Killing Vocations over Wheaties and Milk

Autor: Mary J. Henold
Rok vydání: 2020
Zdroj: The Laywoman Project
DOI: 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469654492.003.0002
Popis: The turn of the 1960s marked a time of extreme demographic challenges for the American Catholic church. While the number of vocations to religious life was rising, the church itself was experiencing massive growth due to the baby boom of the post-war years. There simply were not enough women religious (nuns) to staff the growing number of Catholic schools required to educate the youth of the church. In response, Catholic periodicals signaled what they called a “vocation crisis” starting as early as 1958. An analysis of the articles produced at the height of the crisis in the first half of the 1960s reveals, not only the church’s fears at this unique moment, but also its perception of Catholic laywomen. Laywomen were most frequently blamed for causing the crisis by holding back their daughters from religious life. They were counseled to sacrifice everything for the church in order to achieve sanctity, and criticized for their failure to do so. The literature of the vocation crisis reveals common assumptions about laywomen’s vocation and its importance in the early 1960s.
Databáze: OpenAIRE