Florence Nightingale and Responsibility for Healthcare in the Home

The focus for this article is the approach taken by the famous British nurse and public health reformer Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) to responsibility for care, with particular reference to healthcare as practised in the home. It begins by examining Nightingale’s involvement as a young woman in ‘Lady Bountiful’ style upper-class charitable health visiting in the period before 1850. It goes on to consider the district nursing model designed by Nightingale and William Rathbone in the 1860s as an attempt to adapt this localised model of charitable care to the demands of industrial Victorian cities. The final section broadens the lens to examine Nightingale’s views on religious vocations in care work and the state’s expanding role in regulating the nursing profession. Nightingale’s ideal vision of care combined multiple elements: attachment to a local community, a sense of religious vocation, and the scalability and fundraising of national or governmental organizations.

A Reexamination of Marginal Religious Specialists: Himalayan Messengers from the Dead

A delog is a Tibetan Buddhist religious specialist believed to die and return to life to relay messages from the dead. In the contemporary Himalayas, the revenant experiences that delogs undergo happen to people with limited access to social and economic power and thus confer a religious title on individuals whose opportunities to function in authoritative religious roles are limited. At the same time, the network of expectations within which delogs are identified naturalizes and perpetuates gender, class, educational, and ethnic hierarchies among Himalayan Buddhists. Although minor religious vocations continue to be celebrated as avenues by which subaltern people challenge hegemony, the contemporary delog tradition in the Himalayas effectively works to reinforce the power and authority of texts and male elites.

The Personal Make-up of the Vilnius Fatebenefratelli in the Second Half of the 17th and the 18th Centuries

This article addresses the fluctuations in the annual numbers of candidates accepted into the noviciate of the Fatebenefratelli, the numbers of novices who took vows, and those who withdrew from the noviciate by their own choice or were rejected; the age structure of novices, their geographical and social origins. The main sources for the study of the personal make-up of the Vilnius Fatebenefratelli (Ordo S. Joannis de Deo) are two books of novices (libri novitiorum) (1678‒1725, 1761‒1823) that supply the relevant personal information on 243 novices. The analysis revealed that 51% of the novices had successfully completed the noviciate, while others resigned by their own will or were rejected. Most candidates were aged between 18 and 37; however, the order’s internal structure and the short formation of novices allowed to accept older candidates. Most novices originated from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and mainly from the Vilnius, Navahrudak, Trakai palatinates and Samogitia. Most probably, this reflected the general trends of immigration to Vilnius as well as the lack of opportunities for religious vocations in Samogitia. The geographical origins of novices also show that candidates came from mainly rural localities, whereas only 30 originated from cities (including Vilnius) and towns. The sources do not adequately reveal the social origins of novices, and only sporadic mentions reveal some candidates to have come either from the nobility, towns- and tradespeople, or other groups. Nonetheless, considering their geographical origins and material status, it could be assumed that the majority of novices were of non-noble birth and originated from rural strata.

Other Factors Influencing Religious Vocations

This chapter presents an overview of aspects that may influence women and men religious on their religious vocational decision during their childhood with their family and parish, their attendance of primary and secondary school, their participation in parish life, and their college years. The influential aspects addressed are: attending Mass regularly and devotional practices, having the opportunity to discuss and receive encouragement from others to discern a religious vocation, the witness of men and women religious, and being engaged in youth and voluntary ministry programs. The chapter concludes that while not every individual religious has opportunities to experience these activities in various environments before he or she decides to enter religious life, all the aspects complement one another and have an impact on religious vocational discernment and decision-making.

The Influences of Volunteer Programs on Religious Vocations

This chapter explores the impact of spending a year in post-college volunteer service on the subsequent life choices of the volunteer, with special emphasis on its influences on the volunteer’s religious participation. Based primarily on two CARA surveys and several focus groups, it covers the characteristics of the volunteers, their experiences both before and during their year of service, and the impact of volunteering on their later religious involvement. Implications for the Church and for religious institutes are outlined at the end of the chapter, including suggestions involving meeting volunteers’ desire for discernment and reflection after their service is over.

The Influences of College Experiences on Religious Vocations

This chapter presents different aspects of college environment that had an impact on men’s and women’s religious vocation while they were in college. Based on CARA studies from 2012 and 2014 in which respondents entering religious life answered questions about their backgrounds, these aspects include witnessing religious vocation, Mass participation, spiritual direction, college service programs, devotional and spiritual practices, campus ministry, college roommates and friends, and encouragement and discouragement of vocational discernment while on campus. The chapter presents the differences in these various aspects between religious members attending Catholic and non-Catholic colleges and universities. It also discusses the different influences for men and women on their discernment of a religious vocation.

The Influences of Families on Religious Vocations

This chapter is based on several national surveys of U.S. Catholics that CARA conducted, as well as a 2015 survey commissioned by the National Religious Vocation Conference of the members of men’s and women’s religious orders, diocesan priests and seminarians, and their families. It explores the differences between the families of priests, seminarians, and religious order members and other Catholic families by covering the family religious backgrounds and practices of priests and religious and whether other family members encouraged or discouraged discernment of a religious or priestly vocation. Also covered are the misconceptions that family members had of the priesthood and religious life and the worries they expressed about the future.

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

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

Facing facts: the empirical turn of Irish Catholic sociology in the 1950s

Catholic sociology in Ireland changed significantly during the 1950s and 1960s. This change had four principal strands. First, the joint action of the Maynooth Professor and Muintir na Tire to secure European and US help in fostering rural sociology. Second, the use made by Archbishop McQuaid of his power within UCD to establish social science teaching in the state’s largest university. Third, the tension between useful and critical social science that emerged as the growing number of Irish Catholic immigrants in an increasingly secular Britain became a focal point for research proposals. Finally, the manner in which Ireland’s initially abundant, but later faltering, supply of religious vocations and the maximization of its clergy’s contribution to worldwide Catholic missionary efforts was studied. All of these strands are tied together by a broad turn away from exclusive preoccupation with ethical principles and towards increasing involvement in empirical social investigations.