The identity of American Catholic women religious: A qualitative study of identity narratives in an American apostolic religious community
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The Catholic Church has a rich history of women choosing to devote their lives to God and the Church through religious vocations. The theological shifts at the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) affected the spirituality and lifestyle for many women religious. These changes renewed the identity of women religious and their role within the modern world. Over the past few years in the United States of America, the Vatican has conducted two assessments involving American women religious. The purpose of this study was to explore the identity of American women religious and to explore the impact of the current events within the Church on their identity with emphasis on their sense of generativity. The Listening Guide (Gilligan, 1982) was used to analyse the narratives of 8 American women religious from an apostolic congregation. The findings suggest that these women continue to identify with the principles of Vatican II. Specifically, they view themselves as mature, faithful women who serve God and others through the charism and ministry of their chosen vocation. Although they are upset by the recent attitude and actions of the Vatican regarding the Apostolic Visitation and the assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, they are united in their faith that the current tensions in the Church are creative. As such, they are able to thrive in the face of adversity, evidenced by how they have modeled their values of collaboration and collective discernment in their response to the Vatican. They discussed the importance of group cohesion that fosters individual spirituality within the collective identity. They also emphasized the ability to thrive despite criticism from the Vatican by maintaining their social identity in their daily activities. Finally, they embraced the possibility of an imminent transformation within the Church.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.012 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".