in the churches but in the home. Susan, a US college student also emphasizes the need to speak up in order to respond to her call and has created a strategy for doing so within the ritual action of the “sign of the cross.” This is a strategy that she has thought through and performs in public ritual despite the “sidelong glances” that it sometimes brings. Not only does she change the language, but she imagines her connection to other women, like Adele, who also use this strategy. Just in church the other day. You know it was, “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” Well I say “in the name of the Creator and the Redeemer and the Holy Spirit.” And I say it nice and loud! So, I change it, and I’ve gotten, you know, people have given me,—my parents’ church at home, sidelong glances, because I change the words. Because I gure, well, that’s okay. I’m still praying and I’m praying to my God and, you know, the basic format’s still the same. And that’s another, that’s a smaller form but, on an individual level, people, I think a lot of, I know a lot of women who are very conscious. Of those details and do that kind of thing.

Susan used this as an example of what she had earlier called a “smaller form” of “resistance.” She claimed having other acquaintances who pay attention to those details of church ritual and act similarly. So while she does it individually, she feels solidarity with other women who engage in the same strategy at other times and in other places. The transgressive behavior is empowering and opens up a way to “get through a Mass” for woman-conscious women who nd this difcult. The French feminists see the “disruption of discourse” (Armour 1993) as a way to establish a place for women within discourse. Adele, Susan, Pandita and Rose, among others in these studies, take the initiative to “disrupt” the roteness of ritual language and social relations in the church. Susan feels support from knowing that others feel and act similarly. Individual acts of agency can be thought of, even by the individual performing them, as extending in time and space, which extends their efcacy.

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Linking the strategies of claiming voice in ritual language to other societal issues is particularly evident in the Indian study. This was seen above in D’Mello’s encouragement to Christian women’s groups to stay cognizant and connected to other oppressed groups. Ritual language may appear to be a rather “insignicant” point of transformation but from a symbolic interactionist perspective, we recognize that language, identity and social action are inseparable. Nita Kumar argues that Indian women are located in particular historical and social contexts women which limit them in terms of certain roles and dene them by use of symbolism and by valuing a cultural ideal. Yet women are agentic in devising “strategies of resistance” and “alternative discourses” that give us a “glimpse of potential and possible enlargements and perhaps transformation of their spaces” (1994: 19). Realigning the symbols that limit women in church and culture is a formidable task and is complicated in both countries by other pressing social issues such as racism and casteism which exist within the churches as well as in the broader culture. However, by examining the multiple strategies of voice and of creating even small spaces that are women-friendly, we can detect how religious agency contributes to this transformation. Conclusion: Religious Agency and the Politics of Vocation This chapter has looked at some of the micro-politics of church life in India and the United States, particularly examples of how women are creating pathways for themselves through speech and space. In judging the effectiveness of religious agency as a multidimensional mode of action that engages heart, head and hands, it is critical that we look not only at individual actions but at the interstitial spaces in religious organizations and institutions where religious agency is practiced. In other words, we must search for where “the fault lines lie in otherwise monolithic constructs, where spaces exist that may be widened and utilized” (Kumar 1994: 18). A fault line is dened in the Oxford English Dictionary as “a mass of displaced rock (sometimes of extensive area) bounded by or between two faults.” This geological image accurately describes the experiences of Christian Indian women, based on the interview and observational data collected in this study. As women and religious minorities, they often described themselves as feeling displaced, both in the church and in the wider culture. Moreover, the context in which they live raises a

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daily awareness of the gaps between rich and poor, men and women, between different religious groups as well as factions within Christianity, between Catholic church elites and ministers in the eld, religious professionals and laity, and between scholars and activists. The fault lines that circumscribe the lives of US woman-conscious Catholics, are perhaps less volatile, if only because the gaps between groups are less obvious. Still women struggle with the sense of belonging and not belonging and are keenly aware of concerns of justice such as racism and poverty. The task here has been to examine some of the ways that these Christian women on both sides of the globe navigate the politics of these in-between spaces. What we see is that their work and their words give testimony to their religious agency, how they use personal, religious, and social resources, to work for change within their societies and within their churches. This adaptation of resources to leverage change may be thought of here as political capital. The two main categories of strategies presented here are exercising voice and creating space. Language difculties make voice more problematic in the multilingual Indian context. In almost every interview and group I spoke with, language was stressed as a dilemma. Women noted that the current struggles within dioceses about language used for ritual and ordinary communications are indeed power struggles among language groups. These tensions make nding one’s voice in Indian society, and among Christians, more partial and difcult. Even so, the past two years have seen particular efforts by Christian women’s authors and a Catholic publishing house to raise women’s voice in the society. Several volumes of “training sessions” and proles of women from different religious and cultural backgrounds have been produced. These are designed for use in “leadership seminars and other empowering programs” (Saldanha 2005: 31) some for the wider society and some particularly for small Christian communities. Each session focuses a theme such as analysis of the sex ratio in India, an examination of gender bias in school text books, developing models of power that are not exploitative or examining women’s roles in the church. To increase the knowledge base, the books also include salient information like simple statistics on women’s and men’s literacy, women in elected positions in national government and international and Indian documents specifying goals for women’s empowerment. The book targeted for Christian communities incorporates Catholic documents on women’s advancement as well. These efforts aim to “help participants to articulate their thought, clarify their ideas, and develop a personal

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standpoint” (D’Souza 2005: 14) on the issues. This work to develop women’s voices, especially in the case of the Christian focused book, reinforces women’s ability to respond to their sense of call within their traditions, whatever they might be. Positioning women for effective voice in numerous dimensions of social life, especially within group contexts, moves towards the goal of “transformative politics” that Samita Sen describes. She however is calling for a politics that can “offer women the possibility of space outside the structures, if not also the identities of their own communities” (2002: 461). This notion stands in contrast to the voices and vocations we have listened to in the qualitative data presented here. These women are using political strategies with the hope to transform structures within Christian churches so that they can claim ownership of their treasured identities of woman and Christian. Women are carving out spaces, nding the faults, or breaks in the layers of rock that upholds seemingly monolithic church structures. These interstitial places may be within small groups of women, in the midst of an individual parish or congregation, or on boards of larger church structures like the “women’s cells” that are common in Indian Catholicism. They are spaces that welcome and heed women’s voices, but not necessarily to the exclusion of men. Within these new church spaces, the goals are to “bring about change in our own attitudes as well as to help bring justice to women” (Saldanha 2005: 12) and to “creatively resist power-over and power-against models” (D’Souza 2005: 159). In the US context, July 2006 saw a group of women lay claim to a role within the Catholic hierarchy by celebrating the “ordination” of twelve Roman Catholic women on a riverboat in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Claiming that “this is both a political and sacramental action,” one of the women who conferred “ordination” afrms the validity of the act because she herself was ordained secretly by a bishop in good standing.7 The politics of ordination was a topic that surfaced more clearly in the study of US Catholic women, completed before this recent event took place. Many of the women in the study claimed they would not seek ordination for themselves, but would want it to be an option

7 This event was reported in national US news. The quote is from the account published in the National Catholic Reporter, August 11, 2006, located at http://nationalcatholicreporter.org/update/nt080406.html.

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for women, especially if they had daughters. The Indian women were less likely to make an issue of ordination as they shared their narratives, though access to leadership roles within church structures was clearly a strong theme. The appropriation of “ordination” is a new strategy of claiming space in a more public and disruptive way. The confrontive nature of the action demanded a response from bishops who quickly acted to state that women were excommunicating themselves, i.e., separating themselves from approved church teaching in a public way. The question then becomes one of perspective. In claiming vocation, who has “the say,” as one of my US respondents phrased it, to decide whether their action should be judged as loyalty or exit? (Hirschman 1970) Roy’s (2002: 257) analysis of women and religious communal identity in India insists that “spaces for women’s politics emerge in dispersed ways and locations.” This is true for the politics of vocation as well. From publishing resources that encourage women’s voice to challenging bishops as the women quoted in the introduction did so eloquently, from creating small communities to performing public deance of current Catholic teaching on ordination, there is a wide diversity of the ways women are practicing religious agency. Some practices will open space, while some, perhaps including the July 2006 “ordination” will shut doors. But the persistence of Christian women pursuing what they believe to be their vocation, that is, a response to a divine call, will be channeled in a variety of innovative as well as traditional strategies. Dempsey’s view of Hinduism and Christianity as “siblings” in southern India shows the artfulness of locals’ ability to interweave traditions through a “creative process of reappropriation and hybridization” (2001:15). An examination of the micro-politics of churches nds women weaving together the resources of Christianity and their particular experiences as South Asian and US women, and creating communities that build relationships across the fault lines of their religious and secular milieus. These women are exercising religious agency as they negotiate a satisfying response to what they conceive as their vocations.8

8 The author acknowledges support for this research from the Joseph H. Fichter Research Grant program of the Association for the Sociology of Religion and from the Catholic Intellectual Forum of the University of Dayton.

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Morton, Nelle. 1985. The Journey is Home. Boston: Beacon Press. Moss, Pamela. 1997. “Spaces of Resistance, Spaces of Respite: Franchise Housekeepers Keeping House in the Workplace and at Home.” Gender, Place and Culture 4: 179–96. Patel, Sujata. 2006. “The Sociological Discourse on Religion: Beyond Colonial Modernity and Its Binaries,” paper presented at the European Association for South Asian Studies. Robinson, Rowena. 2003. “Christianity in the Context of Indian Society and Culture.” Pp. 884–907 in The Oxford Companion to Sociology and Social Anthropology, edited by Veena Das. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. Roy, Anupama. 2002. “Community, Women Citizens and a Women’s Politics.” Pp. 239–59 in Community and Identities: Contemporary Discourse on Culture and Politics in India, edited by Surinder Jodkha. New Delhi: Sage. Saldahna, Virginia. 2005. Woman: Image of God. Mumbai: St. Paul’s. Schervish, Paul. 1999. Modern Medici: Strategies of Philanthropy among the Wealthy. Unpublished manuscript. Schneiders, Sandra. 2000. With Oil in Their Lamps: Faith Feminism and the Future. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press. Schüssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. 1998. Sharing Her Word: Feminist Biblical Interpretation in Context. Boston: Beacon Press. Sen, Samita. 2002. “Toward a Feminist Politics? The Indian Women’s Movement in Historical Perspective.” Pp. 459–524 in The Violence of Development, edited by Karin Kapadia. London: Zed Books. Sewell, William H. 1992. “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98: 1–29. Stocks, Janet. 1997. “To Stay or to Leave?” Pp. 99–119 in Contemporary American Religion: An Ethnographic Reader, eited by Penny Becker and Nancy Eiesland. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. Turner, Jonathan. 1988. A Theory of Social Interaction. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Vitek, William and Wes Jackson. 1996. Rooted in the Land: Essays on Community and Place. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wallace, Ruth. 1992. They Call Her Pastor: A New Role for Catholic Women. Albany: State University of New York Press. Walter, Eugene Victor. 1988. Placeways: A Theory of the Human Environment. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Weber, Max. 1946. From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, edited by H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press. ———. 1968. Economy and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press. Wessinger, Catherine. 1996. Religious Institutions and Women’s Leadership: New Roles inside the Mainstream. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SEMINARIANS AND VOCATION Giovanni Dal Piaz An important transformation is deeply changing the physiognomy of the ecclesiastical milieu in Italy. Secularization has deeply penetrated into the social fabric, fully legitimating a pluralistic vision of the world that on the religious side becomes a pluralism of beliefs that favor a manner of believing differently from doctrine proposed and handed down by the Catholic tradition.1 The Church itself since Vatican Council II has undergone a troubled and still incomplete passage toward a new settlement of its theological and organizational structure. As has happened before, when new times require new kinds of priests, a change in their roles, and hence in their selection and training processes, the result is a more or less evident vocational crisis (Toscani 1979: 29–31). In the Italian case the vocational decrease in the diocesan clergy has old roots, but it became especially acute after the ’seventies of the previous century. Between 1871 and 2001 the diocesan clergy has fallen from 100,525 to 36,133; vowed religious men (priests and lay) rose from 9,163 to 22,408, after reaching the peak of 30,679 in 1978, and vowed religious women from 29,707 to 111,032, decreasing in comparison to the maximum peak of 154,790 reached in 1971.2 Obviously the global decrease of the clerical staff is preceded by a parallel contraction in the number of seminarians, and, for men under vows, of novices and of those under temporary vows. From 11,277

1 Since 2005 the magazine Critica liberale has annually published a report on laicism, in which a synthetic measure of the “secularization” phenomenon is proposed in order to perceive its course quantitatively. This “synthetic indicator of secularization” is comprised of 21 socio-demographic variables concerning church, family, school and society (Critica liberale 111, 2005: 4–9, concerning the period 1991–2003). On the basis of this indicator the secularization process appears to be “continuously increasing since 1991, and more distinctly in the years 1995–2002. Between 2002 and 2003 a certain slowdown is detected in it” (2006: 9). 2 For the earlier gure see D’Agata (1943: 26–28); the recent rgure is from Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae 2001. Unless indicated otherwise, the Annuarium is the source from which the statistical data utilized in the text are derived.

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diocesan seminarians in 1881 the number has decreased to 2,763 in 2001 and from 4,957 seminarians in the orders in the ve years 1881– 1885 to 2,554 in the period 1997–2001, seen against 10,701 deaths of priests between 1881–85 and of 3,787 in the period 1997–2001.3 The current enrolment in the seminaries and in the orders’ houses of studies, even at the best (that is, with a complete absence of abandonment of ministry by any priests), will not be able to maintain the demographic balance since the total of deaths is, and will be, higher than that of new ordinations. This is the unrelenting and merciless frame of what is generally called the “vocational crisis” of the Catholic church. In the language of ancient medicine crisis means the moment when the course of an illness is decided: either toward restoration to health or towards death. In the modern era, starting from the analogy between physical body and socio-political body, the term has come to be used to mean a remarkable, considerable, and often sudden change in the life of a community or of a social group, from which transformations of great importance derive. The concept of crisis implies a change involving various social “actors,” and it rapidly transforms their way of interpreting and representing reality. The critical event (or events) is a decisive stage of transition: A change that produces fracture after which what had up to a short time before represented a widely shared way of acting and thinking becomes obsolete, inadequate for express a different conception of social life. We witness a caesura deeply dividing social dynamics, and even if the “past” does not suddenly disappear, it survives in a weakened state, belonging to a minority, withdrawing before the “new” that is taking form. However it is not only a quantitative matter: calculating if the number of priests, friars and nuns is or is not adequate for the demand of religious services coming from a Catholic world which, among other things, generation after generation, is getting more and more marginal. Behind the numerical drop of vocations hides the identity crisis of the clergy, the still open question whether, as to their role, the sacred dimension must prevail or rather that of animator/chairman of the relations inside the community. Called, for sure, but to do what? And for whom? From the way that question will be answered, a more accurate study of “vocation” might start. So far the numbers record the uncertainty of a cultural and structural pas-

3 Throughout both kinds of religious community with members under vows—orders and congregations—will be referred to collectiely as orders.

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sage: the slow decline of a historical form of Catholic priesthood when a new one has not yet been able to emerge. It is within this context for the situation of vocations in Italy that the present chapter means to provide a contribution, highlighting the relation between the various models of priests and the training processes that are proposed to seminarians in order to be able to realize those models. Priestly Vocation: Conversion or Journey? In comparison to the narrowness of the present times the past outlines, although the documentation is incomplete and fragmentary, an Italian ecclesiastical environment characterized by a great abundance of priests. In the 18th Century . . . according to some statistics we nd one priest out of 60 inhabitants in Turin, one out of 45 in Bologna, in Tuscany one out of 82, in the area of Naples one out of 55 (10,300 priests in Tuscany for a population of 850,000 inhabitants, about 90,000 in the Kingdom of Naples out of a little more than 4 million inhabitants).4 Especially in the South, the plethora of priests was a much debated problem: they had tried to nd a remedy for it, rst limiting the orders according to a xed percentage . . . then, after the 1818 concordat, subordinating admission to orders to owning a minimum patrimony. . . . In the rst half of the 19th century the number of priests has certainly decreased, but it still remains very high, to the prejudice of severe selection and of training soundness. Around 1850, for a population that, inside the present borders, was a little over 23 million, we nd about 100,000 priests, between secular and regular ones, with an average of one priest for every 250 inhabitants (compared to an average of one to every 50–60 of the previous century) and a true surplus of buildings open to worship (parishes, collegiate churches, “ricettizie churches,” rectorates, chapels, branch churches, etc.).5 We notice incidentally that, while in our times everyday experience shows that women religious are more numerous than priests, in the last century, relying on the very few data we have, it would seem that, even before the secularization laws, the nuns were inferior in number to priests. Only after

4 To have an idea of the importance of the transformation that has taken place, presently in Turin there is one diocesan priest for every 3,305 baptised people, and if we considered also the religious priests, we would reach a ratio of one to every 1,583; in Bologna we respectively have ratios of one to every 2,173 or one to every 1,319. 5 Ricetezze churches are those in which the administration of and participation in the relative revenues were due, pro rata, to those who were assigned to their service, who were named participants. They were especially widespread in the South of Italy.

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giovanni dal piaz 1881 has the number of the religious women begun to rise, to exceed the number of priests in 1911 (Martina 1996: 124–26).

If it is difcult to have reliable data at national level concerning the clergy, religious men, and religious women, the records become even more uncertain if we explore the much wider and uneven area of vocational orientation. It is not enough to observe the trend of those who attend the diocesan seminaries that, due to the implementation of the Council of Trent’s guidelines, had been started in many dioceses (but not in all of them) since the end of the sixteenth century. Up to the rst half of the nineteenth century an “external clergy” persists that will be totally excluded only after the directives of Pius X, when the seminary actually becomes the only training place for the candidates to priesthood in the national territory. The external clergymen were young people who, due to their wealth or to lack of places in the seminary or to their impossibility of meeting the expenses for their studies remained with their families, both if they lived in the town where the seminary was located (urban external clergymen) and if they lived in the rural areas (diocesan external clergymen). Beside them there were then the seminarians who lived in the seminary continuously and were bound to follow its strict discipline. Since it is difcult to reconstruct the number of seminarians in a reliable way, it is from of the trend of the priestly ordinations that we can reconstruct the vocational dynamics. Some additional information comes from the records of the pastoral visits and, for the religious orders, from the documents connected with provincial and general chapters. The dual modes of training mirrored very distinct motivational orientations. As a matter of fact the mode for external clergy was much less demanding and was often entered into only in order to obtain an ecclesiastic benet or a job as a teacher, that is to acquire, without too much engagement, a level of income that might secure a decent way of living. However, beside the differences that in some cases were very relevant, seminarians and external clergy shared a common paradigm: vocation is joining/aggregating to clergy. In any event we must note that the concept of vocation refers, at least originally, to a rather different perspective. In the New Testament vocation emerges as a “call,” that is to say a divine invitation to embrace salvation in Jesus. The evangelical call “come and follow me” says words capable of evoking a relationship by which one becomes a disciple, well before assuming a particular role with a specic function within the ecclesiastical institution. In ancient tradition we have a

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double modality of accepting that “call.” On one side there is vocation as a “choice” through which divine presence and action is manifest, sometimes almost bursting out. The archetype is Paul’s conversion on the way to Damascus, when the dialogue with God suddenly interrupts the direction of his life, giving it a totally new orientation and meaning. The other modality is that in which the dynamics of the divine is more distinctly emphasized when, asking the subject to answer actively, it marks an existential fracture, a neat border between a “before” and an “after.” The vocation of Anthony, the father of monasticism, is typical in this respect, as narrated by Athanasius: Six months had not yet elapsed since the death of his parents, when, as he was accustomed to do, he was going to church collecting his thoughts and thinking of everything: how the apostles had left their homes to follow the Lord, as the men noted by the Acts of the Apostoles had sold their properties and had the proceeds distributed to the poor; and how great was the hope allowed to them in the Kingdom of Heaven. Thinking of these things, he got into the church and happened to listen to the reading of a gospel passage in which he heard the Lord saying to a rich man: “If you wish to be perfect go, sell all your properties and give them to the poor, and then come, follow me, and you will gain a treasure in Heaven”. Anthony, . . . being persuaded that that gospel passage had been read for him, immediately left the Church and gave his properties away . . . to his fellow citizens, so that they would not disturb either him nor his sister any longer. Then he sold all the other personal property he owned and, having gained much money, he distributed it to the poor. He still kept some money for his sister. Entering the church again, as soon as he heard the Lord saying in the Gospel: “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” he left at once and distributed the money he had saved to the poor. He entrusted his sister to the faithful virgins whom he knew very well, to let her grow her up as a virgin, and he himself developed mystical exaltation outside his house, living an austere life (Atanasio di Alessandria 1974: 11–13).

This interpretation of vocation emphasizes its rooting in the Gospel; it highlights the decision to live the Lord’s teaching sine glossa. It is a consciousness that springs out in Anthony in the context of a liturgical celebration, that is to say when, the spatio-temporal associations are surmounted through the rite and we become “contemporaries” of Jesus. The subsequent development of ecclesiastical structures, strongly rooted in their territories and oriented toward a religious and social presence intended to last in time, put in evidence the necessity of guaranteeing continuity through a regular ow of vocations. Waiting for spiritual awareness for a long time and being uncertain of the outcome

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is open to the risk of discontinuity. Thus a conception of vocation is brought alongside as an existential option to be encouraged, starting from a germ of grace that the Lord places in the heart of a person oriented toward the study of the authentic meaning of existence. We nd a trace of this in chapter 59 of the Rule of Saint Benedict when it is hypothesized that parents may offer one of their sons, while still a little boy, to a monastery. In that perspective vocation may be interpreted as an innate inclination, a seed that God puts into the conscience of a person and that it is possible to gather as a sprout, since childhood. This is a perspective that, as a matter of fact, displaced the previous one and outlined a different vocational paradigm. It was the Council of Trent, in session 23, with canon 18, that provided a settlement destined to last many centuries: Adolescents, . . . if they have not tended since their tender years towards piety and religion before bad habits utterly get hold of them, are not able to persevere in a perfect way in the ecclesiastical discipline, without the primary extraordinary help of almighty God. For this reason the holy synod sets that every single church, cathedral, and others even more important than these, are obliged, proportionate to their means and to the extension of the dioceses, to maintain, educate religiously and instruct in the ecclesiastical disciplines, a certain number of little boys of the same town and diocese, . . . in a boarding school chosen by the bishop for this purpose, close to the churches or in other appropriate places. In this boarding school will be accepted boys of at least 12 years of age, born out of legitimate marriages, capable enough to read and write and whose nature and will accounts for their perpetual loyalty to the ecclesiastic ofces. . . . The bishop will parcel out these little boys in many classes, . . . according to their number, age and levels reached in the ecclesiastic discipline . . . being careful to substitute with other boys those he has led to complete their studies, so that this boarding school is a perpetual seminary of God’s ministers. In order to educate them more easily to the ecclesiastic discipline, they will immediately receive the tonsure and will always wear their cassocks. . . . The bishop will get them to assist at the sacrice of the Mass every day, to confess at least once a month, and to receive the body of our Lord Jesus Christ whenever their confessor will repute it right, and he will see that during festive days they give their services in the cathedral and in the other churches of the place. . . . The bishops will severely punish the undisciplined and the incorrigible ones and those who set a bad example, up to the point of expelling them, if necessary (Conciliorum 2005).

The shift of the vocational choice from adult age to adolescence made it necessary to establish a specic environment, a “breeding ground” (seminarium) in which vocations could be cultivated, grown and brought

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to complete fullment. Having matured vocations therefore was not set as a condition necessary to start the training process, but on the contrary, it was the nal objective of the scholastic/training cycle. In this way a closely-woven network was activated of major and minor seminaries, apostolic schools, boarding schools, a system that in Italy remained fully active until the 1960s. This structure also performed an important social role, that of meeting the growing and unanswered demand of schooling, which was expressed in the rural communities, from the urban petite bourgeoisie, and from part of the working class. Through the mediation of the seminary it was possible to have access to the highest educational levels. At the same time the church could directly rely on a wider basis to select their clergy, and even if many of them would leave the seminary at the end of their studies, the latter would anyway still retain a formative structure strongly marked by religious values. A conrmation of how the seminary structure answered needs that were not specic solely to priestly training is illustrated by the fact that it rapidly underwent a crisis when the State began to establish mass education in 1962, rst with the actual realization of compulsory education up to lower secondary school and afterward through encouraging schooling up to the end of the middle secondary cycle. The seminary paradigm, notwithstanding evident and growing difculties in adequately answering the needs for which it was created, is substantially re-conrmed by Vatican II in the decree Optatam totius (On Priestly Training): In the minor seminaries built up with the purpose of growing the seeds of vocation, the learners, through special religious training and most of all through appropriate spiritual guidance, are prepared to follow Christ the Redeemer with a generous mind and an open heart. Under the fatherly guidance of their superiors, opportunely helped by the parents, let them lead a way of living appropriate for the age, the spirit and the development of adolescents and in full harmony with the norms of sound psychology, without neglecting appropriate experiences of human matters and the relations with their families. . . . With the same care the germs of vocation in the adolescents or in the young should be likewise cultivated in those special institutes that, according to the circumstances of the different places, also perform as minor seminaries. (Enchiridion 1981)

As with other aspects of the ecclesiastical life, the second Vatican Council proposed again, although with some opening toward improving relationships, the traditional model of clergy training. There were, nevertheless, factors external to the ecclesiastical eld that in the following

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years put particularly the minor seminary in a critical position and imposed deep re-thinking of the training processes to be developed at the level of the major seminary. The Italian Anomaly between the Nineteenth and the Twentieth Centuries The factor that more than any other in Italy marks the start of a transformation in the relation between church and society is to be found in the massive migration from the countryside that began a rapid and somewhat uncontrolled growth of the towns between the late 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. Thus the rural basin is drained, from which came a great part of the ecclesiastical vocations and in which the church still maintains its inuence, prestige, power. Between the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, if we consider the relationship between town and country, the former had been the pole of renovation and innovation, opening toward a new way of producing. In the towns it was possible to establish more open social connections, to nd better opportunities for life, to be able to express oneself more freely. Among the cultural transformations activated by urbanization there is also the detachment from a kind of religiousness that appears to identify with the rhythms, the languages, the visions of the world typical of the country civilization, rich in history but by now close to its unavoidable decay. The Church found it difcult to catch the multifarious positive potentialities that were being outlined in the urban environment; it perceived instead the risk of de-Christianization, they felt the hostility of a political class quite anticlerically oriented, and feared that the projects of that class were aimed at weakening the church’s structure and presence in the territory. Exemplary of the tensions and of the interests put forward is the question of the extension to the whole national territory, between 1861 and 1866, and of the 1853 Savoy laws providing for the suppression of the “ecclesiastical organizations that did not attend to preaching, to education or to the assistance of the sick.” A drastic dismantling of the religious communities that after fty years since Napoleon’s suppression re-proposed their dispersion inevitably affected the level of vocational vitality. Between 1871 and 1921 the number of priests and religious people lessened (see Table 8.1). The vocational trend of the religious women will move instead in the opposite direction, a trend in which an unsolved women’s question is

40,250

7,792

68,844

1901

45,616

6,444

67,147

1911

11,907

51,364

1931

24,112

45,677

1951

26,681

44,943

1961

29,184

42,176

1971

29,172

39,470

1981

24,540

37,409

1991

22,502

36,133

2001

71,679 112,208 144,171 152,326 154,790 142,733 125,887 111,032

7,309

55,633

1921

* Religious priests and religious laymen. Sources: 1871–1931: C. D’Agata, Statistica religiosa, Milano, Giuffrè, 1943, pp. 26–28. N.B. 1911, 1921, 1931 data consider only the religious people assigned to pastoral ministry. Therefore the actual total number is higher than that shown in the table. 1951–1961: Annuario Ponticio, Roma, Vaticana. 1971–2001: Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae, Roma, Vaticana.

29,707 28,172

Rel. Women

7,191

9,163

100,525 84,834

1881

Rel. Men*

Priests

1871

Table 8.1. Diocesan priests, religious men and women present in Italy from 1871 to 2001

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reected: To a single woman religious life appears to be a concrete opportunity to get out of the tight meshes of a patriarchal family, an opportunity to nd a different horizon, not only spiritual, but also as an opportunity of professional accomplishment and presence in the society. As a matter of fact it is just when repression puts in evidence the inner fragility of a feminine religious life solely modelled on the monastic form that the courage and the capacity are found to propose very different and innovative models. Starting from the bottom, from the parish experience, and in a rst phase remaining strongly anchored to the diocesan ambit, we witness the birth of community experiences and institutes that nd in charity the way to confront the challenges of a society that, while innovating, at the same time creates poverty, marginalization, deviancy, and therefore demands justice, care, protection. The new active congregations show relevant vocational vitality, a sign that the road that has been chosen is the answer to really felt social and ecclesiastical needs. This expansion, though widespread throughout the national territory, manifests itself with particular intensity in the northern regions, especially in the Lombard-Venetian area, where it allows for the organization of a closely-woven network of social services. It thus becomes possible to activate, starting from the towns, a rst series of social services (nursery schools, homes for the aged, hospital assistance, etc.) to the benet of those social groups mostly affected by the weakening of parental and village solidarity. Between 1921 and 1971 the vocational resumption also involved the men’s religious congregations. As for the diocesan clergy, the vocational growth was never sufcient to interrupt the progressive numerical decline, even if the local situations have always been characterized by relevant differences. In 1881, 44.8% of the 11,227 seminarians lived in the North, 19% in the dioceses of the Center, and 36.2% in the South and in the Islands (D’Agata 1943: 33). In 1954, of 8,183 Italian seminarians (a decrease of 27.1% compared to 1881), 59.2% lived in the North, 18.6% lived in the Center, and 22.2% lived in the South and Islands (Brunetta 1957). If we relate these data to the territorial distribution of the Italian population, which is a good approximation also of the territory distribution of the baptised people, we see that for 100,000 resident people in the North there are 22.88 seminarians, in the Center there are 14.70, and in the South 11.37. After fty years in 2004 seminarians have decreased to 2,862 (a decrease of 65% compared to 1954) and are distributed as 38.1% in the North, 18.7% in the Center,

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and 43.2% in the South.6 However the territorial differences level out in relation to the resident population. As a matter of fact we have 4.87 seminarians for 100,000 inhabitants in the North, 4.56 in the Center and 4.82 in the South and Islands. The priest’s “profession” in half century appears to have uniformly lost much of its attractive capacity. In this vocational decrease undoubtedly is to be found the mark of a waning of affection towards a kind of ecclesiastical belonging, “strong” and demanding from the point of view of the institutional link. Nevertheless if we set the Italian situation in the context of the international Catholic church we realize that it is anomalous from the point of view of the relation between the ecclesiastic staff and the number of baptised people. The number of priests, religious men and women per baptised people in Italy is denitely higher than that of other countries with Catholic majorities, and therefore there are still margins for a lower oriented settlement, certainly without taking value away from the pastoral services offered to the believers for this reason. As a matter of fact while baptised Italians belonging to the Catholic church are, at the world level, 5.1% of the Catholics, their pastoral care is in the hands of 12.5% (33,684) of all the diocesan priests, of 9.4% (2,992) of the permanent deacons, of 13.3% (102,363) of female religious, of 11.2% (21,591) of male religious, and of 48.2% (10,404) of those who belong to secular institutes. On the whole, then 171,034 people belong to the Italian ecclesiastical structure, 112,552 of whom are women (65.8%), with a ratio of 1 religiously qualied individual (priest, friar, nun) to every 328 baptized persons. These are data that point out a much stronger social rooting than that noticed in countries with similar Catholic tradition such as Spain, where the ratio of ecclesiastical staff to baptized persons is 1 to every 439, or France with 1 to every 651, or Poland with 1 to every 672. Therefore it is not correct to say that Italian ecclesiastical institutions lack the human resources necessary to provide for effective pastoral action, and this is true in terms of both the total number of staff and in relation to the rate of baptised population. The latter issue is to be modied further, inasmuch as the share of those who request pastoral services is much lower than the share of baptised people. It is with

6 Chiesa in Italia. Annuario 2005, Bologna, Dehoniane, 2005. The statistical data of the Annuario refer to 2004.

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respect to this social area, estimated around fourteen to eighteen million people, in which we notice some persisting interest in the ecclesiastical belonging, that the data of the vocational ow should be reported and evaluated. There is a “physiological” aspect in the vocational decrease because, since the prestige and social promotion factors connected with the ecclesiastic “career” have vanished, it is reasonable to expect that the bulk of the ecclesiastical personnel will settle down on the basis of the actual request of services—ritual, sacramental, training etc. It is clear that facing the decrease of the number of those who believe it is important per se to have access to religious services, a reduction in the vocational ow is to be expected, and this apart from the inuence of other factors (demographic decrease, secularization, new emerging models and roles in the ecclesiastical engagement, etc.). The Vocational Crisis in Contemporary Italy If from the quantitative point of view the structure of the Church in Italy still appears to be strong, it is not difcult to spot signs of frailty and indicators of a change on the way. The rst such sign is ageing (see Table 8.2). The clergy who are over 60 amount to 52%. Religious people over that age are 56%. Even if we assumed a more rigid criterion to trace the elderly condition limiting our analysis to the over-70s, we would respectively have shares of 31% and 34% respctively, which are higher levels compared to the corresponding Italian male population, where the male share over 70 is 10.1%. The second element of weakness in the institutional presence of the Italian church can be found in the persisting low vocational ow that has even affected the religious in houses of study, for thirty years (see Table 8.3). Clergy and vowed religious are an army without reserves. Certainly it is not enough to limit oneself to record the numerical decrease, which has been undoubtedly huge if we consider that in 1946 the presence in the major seminaries in Italy was 10,442 people, reducing to 7,299 in 1956, only to decrease to 2,874 in 1976, and then go up slightly and even out at 3,145 in 2004. Even in this case, however, if we compare the Italian situation with that of European countries with a strong Catholic presence, we realize how vital it still appears to be. In 2004 in Italy there were more seminarians than in Spain (1,374), France (716), or Germany (872), while at the European level only Poland had more (4,552). Notwithstanding these specications

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Table 8.2. Diocesan clergy and religious people distributed according to age bands, by 31st December 2003 (percent)

Dioc. Clergy Religious People

29

30–39

40–49

50–59

60–69

70

4.0 8.0

15.0 12.0

13.0 10.0

16.0 14.0

21.0 22.0

31.0 34.0

Source: Annuario CISM 2004, Roma, Conferenza Italiana Superiori Maggiori, 2004.

Table 8.3. Diocesan Seminarians and religious philosophy/theology students from 1970 to 2004 1970 Seminarians Religious People

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2004

6,337 3,357 2,823 3,075 3,588 3,710 3,653 3,145 3,890 2,786 2,253 2,589 2,559 2,546 1,324 1,195

Source: Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae, Roma, Vaticana.

suggesting a less hurried reading of the numerical data, the discrepancy remains, and even tends to grows, between new ordinations and clergy mortality: the negative balance that in 1989 was –225 priests, increasing by 2004 to –282. Many other factors converge in explaining a diminished interest in the sacerdotal vocation beside those cited before. One might note the lesser care dedicated by the families to their children’s religious socialization. For many families the religious choice is a strictly private question to be left to their children’s decision; consequently they conne themselves to granting that participation in parochial life that nds its beginning and its end between infancy and adolescence, in preparing for rst Communion and conrmation. At most they are willing to expand their children’s religious training to the teaching proposed by the school as an optional choice. We must consider the effect that the widespread demographic decrease has on the vocational trend in terms of birth rate. Other conditions being equal, the decrease of new-born babies presents a scene with fewer individuals in place to bind themselves in total consecration to God. If we pay attention to the fact that in Italy the demographic decrease begins to appear around the middle of the 1960s, its effect on the vocational dynamics will be more and more evident in the next decades. If the orientations of Vatican II remained essentially within the postTridentine guidelines, their implementation happened to interweave

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with two very different questions that deeply inuenced the operative choices. If on one side the seminary structure, and the vocational paradigm underneath, had granted to a celibate clergy the possibility of maintaining role continuity and identity, at the same time it had not always been able to form people capable of contending with the challenges of a world in deep transformation. As long as social control and the ecclesiastical disciplinary structure constituted a sufciently robust barrier, it was possible to contain that uneasiness that was due to belonging to the Church without being sufciently convinced and motivated. Yet when secularization on one side and conciliar updating on the other side debated the ecclesiastical status and the social role of the priest, the conditions for a clarication of this discomfort were created. In Italy, unlike other European countries, all this did not cause any mass exodus. All the same, the phenomenon was reported by the mass media, and for the rst time it communicated the image of a “weak,” doubtful Church, entangled in the contradictions of a renewal that was difcult both to start and stop. The concurrence of the events led to identifying in the conciliar project of modernization the reason for a crisis that on the contrary had remote origins and anyhow had reached the end of a cycle that had begun in the previous decades. Still in the 1970s a lively discussion was started on vocation in general, addressing among others the question of the opportuneness of accepting young adolescents to be trained for the presbyteral life. The changed feeling toward adolescence and the awareness of how negatively in that phase of life may weigh existential choices that have not been well pondered, enfeebled the hypothesis of an early inclusion into a “global” institution, denitely detached from the family, in which the isolated young boy experienced a discipline that already guided him toward the assumption of a specic ecclesiastical and social role. In a cultural atmosphere as that of the immediate post-conciliar era, run through by anti-authoritarian, anarchical agitation, even for the Church the theme of personal freedom, interpreted as primacy of conscience, became central. In so doing, however, a potential conict came to the surface—the conict between the subject’s expectations, even legitimate, and the logic of institutional government that to be effective required obedience and self-discipline, hence were not open to criticism, discussion, and free confrontation. The traditional organization of the seminaries was utterly unprepared to face such questions, nor did those who were directly responsible for the seminarians know particularly well how to behave in these circumstances. There was

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Table 8.4. People Attending Diocesan Minor Seminaries and Religious Institutes from 1970 to 2004 1970

1975

1980

1985

1990

1995

2000

2004

Sem.dioc 11,412 7,879 Sem.relig 14,425 8,622

6,045 7,445

5,531 5,360

4,154 3,259

3,075 2,023

2,093 1,324

1,466 1,195

Source: Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae, Roma, Vaticana.

some experimentation, often improvised and not very well planned, that ended up with increasing the tensions, causing breaks that in some cases were shocking. The experience with the “minor seminaries,” coming to an end relatively quickly in this process, is paradigmatic of these tensions (see Table 8.4). This is not only owing to the diminished number of candidates for priestly training, but also as a consequence of the idea that has decidedly asserted itself, that vocation, more than a seed to grow, is an option to consider carefully before making it one’s own and therefore requiring the maturity of a young adult rather than the enthusiasm of an adolescent. Adolescence appears more and more to be an age of transition, during which different existential possibilities are “sampled” rather than selected, when different orientations and lifestyles are compared, experiencing their feasibility but leaving many doors open. The passage toward vocation understood as something to be recognized in oneself leads to changes in the selection criteria for admission to the seminary. The individual who now acknowledges his adequacy to start his training process is not the adolescent of the past, willing to be educated according to pre-dened models; on the contrary he is a young man whose personality is already settled in its psychological, behavioral, spiritual lines. He has not been trained in the enclosed space of a seminary, but in touch with a widely secularized environment that favors a practical materialism and consumerism and is prone to relativism in moral choices. Therefore he will consider it reasonable to rank self-realization as the primary aim of existence independently of the choices to be made in order to pursue this aim. His own devoutness is sometimes discontinuous or incoherent, which is a symptom of no longer belonging to an environment where religiousness is widely felt. As for training, together with the inuence of the family there is the inuence of school, groups, friends, and mass media. His experience is that of metropolitan society, of widespread technology, of swift changes,

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of a life inside global communication that permits being present in far away places simultaneously. The young man who enters seminary does so following a decision taken autonomously, a personal synthesis of an existential itinerary, sometimes very uneven, in which family and ecclesiastic environment weigh less than in the past. This means that in today’s situation the vocational choice is becoming more and more a personal undertaking of coherent living and of donation, and to a lesser extent at least in the initial phase, the reception of the clerical identity, already outlined in its traits. We might say that in many cases the choice of entering seminary, just because of the changes implied, is subjectively interpreted as a conversion decision. Finally, it must be taken into account that even in Italy it is beginning to happen that people express their vocational demand at a decidedly adult age (30–40, if not later). These are situations in which the option of priestly life takes place after experiencing, and not for a short period, other existential choices that may have deeply affected these persons, thus making the inclusion/integration process in the priestly role much more complex. While estimating the inuence of the older age of the choice on the vocational dynamics and on the formative process, it is also to be taken into account that it is closely connected with a change in sensibility in the way of interpreting and implementing the values of allegiance over time. Allegiance is meant as holding fast to a decision taken freely, but on condition that the choice made at one time is still meaningful “today” for the subject, allowing him to be “authentic,” true, and not a kind of actor who, due to the respect he owes to a duty accepted yesterday, plays a role in which today he feels clipped and bound. Every option then can be reconsidered whenever new and unforeseen existential opportunities begin to appear. Rather than an initial decision, duration is the nal outcome of a favorable concatenation of circumstances, among which there is also the person’s intention of persisting in the decision. This changed idea of allegiance and vocation does not always lead to abandoning one’s life choice more easily; the outcome is rather leaning toward a weak sense of belonging, making one’s existential decisions and life style denitely “private,” and simultaneously loosening one’s spiritual tension. To safeguard one’s own identity besides means defending one’s mental integrity. To resign oneself from that would leave space for neurosis, to developing a split personality: a false self derived from heteronomous environmental factors, by non-interiorized links and therefore lived as something formal,

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not corresponding to what the person actually feels, ends up setting itself over the real self until it suffocates it and loses it. Consequently, entering seminary today means researching authenticity, a wish to be recognized and welcomed. The wish of being accepted, of nding a surrounding in which one can express one’s spiritual features and provide a coherent Christian testimony leads to attaching great importance to the relational dimension. One expects to meet people with whom one can enter into frank and easy communication in an environment available to confronting and exchanging ideas. Hence a certain emphasis on the community, often idealized as a protective place, non-conictual, engaging, in which positive relations may be settled. The dialogues, the communication, then become values in themselves whenever they show that there is true relation, with the effect of downgrading the contents of the interpersonal exchange (values, norms, behaviors). The distance between educators and the educated shortens, but the generation gaps do not equally shrink for what concerns the value ranges and the behavioral models, and this is the reason why frequent communication cannot, beyond the speakers’ good intentions, loose the knots of incomprehension and contrast. While an environment rich in lively interpersonal relations is desired, almost to prevent the risk of a suffocating “communalism,” the exigency is felt of treasuring one’s own space and time. This is not meant as a means to escape from the others, from the community, the mission, or the service, since it is felt as a moment’s rest, of re-creation, in order to nd in meditation, in reection, or more simply in being quietly by oneself, new spiritual energy and psychological respite. The rapid and deep re-denition of the social and ecclesiastic role developed by priests in contemporary Italy (and in the world) makes any hypothetical revision extremely aleatory. On one point the different analytical approaches seem to converge: The clergy will keep diminishing (Diotallevi 2005: 122–23) because manifestly the number of seminarians will keep falling. The shortage of candidates is already orienting some dioceses, especially in central Italy, in the direction of “importing” clergy—that is, of making up for the lack of local clergy with priests born abroad. In the long term the undesired effect could be the “ethnicization” of the priest, the acceptance (or refusal) of whom on part of the faithful would be interwoven with the wider problem of multiculturalism. Another strategy that is being followed is that of secretly modifying the selection criteria, making them milder, less

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demanding, in particular for what concerns theological and cultural training. The young man who means to enter seminary soon realizes he is a precious good, just because he is rare. It easily happens then that in the relation between the bishop, the rector and the seminarian a kind of agreement logic prevails that does not solve the problem of differences but favors negotiation in search of a mediation between the possible desertion of the candidate and the exigencies of the priestly role. All the parties in the case will avoid haughty tones with repect to the issues, preferring to smooth the edges away and delay the discussion of the problems indenitely if possible. Looking into the question of vocations is a way of working out future scenarios. The potential number of priests available in the next years is already detectable, right now observing the present number of seminarians, while it has been empirically noticed that a small number of young people are available to accept the hypothesis of a priestly ofce as their own life project (cf. Garelli 2006).7 The empirical data tell us that realistically in Italy what is to be expected is, at best, a stabilization of the present vocational ow that can be placed around a 600–700 people asking every year to start a training journey in a diocesan seminary. Of these, a share will of course leave before concluding and taking holy orders; therefore it might be realistic to expect for the near future 400–450 ordinations per year. If we then observe young people’s religiousness such as it is outlined in recent inquiries, we notice that they conrm the detachment from church-religion, especially concerning a coherent integration between their orientation in faith, the magisterium’s guidelines, and their behavior.8 A growing trend is found in the share of those who, as regards the religious problems, set themselves in an attitude of disenchanted indifference and in those who, instead, although they formally keep themselves inside the Catholic sphere of belonging, tend toward an inclusive syncretism open to a variety of hybrid beliefs. To reect about vocation means asking oneself not only, “How many priests?” but also, “What for?” The role and the ofce of the priest is a

7 Borghesi et al. (2007) discuss the perception/representation of the religious life on part of twenty-year-old people in the Venetian and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions. In both sites the disposition to accepting the vocational possibility is around 10% of the interviewees. 8 Buzzi et al. (2002); Grassi (2006); Castegnaro (2006); Garelli et al. (2006).

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mainly theological knot, although it is obviously connected with social dynamics. At the moment this reection seems to have polarized around the question of celibacy and of that of opening to feminine priesthood, undoubtedly important issues, but these would be more sensible to face after outlining the identity of how as a presbyter/priest one is expected to help other believers to live their experience of faith in a society with many beliefs and with multifarious images of God. References Atanasio di Alessandria. 1974. Vita di Antonio [Life of Anthony], edited by C. Mohrmann. Milano: Mondadori. Borghesi, Claudio, Alessandro Castegnaro, Giovanni Dal Piaz, and Italo De Sandre. 2007. Giovani e vita consacrata [Youth and Consecrated Life]. Padova: Dehoniane. Brunetta, Giuseppe. 1957. “Statistica religiosa in Italia” [“Religious Statistics in Italy”]. Sociologia Religiosa 1: 103–18. Buzzi, Carlo, Alessandro Cavalli, and Antonio de Lillo eds. 2002. Giovani del nuovo secolo [Youth of the New Century]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Castegnaro, Alessandro. 2006. Fede e libertà: Indagine sulla religiosità nel Patriarcato di Venezia [Faith and Liberty: A Study of Religiosity in the Venice Patriarchate]. Venezia: Marcianum Press. Conciliorum. Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta [Decrees of the Ecumenical Council]. 2005. Bologna: Dehoniane. D’Agata, Carmelo. 1943. Statistica religiosa [Religious Statistics]. Milano: Giuffrè. Diotallevi, Luca, ed. 2005. La parabola del clero: Uno sguardo socio-demograco sui sacerdoti diocesani in Italia [The Parable of the Clergy: A Sociodemographic Look at Diocesan Priests in Italy]. Torino: Edizioni Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli. Enchiridion Vaticanum. 1981. Optatam Totius [On Priestly Training]. Bologna: Dehoniane. Garelli, Franco. 2006. Chiamati a scegliere: I giovani italiani di fronte alla vocazione [Called to Choose: Italian Youth Face Vocation]. Milano: San Paolo. ———, Augusto Palmonari, and Loredana Sciolla. 2006. La socializzazione essibile [Flexible Socialization]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Grassi, Riccardo ed. 2006. Giovani, religione e vita quotidiana [Young People, Religion and Everyday Life]. Bologna: Il Mulino. Martina, Giacomo. 1996. “Formazione del clero e cultura cattolica verso la metà dell’ottocento” [“Clergy Training and Catholic Culture During the First Half of the Nineteenth Century’]. Pp. 120–206 in La chiesa in Italia: dall’unità ai nostri giorni, edited by Elio Guerriero. Milano: Edizioni San Paolo. Toscani, Xenio. 1979. Il clero lombardo dall’ancien regime alla restaurazione [Lombardy Clergy from the Ancien Regime to the Restoration]. Bologna: Il Mulino. ———. 1982. Secolarizzazione e frontiere sacerdotali [Secularization and Sacerdotal Boundaries]. Bologna: Il Mulino. ———. 1986. “Il reclutamento del clero” [“Clergy Recruitment”]. Storia d’Italia. Annali 9: 573–628. Traniello, Francesco. 1995. “L’Italia cattolica nell’era fascista” [“Catholic Italy in the Fascist Era”]. Pp. 257–300 in Storia dell’Italia: Religiosa, vol. 3, edited by Gabriele De Rosa, Tullio Gregory, and André Vauchez. Bari: Laterza.

CHAPTER NINE

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.’S LIFE: VOCATION AS A SOCIAL MOVEMENT Robert C. Butler Two generations have passed since Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis, Tennessee, April 4, 1968. All over the world, young and old, black and white, Asian and Hispanic, Christian and non-Christian, and rich and poor, have been asking and are continuing to ask the question: What were the forces in life that shaped, inuenced, and formed the life, thought and efforts of Dr. King to translate his vocation as a minister of the Gospel into a worldwide social movement? Was it the thought of gaining notoriety, fortune or fame that drove Dr. King? Or was it both the subjective and objective overt racism and oppression he had directly experienced both in his own life and as reected in the total network of social institutions that governed the society in which he lived? As an insider, that is, Christian minister of the Gospel, human rights activist, and academic involved in community advocacy research that seeks to eradicate and/or break down the walls of social inequalities as well as race, class, and gender oppression, I will focus on four very essential elements that impacted upon the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.—family, church, community, education—that pushed him in the direction of “vocation as social movement”—that is, how his family heritage, his deep roots in the Black Church, and the sense of responsibility and dignity which he animated in his community and in his education universalized his “traditional vocation” into a worldwide social movement. Using a close reading of Clayborne Carson’s edited Autobiography of Martin Luther King Jr., I will show how King began with a received traditional “vocation” in the sense of an occupation, transcended its limits, and then developed a more personal vocation that he cultivated within the occupation’s framework.

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The paternal grandparents of Dr. King were James A. King and Delia Lindsay-King, and his maternal grandparents were the Reverend Alfred D. Williams and Jeannie C. Parks-Williams (King 1980). Of course, as most Americans know, his parents were the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr. and Alberta Williams-King. Martin Jr. knew of his family history through the stories told by his father and mother. They told him about his grandparents being exploited “sharecroppers.” James King, Martin Jr.’s paternal grandfather, turned his torment inward, and he conveyed this to Martin Sr. Although he loved his family, James A. King, beat his wife and yelled at his son (Martin Sr.) and family members on an ongoing basis. Martin Jr. was told about the degradation of slavery; however, his sense of the evils of capitalism was heightened by his personal knowledge of how his forebears and grandparents had been exploited. Although Martin Jr. was born into a middle-class home/family, he grew up among poor blacks in Atlanta. Thus, he identied with a world larger than his middle-class family. This enabled him to keep a sense of urgency about the need to work with and help poor people. King’s maternal grandmother, Jeannie C. Parks-Williams, referred to as “Big Moma,” was very dear to him. She was a very strong spiritual force in the King family. In one of Dr. King’s papers, An Autobiography of Religious Development, written while he was working on his bachelor of divinity degree at Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, he commented: “In our immediate family there was also a saintly grandmother (my mother’s mother) whose husband had died . . . I can remember very vividly how she spent many evenings telling us interesting stories” (1949: 2). These stories were mostly about black life (Butler 1989a: 1; cf. Butler 1989b). Martin’s maternal grandmother’s husband was the Reverend A.D. Williams. He died in 1931 after having pastured Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta for approximately thirtyseven years (1894–1931). He was succeeded as pastor by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Sr., better known as “daddy King”, the father of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On May 18, 1941, when Martin Jr. was eleven years old, his grandmother, Jennie Celeste Parker-Williams died while he was on a sightseeing tour downtown (Carson 1998: 1). Young Martin thought of suicide after learning of her death. This incident had a profound impact on Martin Jr. He comments:

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Two incidents happened in my late childhood and early adolescence that had a tremendous effect on my development. The rst was the death of my grandmother. She was very dear to each of us, but especially to me. I sometimes think I was her favorite child. I was particularly hurt by her death mainly because of the extreme love I had for her. She assisted greatly is raising all of us. It was after this incident that for the rst time. I talked at any length on the doctrine of immortality. My parents attempted to explain it to me, and I was assured that somehow my grandmother still lived. I guess this is why today I am such a strong believer in personal immortality (Carson 1998: 6–7).

Martin Jr.’s parents created an intimate household, and they always maintained a loving relationship with each of their children. In addition, extended family relationships were at work in the King family. Aunts and uncles were always in and out of the King household. Thus, Dr. King grew up in a very secure family that gave him inner security. A person who is secure does not have to hate people or ght people physically. Thus, it was easy for Martin to think of a God of love simply because of a loving family relationship. Many white scholars and black scholars have said that all black families are unstable and matriarchial. This is not true. Economic security and comfort was one of the great values and virtues of the King family. Martin looked up to his father, “Daddy King,” who was six-feet-one-inch tall and weighed 220 pounds (Carson 1998: 2). Martin Jr. further conveys that his father had always been a very strong and self-condent man. I have rarely ever met a person more fearless and courageous than my father, notwithstanding the fact that he feared for me. He never feared the autocratic and brutal person in the white community . . . A sharecropper’s son, he had met brutalities rst hand, and had begun to strike back at an early age. His family lived in a small town named Stockbridge, Georgia, about eighteen miles from Atlanta . . . The thing that I admired most about my dad is his genuine Christian character. He is a man of real integrity, deeply committed to moral and ethical principles . . . My father has always had quite an interest in civil rights. He has been president of the NAACP in Atlanta, and he has always stood out in social reform . . . As pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, my father wielded great inuence in the Negro community . . . I have never experienced the feeling of not having the basic necessities of life. These things were always provided by a father who always put his family rst. . . . He has always had sense enough not to live beyond his means . . . The rst twenty-ve years of my life were very comfortable years . . . If I had a problem, I could always call daddy” (Carson 1998: 4–5).

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The Value of Education Martin’s educational prowess came from his mother’s side of the family. Martin comments that his mother, Alberta Williams-King was: The daughter of A.D. King, a successful minister . . . [She] grew up in comparative comfort. She was sent to the best of available schools and college and was, in general protected from the worst blights of discrimination. An only child, she was provided with all of the conveniences that any high school and college student could expect. In spite of her relatively comfortable circumstances, my mother never complacently adjusted herself to the system of segregation. She instilled a sense of self-respect in all of her children from the very beginning. . . . My mother confronted the age-old problem of the Negro parent in America: how to explain discrimination and segregation to a small child (Carson 1998: 3).

His father managed go back to school at twenty-one years of age in the fth grade at the Bryant Preparatory School where he earned a high school diploma; later he earned a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College (King 1980: 18–19). As Martin would say, he “started out getting a high school education and did not stop until he had nished Atlanta’s Morehouse College” (Carson 1998: 4). Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Dr. King not only attended public schools, but he also matriculated at the Atlanta University Laboratory High School for two years. Ultimately, the Laboratory school was closed down, which resulted in Dr. King completing his high school education at the age of fteen at Booker T. Washington High School with a B plus grade point average graduating in June of 1944. On September 20, 1944, young Martin entered Morehouse College. He graduated four years later at the age of 19 with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology. Both his father and maternal grandfather also attended and graduated from Morehouse College. After graduating from Morehouse in 1948, he went on to earn a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Crozer Theological Seminary in 1951. In 1955, Dr. King received a Doctor of Philosophy degree from Boston University. It is quite clear that Dr. King inherited his sense of education from his family. Moral and Spiritual Values From birth, Martin Jr. was socialized as to “how to treat people,” which was inclusive of all of humanity. The strong socialization in spiritual and moral values he carried with him throughout his entire life came chiey from his family and the African-American church. When a boy,

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Martin came perilously close to hating all white people, but his parents taught him otherwise: We were at the dinner table when the situation was discussed, and here for the rst time I was made aware of the existence of a race problem. I had never been conscious of it before. As my parents discussed some of the tragedies that had resulted from this problem and some of the insults they themselves had confronted on account of it, I was greatly shocked, and from that moment on I was determined to hate every white person . . . My parents would always tell me that I should not hate the white man, but that it was my duty as a Christian to love him (Carson 1998: 7).

Social Awareness and Social Responsibility Dr. King’s family was involved in ghting against racial discrimination. Considering his heritage, it is no accident that Martin Jr. became a great civil rights leader. He was never able to accept segregation and discrimination: “I always had a resentment towards segregation and felt that it was a grave injustice” (Carson 1998: 7). Martin’s maternal Grandfather, the Reverend A.D. Williams led a boycott, and also was involved in local civic affairs. Martin, Sr., served as president of NAACP in Atlanta. Moreover, his mother was responsible for the emerging social consciousness of young Martin. In summary, it appears that Martin believed slavery and racism helped to shape the black family. Moreover, Martin talks about the values that all black families should teach their children: 1. 2. 3. 4.

Global perspective (love all people). Have a desire to achieve excellence in every eld of endeavor. Have a sense of social responsibility and a sense of evil. Have respect for the dignity and worth of all human beings (all people are important). 5. Have a sense of God consciousness. All of these values arose out of Martin’s own family experience. He tried to practice these values on a daily basis. However, there was always a source of unhappiness with Dr. King because he could not spend more time with his children (King 1969). Perhaps this is why Dr. King used to say in many of his speeches, “It’s not the quantity of time, but quality of time spent that matters.”

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The role of the Black Church in Dr. King’s life is just as important as the Black Family for understanding his religious development as well as his vocation as a social movement. For Martin, family and church were inseparable: The church has always been a second home for me. As far back as I can remember I was in church every Sunday. My best friends were in Sunday school, and it was the Sunday school that helped me to build the capacity for getting along with people. I guess this was inevitable since my father was the pastor of my church (Carson 1998: 6).

Martin Jr.’s family roots were steeped in fundamentalism. When he was growing up in Atlanta during the late 1920s and 1930s, his community, neighbors and playmates were very religious people. Furthermore, his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, his only brother, and his farther’s brother were all preachers (Carson 1998: 1). When he was ve years old, Dr. King joined Ebenezer Baptist Church where his father was pastor. He did not want his sister to out do him. She went down to the altar rst. In a spirit of competitiveness, he followed her. He did not have an abrupt conversion; he was just always a part of the religious experience. Two important incidents occurred in Martin’s life that contributed to his religious development. One was the loss of two of his white playmates, and second, the death of his grandmother. These two incidents led him to believe in “personal immortality,” which is African in origin. It espouses the belief that the dead person is not dead, but their spirit is always with us. Early Struggle of Skepticism Martin’s struggle with his skepticism of fundamentalism began to surface when he was twelve years old. His skepticism led him to throw off the shackles of fundamentalism, chiey because his Sunday school teachers at his father’s church, and other black Baptist churches, were unlettered and thus believed wholeheartedly the fundamentalist line. They never questioned anything critically. Martin’s questioning attitude led him at the age of thirteen to deny the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ in a Sunday school class (Carson 1998: 6; Butler 1989). Even after Dr. King entered Morehouse at the age of fteen, his skepticism of fundamentalism continued to occupy the forefront of

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his growing young mind, especially after meeting and being exposed to black scholars at Morehouse who had a more reasoned and liberal approach to religion, and others who encouraged their students to come up with ways to solve the race problem in America. After all, W.E.B. DuBois, the rst African-American to graduate with a doctoral degree from Harvard University (in 1895), had declared in his classic book, The Souls of Black Folk (1976 [1903]: v), that “the problem of the twentieth century is the color line.” Also, reading Henry David Thoreau’s “On Civil Disobedience” opened up Dr. King’s eyes to the theory of “nonviolent resistance.” Thoreau’s theory projected the idea that human beings did not have “to cooperate with an evil system.” This theory mentally captivated Dr. King so much that he commented: Fascinated by the idea of refusing to cooperate with an evil system, I was so deeply moved that I reread the work several times . . . No other person has been more eloquent and passionate in getting this idea across than Henry David Thoreau. As a result of his writings and personal witness, we are the heirs of a legacy of creative protest. The teachings of Thoreau came alive in in our civil rights movement . . . Whether expressed in a sitin at lunch counters, a freedom ride into Mississippi, a peaceful protest in Albany, Georgia, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, these are outgrowths of Thoreau’s insistence that evil must be resisted and that no moral man can patiently adjust to injustice (Carson 1998: 14).

It was at Morehouse that Martin began to pick up the baton for racial justice. His work with and in the Intercollegiate Council opened his eyes to the fact that many whites were also interested in working for racial justice. Of course these new experiences caused him to retract some of his earlier statements referring to all white people as being racists. As did now-deceased Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, Dr. King also committed himself to breaking down the legal barricades that barred African-Americans from their guaranteed United States Constitutional Amendment rights. The rst two years at Morehouse were very tumultuous for Dr. King. On the one hand, he was developing a deep afnity for racial justice; however, on the other hand, he had developed a tremendous disdain for fundamentalism, unlettered (non- seminary trained) black ministers, anti-intellectualism and emotionalism (shouting and stomping) in the Black church. In sum, both of Dr. King’s parents as well as his liberal education at Morehouse inuenced him in wanting to serve humanity, but not in the capacity of a the preacher in the traditional AfricanAmerican mode as he saw it. Martin comments that

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robert c. butler This conict continued until I studied a course in Bible in which I came to see that behind the legends and myths of the Book were many profound truths which one could not escape. Two men—Dr. Mays, president of Morehouse College and one of the great inuences in my life, and Dr. George Kelsey, a professor of philosophy and religion—made me stop and think. Both were ministers, both deeply religious, and yet both were learned men, aware of all the trends of modern thinking. I could see in their lives the ideal of what I wanted a minister to be (Carson 1998: 16).

Thus, Martin decided to enter the ministry during his senior year in college at the age of nineteen. According to Martin, “I had felt the urge to enter the ministry from my high school days, but accumulated doubts had somewhat blocked the urge. Now it appeared again with an inescapable drive. I felt a sense of responsibility which I could not escape” (Carson 1998: 16). King’s Life at Crozer Theological Seminary (1948–1951) It was no accident that Dr. King selected Crozer Theological Seminary in Chester, Pennsylvania, to pursue his theological education in liberal evangelism. Crozer is where he began to master the works of great philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, Locke, Marx, and many others. He examined the social and ethical theories of each of these great men in hopes of nding a method to eliminate social evil. In his early days at Crozer, Martin posed a profound question to himself: What is the mission of the church? He turned to the social gospel movement for answers. This movement was led by white liberal Christians who sought to Christianize society and its institutions. After getting its start in 1918, it sought to redeem both individual and corporate life in our society. Moreover, it challenged the widely held notion that church and religion should only be concerned with personal and individual salvation. The major gures in the social gospel movement were Walter Raushenbusch and Washington Gladden. In an attempt to answer his question about the mission of the church, Dr. King read Rauschenbusch’s book, Christianity and The Social Crisis (1907). Rauschenbusch argues that what was important for Jesus were the ethical demands of the faith. Moreover, he stresses that religion should move from right-word teaching (orthodoxy) to right deed (orthopraxis). At the same time reading Rheinhold Niebuhr’s works: An Interpretation

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of Christian Ethics (1935); The Nature and Destiny of Man (1941); and Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), kept Martin from falling head over heels into the social gospel. King criticized Rauschenbusch for coming very close to equating the social gospel with a political-economic system such as socialism, as well as being too optimistic about human nature (cf. Wasserman 1972: 11). Nevertheless, in King’s book, Stride Toward Freedom (1958), he gives Rauschenbusch credit for providing him with a theological basis for the social concerns that had grown up in him since his childhood. In addition, King applauds him for bringing the Christian church back to its calling, the social action gospel. It must be pointed out that Dr. King was known as “the great eclectic” because had he the intellectual ability and wherewithal to separate the good and the bad in everything he read as well as in human beings. As a matter of fact, he “read all of the inuential historical thinkers—from a dialectical point of view, combining a partial yes and a partial no” (Carson 1998: 21). This is indicative of why Dr. King commented: But in spite of these shortcomings Rauschenbusch had done a great service for the Christian Church by insisting that the gospel deals with the whole man—not only his soul but his body; not only his spiritual well-being but his material well-being. It has been my conviction ever since reading Rauschenbusch that any religion that professes concern for the souls of men and is not equally concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion only waiting for the day to be buried (Carson 1998: 18).

During his rst two years at Crozer Theological Seminary, Dr, King also plunged into the writings of Marx (Das Capital and The Communist Manifesto) and Nietzsche (The Will To Power and The Genealogy of Morals). He viewed Marx’s communism as being both unchristian and immoral as well as failing to see that life is individual and personal. At the same time, King appreciated Marx for bringing out the truth concerning collective enterprise and the shortcomings of traditional capitalism, especially its overwhelming concern for prot. Nietzsche is important in the thinking of Dr. King in that he temporarily shook his faith in the love ethic. He not only attacked the whole of the Hebraic-Christian morality, but he was also obsessed with the glorication of power, i.e., all life expressed the will to power. It was not until King heard Dr. Mordecai Johnson, then president of Howard University, speak on the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi that his faith in the love ethic was rekindled. Dr. Johnson’s lecture was so riveting that it resulted in

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Dr. King reading many of the writings on Gandhi’s life and works. After examining these writings, King realized the effectiveness and value of using the love ethic (Satyagraha) in the arena of social reform. Of course, King’s quest for his position on nonviolence did not end with his discovery of Gandhi’s Satyagraha. Exposure to the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr during his last year at Crozer led him to read his critique of the pacist position in Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932). Because Niebuhr was a former national chairperson of a pacist group, Martin was almost taken over by the passion and profundity of his critique; however, being the great eclectic he was, he saw the shortcomings in Niebuhr’s position. The fundamental aw in Niebuhr’s scathing criticism of pacism, King believed, was that Niebuhr argued that: It could only be successful, he argued, if the groups against whom the resistance was taking place had some degree of moral conscience, as was the case in Gandhi’s struggle against the British . . . pacism failed to do justice to the reformation doctrine of justication by faith, substituting for it a sectarian perfectionism which believes that divine grace actually lifts man out of the sinful contradictions of history and established him above the sins of the world (Carson 1998: 26).

King rebuts Niebuhr by arguing that he holds a distorted view in his interpretation of Gandhi’s pacism. Rather than seeing pacism as “nonviolent resistance” to evil, Niebuhr saw it as being “nonresistance” to evil. In short, Niebuhr saw Gandhi’s pacism “as a sort of passive nonresistance to evil expressing naïve trust in the power of love” (Carson 1998: 26). In trying to arrive at the type of pacism to ght against racism, war, poverty, and other evils in the world, Dr. King struggled to avoid the self-righteous (sinless) posture held by many Christian pacists as well as Christian non-pacists. Like Thoreau, King refused to stand by and watch evil raise it head without him taking a stand against it. King called it “a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love, in the faith that is better to be the recipient of violence than the inicter of it.” (Carson 1998: 26). Although King disagreed with Niebuhr’s criticisms of pacism, he marveled at his insightful critique of how many liberal Protestants had been overtaken by false or supercial optimism in regards to human nature. Not only did Niebuhr illuminate King’s thinking on man’s potential for good, but for evil as well. Also, Niebuhr contributed greatly to King’s thinking about humankind’s potential for collective evil.

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Although King had completely thrown off the handcuffs of fundamentalism as a result of his solid liberal education at Morehouse and Crozer Theological Seminary, he still had some problems with the total acceptance of “the liberal doctrine of man” during his last year at Crozer. Without a doubt, King had fully accepted that humankind’s ability to reason was good; however, for King “Liberalism’s supercial optimism concerning human nature caused it to overlook the fact that reason is darkened by sin” (Carson 1998: 25). Moreover, King saw that “the liberal doctrine of man” results in a false idealism that overlooks and/or justies man’s reasons for engaging in both individual and/or collective evils (i.e., hatred, fear, ignorance and war, poverty, racism). Nevertheless, King could not deny that his liberal learning had encouraged him to become optimistic about the race problem in America as well as about about human nature. Both were viewed by King as “the possibility of the impossibility,” which resulted in creative tension. Also, he came to appreciate how liberal theologians had instilled in him the quest for truth, an open and analytical mind, always willing to see reason in its best light, and the benets of philological-historical criticism of biblical literature. Finally, it must also be pointed out that King not only graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary as a great eclectic thinker and scholar, but he had also learned the practice of ministry from J. Pius Barbour, a friend of his father, and a preaching style that had been tremendously inuenced by Walter Hester, from whom he borrowed a great deal. Upon graduating from Crozer, King was torn in two directions. First, he had an insatiable yearning and determination to return to the South to pastor an African-American church. This would bring him in close contact with the people to whom he wanted to devote his life. He wanted to take a program back to the South that reected the thoughts and inuences of both J. Pius Barbour and Walter Hester. The second direction that was tugging at Dr. King was his desire to enroll in the doctoral program at Boston University, a bastion of liberal evangelism, to study philosophy and theology under Edgar S. Brightman and L. Harold DeWolf. King explains his reasons for deciding to enroll in the doctoral program at Boston University instead of returning immediately to the South in the following way: My particular interest in Boston University could be summed up in two statements. First, my thinking in philosophical areas had been greatly inuenced by some of the faculty members there, particularly Dr. Edgar S.

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robert c. butler Brightman . . . I longed for the possibility of studying under him. Secondly, one of my professors at Crozer was a graduate of Boston University, and his great inuence over me turned my eyes toward his former school. I had gotten some valuable information about Boston University from him, and I was convinced that there were denite advantages there for me (Carson 1998: 27–28).

King’s Life at Boston University (1951–1955) Boston University helped Dr. King to sharpen his intellectual skills all the more in the areas of nonviolence, pacism, liberalism, and neo-orthodoxy. King saw neo-orthodoxy as a means by which to take liberalism out of the bondage of modern culture and shallowness. Furthermore, King revisited the writings of Reinhold Niebuhr. He contended that Niebuhr devoted too much energy being pessimistic about the evil nature (sin) of humankind rather than the cure that God offers through grace and forgiveness. Finally, it was under both Brightman and DeWolf that King was introduced to the concept of personalist philosophy, which theorizes that “the clue to the meaning of ultimate reality is found in personality” (Carson 1998: 31). According to King, the thought of ultimate reality being found in personality was so revolutionary that it gave him both a metaphysical and philosophical base for the idea of a personal God as well as a metaphysical foundation for his belief in the sacredness of all human personality. This kind of thinking led Dr. King to the writings of Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, Philosophy of History, and Philosophy of Right. Although King discovered various aws in Hegel’s analysis of the dialectical process such as his “absolute idealism,” it still helped King to realize that growth comes through struggle. Ultimately, Martin Jr. wrote a doctoral dissertation entitled “A Comparison of the Conception of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Henry Nelson Wieman” (Carson 1988: 30) King chose the concept of God for two reasons: (1) Because of the central place it occupies in any religion and (2) Because of the ever-present need to interpret and clarify the God concept. Both men represented the perfect dialectical contrast for King in that they came from different ends of the theological and philosophical thought continuum. The writing and completion of his dissertation allowed Dr. King to synthesize the many divergent intellectual forces he had encountered at Morehouse College, Crozer

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Theological Seminary, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Boston University, into a positive social philosophy. Conclusion Interestingly enough, one of the main tenets of Dr. King’s social philosophy was the conviction that nonviolent resistance (Gandhi’s teachings) was one of the most potent weapons available to oppressed people in their quest for social justice. Other tenets woven into King’s social philosophy were: the world needs men and women who will stand up for right and be opposed to wrong, wherever it is (Thoreau’s teachings); God has made the universe to be based on moral law (biblical teachings; also Durkheim’s writings); no lie can live forever (Carlyle’s writings); you shall reap what you sow (biblical teachings, esp. Galatians 6:7); truth, crushed to the earth, shall rise again (William Cullen Bryant’s writings); behind the dim unknown stands God ( James Russell Lowell’s writings); and all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control (personalistic philosophy). Dr. King returned to the South to embark into the vocation of becoming the head pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama. It was there that he rediscovered the black church’s tremendous capacity for spirituality, community activism, and political and social action. Due to Dr. King’s grassroots approach, poor people began to join the church in mass. He immediately encouraged his members to join the NAACP. Indeed King’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church had become a social and political base for the black movement. By 1955, Dr. King had been elected to head the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) to organize a bus boycott due to blacks having to ride on the back of the buses in Montgomery. As matter of fact, Mrs. Rosa Parks sparked the bus boycott by refusing to get up and give her seat on the bus to a white man. In his capacity as leader of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Dr. King did ve important things: 1. He took conservative black pastors and organized the community (i.e., King was able to convince conservative, southern, black pastors that the black church was a community building institution as well as challenging black pastors to accept their messianic role as being the leaders in changing the status quo). 2. He was a “unifying symbol.”

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3. He gave birth to S.C.L.C. (Southern Christian Leadership Conference), which became known as the black church in action. 4. He united the picket lines with prayer. 5. He saw to it that S.C.L.C. served as a channel for local groups to do their thing. Dr. King solidied the black community around common goals. He galvanized the black churches and their members into becoming disseminators of nonviolent principles. Consequently the black church became known for nonviolence and moral suasion. Not only was Gandhi important for King, but also for the Black Church. For Dr. King, the practical application of the principles that had become the driving force and foundation of his social philosophy he had woven together during his academic training provided the basis for action that transcended philosophical-theological argument (cited in King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail). After all, great social justice leaders such as Thoreau and Gandhi had admonished him to take action rather than stand by and do nothing while evil lurks its ugly head. Now, we can clearly see why the forces of family, church, community, and education were determinant factors in guiding Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into his vocation as a minister as well as the cataclysmic forces for a social movement that became inseparable from his traditional “vocation.” References Butler, Robert C. 1989a. “The Impact of Family, Church, and Education on Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Life.” Prospectus 31(2): 1–3. ———. 1989b. “Class Notes from Professor Lewis V. Baldwin’s Course, ‘Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’ ” Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Carson Clayborne, ed. 1998. The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York: Warner Books. DuBois, W.E.B. 1976 [1903]. Souls of Black Folk. New York: Buccaneer Books. King, Jr., Martin Luther. 1949. An Autobiography of Religious Development. Unpublished ms. Crozer Theological Seminary. ———. 1958. Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story. New York: Harper & Row. King, Sr., Martin Luther. 1980. Daddy King, An Autobiography, NewYork: Morrow. Niebuhr, Reinhold. 1932. Moral Man and Immoral Society, New York: Scribner. ———. 1935. An Interpretation of Christian Ethics. New York: Scribner. ———. 1941. The Nature and Destiny of Man. New York: Scribner. Rauschenbusch, Walter. 1945. A Theology for the Social Gospel, New York: Macmillan. Wasserman, Lois. 1972. “Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Molding of Nonviolence as a Philosophy and Strategy: 1955–1963.” Ph.D. dissertation, Boston University.

CONTRIBUTORS Luigi Berzano is Professor of the Sociology of Culture, University of Turin. His publications include Differenziazione e religione negli anni Ottana [Differentiation and Religion in the ’Eighties], Religiosità del nuovo Areopago: Credenze e forme religiose dell’ epoca postsecolare [The Religiosity of the New Aroepagus: Beliefs and Religious Forms in the Postsecular Age], and New Age. His research interests are new social movements and changing religious forms. Anthony J. Blasi is Professor of Sociology, Tennessee State University. He is a former president of the Association for the Sociology of Religion, editor of Diverse Histories of American Sociology, and author of A History of Sociological Research and Teaching at Catholic Notre Dame University, Indiana, and with Joseph Zimmerman, of The Transition from Vowed to Lay Ministry in American Catholicism. Robert C. Butler is an Adjunct Professor of Sociology at several metropolitan Nashville colleges. He serves as a pastor and is founder and CEO of Committee For a Unied Nashville (CFUN), a community action organization, and also co-Chair of the McFerrin Neighborhood Organization. His current interests include efforts to move beyond the balkanization of race and denominationalism, slave and slave/master religion, and the impact of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s religious teachings upon African-American theology. Giovanni Dal Piaz is Professor of the Sociology of Religion at the Theological Institute of Triveneto (Padova). He is the author of several articles and book chapters on religious community life. His most recent books are Una strada diversa [A Different Street] and, with Claudio Borghesi, Alessandro Castegnaro and Italo De Sandre, Giovani e vita consacrata [Youth and Consecrated Life]. Robert M. Fishman is Professor of Sociology and Kellogg Institute Fellow, University of Notre Dame. His books include Democracy’s Voices, The Year of the Euro (co-edited with Anthony Messina), and Working Class Organization and the Return to Democracy in Spain. He is currently working on a book, tentatively titled Democracy in Iberia: Revolution and Identities

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in the Shaping of Portuguese and Spanish Politics, which focuses on explanations for the substantial contrasts between the neighboring countries of the Iberian Peninsula in their contemporary forms of democratic practice. Franco Garelli is Professor of the Sociology of Culture and Sociology of Religion in the Political Science Faculty of the University of Turin, of which he is currently the Dean. His is a Fellow of the Italian Association of Sociology and a member of the Board of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion (ISSR). His books include Religione e chiesa in Italia [Religion and Church in Italy]; I giovani, il sesso, l’amore [The Young, Sex and Love]; L’Italia cattolica nell’epoca del pluralismo [Catholic Italy in the Age of Pluralism], and with Giuseppe Guizzardi and Enzo Pace, Un singolare pluralismo: Indagine sul pluralismo morale e religioso degli italiani [A Peculiar Pluralism: Research on the Moral and Religious Pluralism of the Italian People]. Giuseppe Giordan is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Valle d’Aosta. He is member of the Board of the Italian Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of Religion and Book Review Editor of Religioni e Società. His main works include Valori e cambiamento sociale: denizioni operative e modello esplicativo [Values and Social Change: Working Denitions and Explanatory Models], Dall’uno al molteplice. Dispositivi di legittimazione nell’epoca del pluralismo [From One to Many: Systems of Legitimation in the Age of Pluralism], and Identity and Pluralism: The Values of Postmodern Times. His current interests are the sociology of religion, the interaction between religion and spirituality, and the relationship between sociology and theology. Keely Jones is an assistant professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy at the University of Georgia. Her work centers on civic engagement and nonprot organizations and includes articles on giving and volunteering behavior, nonprot nance and marketing, and cultural patterns of engagement in nonprot organizations. She is currently engaged in a project exploring employment incentives in nonprot organizations as well as a series of papers on the role of community structures in nonprot outcomes.

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Laura M. Leming is Assistant Professor in the Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Department of the University of Dayton. She chairs the McNamara Award Committee for the Association for the Sociology of Religion. Author of several scholarly articles and book chapters on religious agency, Laura also teaches and helps coordinate the undergraduate social science curriculum at the Chaminade Education Center in Bangalore, India. Andrew J. Weigert is Professor of Sociology, University of Notre Dame. His latest book is Religious and Secular Views of Endtime. Currently he is working on identity, hope, and the interface between sociology and Catholic social thought.

Religion and the Social Order Edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. ISSN 1610–5210 The series Religion and the Social Order was initiated by the Association for the Sociology of Religion in 1991, under the General Editorship of David G. Bromley. In 2004 an agreement between Brill and the ASR renewed the series. 11. State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies. 2005. Edited by Fenggang Yang and Joseph B. Tamney ISBN 978 90 04 14597 9 12. On the Road to Being There: Studies in Pilgrimage and Tourism in Late Modernity. 2006. Edited by William H. Swatos, Jr. ISBN 978 90 04 15183 3 13. American Sociology of Religion: Histories. 2007. Edited by Anthony J. Blasi ISBN 978 90 04 16115 3 14. Vocation and Social Context. 2007. Edited by Giuseppe Giordan ISBN 978 90 04 16194 8