Teaching vocation or religious vocation: examining the changing identity of Irish teaching sisters c.1940–1970, an oral history approach

ABSTRACT

This article discusses oral history sources that give insight into how a specific group of teaching sisters (also known as nuns or women religious) reflect on their primary identity as vowed women, and their professional identity as teachers. Their identity was bound up with the fact that they had taken religious vows, and entered a congregation with a clear charism or identity of its own, and they each had their own understanding of vocation. The article also considers the different ways in which they became involved in education; some did not chose to become teachers, while others had a clear desire to teach. The article also discusses the impact of the changes that followed the Second Vatican Council, and notes how these changes impacted upon some of the women in this study.

Keywords:

• Oral history
• teaching vocation
• identity
• nuns
• Ireland

Introduction and approach

The article begins by giving a brief overview of relevant research that has examined histories of women religious, and of congregations/orders of teaching sisters.¹ Common to much research on orders of teaching sisters, is an acceptance of the concept of a ‘religious vocation’, which impelled women to enter convents. The article indicates the ways in which the training and ‘formation’ of a sister, developed this sense of vocation. The expression of ‘vocation’ was located in the religious domain, and included the profession of faith, the sacraments, the study of religious writings, and living by the Rule and Constitutions of the order. The article contends that teaching sisters – even when bound by rules of enclosure – had to develop an identity as an educator, engaging with children and lay teachers during school hours, and relating to parents and the wider world of professional education; some also attended teacher training colleges and universities. We draw on a body of original research, based on oral accounts, in which teaching sisters describe how they experienced this kind of bifurcated existence – vowed nun and professional teacher – and how changes in the 1960s impacted on their experience.

Portelli (2018) has noted that oral history is a ‘social methodology based on personal accounts’. We adopt an oral history approach because it foregrounds the subjective views of the women who were interviewed and ‘creates a space for their unique narrative’ (Regan and Raftery 2021, 523). The methodology involved selecting participants, conducting interviews, transcribing the interviews verbatim, and carrying out a thematic analysis of the transcripts. This approach was selected as oral history enables the historian to give a voice to the underprivileged sectors of society (Lummis 1998). Women religious have been, and continue to be, representative of the ‘underprivileged’ due to their inalienable invisibility in the traditional narrative history of the institutional Catholic Church. Writing in 1995, Margaret MacCurtain (1995) recognised this invisibility when she stated that ‘We need to hear the voices of women religious, the self which is no longer annalist but the subject of the testimony’ (43). Since the mid-1990s, MacCurtain’s call has been repeatedly echoed by many leading historians of women religious including Elizabeth Smyth (year?), who stressed the urgency of recording the voice of women religious who ‘represent a declining resource … Unless the stories and experience of these women religious are documented now, the details of their lives and works, as told in their own voices, will be lost forever’. Several historians of women religious have responded to this appeal including Yvonne McKenna (2006), who interviewed more than thirty Irish women religious and explored their experiences of missionary work between 1962 and 1965. In 2013, Louise O’Reilly (2015) used oral history interviews to enhance her analysis of the impact of Vatican II on the Irish Presentation Sisters. Similarly, Delaney and Raftery (2020), invited female religious participants to reflect on their experiences as teaching Sisters during a period of unprecedented reform in Irish education in the mid-1960s. Flora Derounian (2018), has examined the existences of women religious living in post-World War II Italy, while Carmen Mangion (2020) drew extensively on oral history testimonies in her study of Catholic nuns in Britain between 1945 and 1990.

Notwithstanding the urgency around recording the voices and lived experience of women religious, there are notable limitations to oral history as a methodological tool in the recording and preservation of community experiences, a limitation which is often discussed in terms of ‘collective memory’. As noted by Mangion (2018, 303) collective memory, especially within religious communities, can influence individual stories: ‘once a Sister was professed and entered her community collective memories were transmitted from Sister to Sister in order to create a cohesive message and identity’. Mangion suggests that this collective memory was often the by-product of a shared and strictly observed Rule and Constitution which played an essential role in religious formation, the basis of religious vocation. But ‘personal stories do not always depend on shared history’ nor are ‘personal stories … solely reliant on collective memory’ (Mangion 2018, 303, 312). Moreover, oral history allows for a rich form of exploration of human experience which is often excluded from traditional top-down narratives constructed solely from archival records; as Raleigh Yow (2015, 10), has noted, ‘real motivation rarely appears in official written documents’. We have argued elsewhere that oral history ‘privileges the voices of participants, and allows their views to be recorded’ (Delaney and Raftery 2020, 36). We believe that this approach is particularly valuable in research on women religious, as they are a group rendered almost invisible within the patriarchal Catholic Church. Accordingly, we have undertaken a study, drawing on oral accounts by women religious. In response to helpful advice from peer reviewers, who recognised the vastness of the data gathered, we have analysed the interviews within two separate, but connected, articles (Delaney and Raftery 2020).

The voluntary participants cited in this article are members of an order of teaching sisters, which had several convent schools in Ireland. All of the women who participated in this study entered religious life between 1940 and 1960 and so had varying experiences of conventual life prior to the Second Vatican Council (hereafter Vatican II) which sat from 1962 to 1965. A total of forty-one Sisters were interviewed for this oral history project, which underwent a university ethical review process; the participants agreed to the anonymised interviews being used in published research, and the full transcripts from the project will be archived. The interviews invited the participants to reflect on their professional lives, and their lives as members of their religious order. Within the limits of space, the article focuses mainly on the changing experience of sisters across the period from when they entered religious life (mainly during the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s) and culminating in the era directly after the Second Vatican Council. The impact of the Council on teaching sisters is noted, especially with reference to changes that directly influenced on how sisters experienced their religious life and their teaching careers.

The article then provides an engagement, in three thematic sections, with the oral accounts given by women religious. The first theme is the ‘experience of vocation’ and the way in which it was related to a commitment to be a teacher. The second theme concerns the relationship between training as a nun (formation) and teacher training. The third theme that emerged was the impact of the Second Vatican Council: participants felt the winds of change blow through their lives as nuns and as teachers, in the post-concilliar period.

Concepts of ‘identity’ were evident in the oral accounts, as the participants reflected on how they became professional educators. They recognised that their identities were initially bound up with the ways in which others defined them, but this changed across time. The freedom given to sisters after Vatican II resulted in subtle shifts in their religious identity, and significant shifts in their teacher identity. For example, as will be seen, affective dimensions of the self, such as self-esteem, sometimes changed considerably. As a result, some women felt that they became better teachers, while others left the teaching profession.

While the article is not a theoretical study of ‘identity’ per se, it recognises that research in social psychology has greatly illuminated our understanding of processes of identity development, and ways in which people are transformed by experiences such as education, professional development, and religion (see Beauchamp and Thomas 2009). We also recognise that ‘professional identity is not a stable entity’ (Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop 2004, 113), and it cannot be interpreted as ‘fixed’: rather, it is complex and reflects the reality that people can take on a number of roles. As noted by Beijaard, Meijer, and Verloop (2004), citing Gee and Crawford (1998), people ‘take on different identities, depending on the social setting’ (Ibid.). As will be seen, teaching sisters occupied two ‘settings’ simultaneously: the convent and the school. Additionally, the issue of ‘agency’ is relevant here: across the period under review in this article, teaching sisters were given more freedom, and allowed to determine how they lived their own lives, including their professional/teaching lives. We recognise that teacher identity is a socio-historical and dynamic process (Solari and Ortega 2020), and see the findings of this study as contributing to a wider understanding of that process.

Religious ‘vocations’ and teaching orders

Over the past twenty years, scholars have shown increasing interest in the history of women religious, and in the ways in which they contributed to education. For example, Rebecca Rogers (1995, 1998) has argued that they contributed to the professionalisation of the teaching profession, while also playing a major role in the emergence of the secondary school system in nineteenth-century France. Other research, including that of Raftery (2012), has examined how women religious balanced their teaching mission and their apostolic mission. While Rogers and Raftery both drew on archival sources, Jenny Collins (2015) has used collective biography to study a group of eight Dominican Sisters who worked in education from the 1930s to the 1960, and Christine Trimingham Jack (1998a; 1998b) has drawn on the materiality of education (convent school furniture, iconography, buildings) in her work on teaching sisters. Several scholars have examined the expansion and evolution of convent schools during the nineteenth century (Clear 1987; Peckham Magray 1998; Raftery, Delaney, and Roebuck 2019). Additionally, some studies have examined why women chose religious life in the nineteenth and twentieth century (McKenna 2006; Mangion 2018; Raftery 2015). All of this work gives insight into how women religious ‘negotiated and contested a sense of self as … women, as Catholics and as religious’ (McKenna 2006, 3). More recently Delaney and Raftery (2020) used an oral history approach to examine the impact of the Free Education Scheme (1967) on teaching sisters, while Brendan Walsh (2021a, 2021b) provided a study of the contribution of teaching congregations to education in Ireland in the 1960s, at the time of major educational reform. These studies have gone some way towards challenging the notion that ‘teachers have no lives and become merely agents engaged in the implementation of policy or curricula’ (Walsh 2021c, 567). Perhaps more importantly, these accounts also suggest that ‘the work of teachers is nuanced’ and there remains a need to fill a void in top-down historical narratives which have traditionally neglected the experience of teachers, specifically teaching religious (Walsh 2021c, 577). One such area which is absent in current scholarship is a body of work that examines the relationship between women’s religious vocation and their work as educators – often described by teachers as a kind of ‘vocation’. The article, therefore, attempts to explore how teaching sisters experienced their lives as both vowed women and teachers.

The experience of ‘vocation’ and the desire to teach

A number of women who participated in this research understood their vocation as being part of a ‘higher calling’. Sister Linda recalled ‘ … I had a very deep experience of meeting Christ in prayer during a retreat which stayed with me and I began to think really I wanted to give my whole self to God. At that time, the biggest way I could see was to be a religious’ (Sister Linda 2019). Similarly, Sister Gemma recognised her entry to religious life as answering ‘a spiritual call’ while Sister Leonie felt she ‘was being called to it’ (Sister Gemma 2019; Sister Leonie 2019). For some, this ‘calling’ was the sole purpose of their religious vocation as Sister Clodagh explains: ‘what drew me was an inner experience of God over and over. It wasn’t the habit and it wasn’t the teaching’ (Sister Clodagh 2019) Sister Lisa was equally convinced of her existential calling to religious life: ‘I was looking for God. It wasn’t a particular order, it wasn’t because I wanted to teach, or be a missionary, it was totally selfish. I wanted to know about God’ (Sister Lisa 2019). Clearly, for these women, the sense of having a ‘calling’ permeated all aspects of their religious lives, but for others, being a nun or a teacher was not a mutually exclusive vocation.

Sister Anne-Marie’s decision to apply enter a particular congregation of teaching sisters was decidedly more calculated: ‘I had … my basic degree, I had national teaching and I had a diploma in Special Ed … Yeah, so they [the religious order she entered] were into education as well and so was I’ (Sister Anne-Marie 2019). Some of the women, had completed their teacher training prior to deciding to enter a convent. A few arrived at a decision to enter religious life either while at college or after they had finished their teacher training, and could think more deeply about how they wanted to live their lives. For example, upon finishing her second-level education, Sister Maureen stated that she ‘did teacher training … and I thoroughly enjoyed the three years teacher training … and then I got a job right away … I was there for a year when I began to think about things’ (Sister Maureen 2019). Sister Maria, similarly, became a qualified teacher prior to becoming a nun: ‘When I left school, I went to training college, became a teacher … And then I felt … I felt unless I tried religious life, I might always regret it’ (Sister Maria 2019). For Sister Vera, gaining a teaching qualification was a practical use of her time before she had the opportunity to enter: ‘So I qualified as a teacher in the summer, and in the autumn my mother became very ill and died. Then I was free to make my choices and I went to [the convent] to enter’ (Sister Vera 2019).

The convent school environment also had an impact on why some women chose to enter religious life. Because the convent and school were inherently linked, young girls often became more susceptible to certain practices within that specific environment. This was especially true for Sister Michelle who recalled that ‘it was very much my experience of [convent schooling] that drew me to religious life … The nuns fascinated me’ (Sister Michelle 2019) Similarly, Sister Jo felt that her schooling had an influence on her decision:

… the spirituality was very – it permeated the day. It wasn’t that we were encouraged to be Sisters or to take that up as our life. It was hardly mentioned. There was a very strong devotion to the Blessed Sacrament and many of the pupils went to the chapel before classes for a visit to the Blessed Sacrament and also after school they remained, many of them, and paid a visit before the went home. That was a very strong influence in our lives. (Sister Jo 2019)

Others saw their convent schooling as a kind of preparation for religious life. According to Sister Clodagh:

I was prepared for it in boarding school because we had an almost monastic experience … the context was totally focussed on the Sacred Heart, on Christ as the God of love made man for us, and those were just beautiful words … They came alive and real inside a person. We had a three-day silent retreat annually from about the age of fourteen. We had – daily mass was of course normal – we had a lot of very strong religious formation. But it was done in an atmosphere of freedom and love. I felt loved by the nuns. (Sister Clodagh 2019)

Others were drawn to religious life on account of their personal interactions with and observations of teaching sisters while at school. When reflecting on her time attending a convent school, Sister Ruth stated that ‘we loved the nuns and we loved the convent, everything about it and I think looking back on it, I think that’s where I got the beginning of my vocation … ’ (Sister Ruth 2019). Sister Rachel had a similar experience while at school: ‘I loved the nuns … in the day school. I loved the atmosphere and the whole faith element of it. I was drawn to that … I would have felt drawn to church things … to the choir, I would have felt drawn to go and pray’ (Sister Rachel 2019). Sister May’s decision to enter was influenced by a very specific event in her school life. She recalled: ‘I never thought of becoming a religious … we used to go to daily mass and we had exposition. There was one day and one of the nuns was playing the organ and … I don’t know what, something came over me, and I thought this is for me’ (Sister May 2019).

The experience of convent schooling helped some of the participants to recognise that sisters were ‘ordinary’ humans. This realisation was a decisive factor in Sister Linda’s decision to become a nun:

When I was about 15 or 16, I think, I was very impressed by one of the old nuns … she was very loving with us … she was like a mother. I thought she was an ordinary person, and I thought, mmm an ordinary person can be a nun. That was something. (Sister Linda 2019)

Kinship networks within convents helped some women to decide to be nuns. Research indicates that it was not usual for women to have extensive family networks within the same congregation, and archival data has indicated that ‘nieces/aunts, cousins, siblings and even twins’ can be found in many religious congregations, for at least two centuries (Raftery 2015, 722). The presence of extended family in the congregation influenced the decision by some women to become a nun. Sister Betty, for example, said that she came from a very religious family: ‘I had a very religious childhood. My family were religious. I had two aunts in the convent and my older sister had entered’ (Sister Betty 2019). Additionally, family expectations also played a significant role in why some women entered religious life. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Catholic Church in Ireland had grown in power and influence. With that growth came an unprecedented level of respect for Catholic religious, including nuns and sisters. Consequently, having a family member become a priest or nun was association with social status and respectability. Although this perception waned somewhat as the century progressed, many young girls continued to be influenced by familial expectations and traditions. Indeed, until at least the early 1960s, in many large families it was assumed that at least one child might enter religious life (Delaney 2017; McKenna 2006; Radharc 1962).

While some women may have felt pressurise to becoming a sister, for others, the decision was made freely. Sister Rebecca, for example, acknowledged that ‘it was almost kind of normal in those days that you might think about a vocation’ (Sister Rebecca 2019). The routine of family life and religious observation in the home, made entering a convent a natural decision for Sister Rosemary:

I came from a household where religion was very important, and my mother, particularly was very devoted and, of course, we did the usual thing, we said the rosary every night … And I don’t think either of my parents were in the slightly bit amazed that I wanted to join a religious order, because I got them to pull me out of bed every morning, and shot over to go to mass and then to come back, and swallow breakfast, and then to get on a bus and go to [school] … and also, then … [my brother] went to the Jesuits. To me, in our family, it was a normal thing to do. (Sister Rosemary 2019)

Understanding the motivations behind entering religious life, is an important aspect of understanding how these women subsequently developed a sense of professional identity. Identity was also shaped by religious and secular training.

Religious training and teacher training

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, religious ‘formation’ was foremost in the training of sisters and nuns, regardless of what role they would play in society thereafter. Today, religious formation still plays a central element in sister-training, however, from the mid-twentieth century the focus was less ridged with more opportunities for parallel secular training (Delaney 2017). Typically, formation commenced when a young woman entered the convent novitiate, to prepare to become a professed nun. The period of time spent in the novitiate was normally two years. In the first year, novices learned the rhythms and routines of convent life, and undertook many small activities to ensure that they had a strong vocation. In the second year, called the ‘canonical year’ or ‘spiritual year’, novices were not permitted to study secular subjects or to assist in the external charges of the congregation. Instead, they were supposed to engage in intense study and prayer, as they prepared to be ‘received’ fully into the congregation.

At the ceremony of Profession, the novice took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, exchanged her white veil for a black veil, and was robed in the full habit of her congregation. In some teaching congregations, there was a fourth vow, such as a vow to educate girls, or a vow to educate the poor. But the vow of obedience was perhaps the most important of the three vows, in so far as the daily routine of the convent was concerned. In the convent, those nuns who held positions of authority – such as the Mother Superior and the Novice Mistress – made the important decisions; the rest of the community were taught to follow instruction without question. For many, this involved great personal sacrifice, particularly for those who had clear ideas about what their religious life would be like. For example, a number of sisters indicated that they had chosen to enter a specific religious congregation because they wanted to become primary school teachers. However, these women were not involved in the decision-making process regarding their teaching work, and were not expected to determine the trajectory of their professional lives.

By accepting the decisions that were made for them, sisters learned to lay aside their own personal teaching ambitions and respond to the needs of the wider congregation. Sister Maeve recalled: … I made my vows in 1964 … and I was told, to my surprise, that I was going to go to university in September and I was going to do science … No consultation, just do it! (Sister Maeve 2019).

The impact of the Second Vatical Council

The latter half of the twentieth century heralded a new era in the lives of women religious globally. The Second Vatican Council 1962–1965 brought about universal change within the Catholic Church and transformed the traditional, patriarchal conventions of conventual life, giving women religious the freedom and agency to implement changes for themselves. Perfectae Caritatis or the ‘Up-to-date renewal of religious life’ was promulgated on 28 October 1965 and became the blueprint for reform and renewal in religious life (Flannery 1998). Perfectae Caritatis allowed for the reorganisation of the governing structures of religious institutes, revision of constitutions, directories and books of customs, and offered women religious the autonomy to incite very real change in their institutes (Flannery 1998). Periods of ‘discernment’ took place in communities, as sisters discussed the future. For many of the women who provided oral testimonies for this project, change was immediate and radical.

Unsurprisingly, the cultural changes to the lives of women religious would have an impact on their sense of identity as sisters, and as teachers. Firstly, they were no longer expected to ‘die to the world’ once they entered a convent and could now occupy a very real space in society. They were able to leave the convent enclosure, and this allowed them to consider new ways to continue to live out their vocations. Some of the participants reflected on the fact that their social world was widened: as Sister Eleanor explained: ‘ … we went out … we climbed the hills, while we were still in the habit’ (Sister Eleanor 2019). Others developed new skills. Sister Rosemary stated that ‘ … in 1969 I got my driving licence, which I would never have even dreamt about, because you didn’t go out’ (Sister Rosemary 2019). However, some of the participants were fearful of change, and questioned whether they could reconcile themselves to the reforms of the Second Vatican Council without serious implications to their identity as women religious. According to Sister Angela, prior to the Second Vatican Council there was an element of security in enclosure and obedience to the Rule of your congregation. She stated:

Because if you were trained that fidelity to the Rule would keep you, you just needed to keep the Rule – silence, enclosure, keeping to the structures as they were – and all that was done in total fidelity … . (Sister Angela 2019)

Sister Eleanor indicated that the way of life prior to the Second Vatical Council, meant that she did not have to think too deeply about her responsibilities as a teaching sister – she just had to follow the commands of her Superior. As she recalled, ‘ … you didn’t worry about what you were going to put on the next day, or what you were going to do here or what you were going to do there … [and] there was a tremendous freedom about it (Sister Eleanor 2019). Now, for the first time, teaching sisters became directly engaged in making decisions about their professional training, the work they would undertake, and whether or not they would stay in education. This brought about a far greater awareness of their professional identity, and indeed some decided that they wanted to leave the teaching profession for good.

In Ireland, the recommendations put forward by the Second Vatican Council coincided with major reforms in the Irish education system – most notably, the introduction of free post-primary education in September 1967. Together, Second Vatican Council and the ‘Free Education Scheme’, would change convent secondary schooling completely, and bring about many changes in the professional identity of women religious as teaching sisters (see Delaney and Raftery 2020). The introduction of free education happened at exactly the same time that a marked decline in religious vocations started to become evident in Ireland, and indeed in the Global North. There were many reasons for this decline; firstly, the relaxation of many of the rigid rules under which nuns had lived, allowed them to see more of the ‘outside world’, and some chose to move back into that world. Secondly, the general ‘spirit of 1960s’ had an impact on institutional life in convents; televisions and cars were bought for convents, and nuns listened to popular music and read newspapers. They became aware of political and social changes around the world, and they ventured into that world more easily. Thirdly, women no longer needed the protection of a religious congregation in order to travel overseas as missionary teachers or healthcare workers; the growth in agencies for secular volunteering made it possible for women to travel to the Developing World, as teachers. Fourthly, some sisters simply did not like the more liberal atmosphere of convents after the changes of the 1960s, and left religious life because it no longer met their needs. The women in this study recognised that the changes that followed Vatican II gave them the freedom to determine the trajectory of their professional lives. As it happened, the majority chose to continue to work, either directly or indirectly, in education. Some remained in the post-primary sector, while others took on posts of responsibility or volunteering. Generally, the found that their identity was bound up with serving through education, even if they were no longer in a school staff room.

The period 1940–1970, when the women in this study were actively involved in education, was one of great change. After the changes which followed the Second Vatican Council, sisters were allowed to make decisions about how they would spend their lives. Although it falls outside this article, it is clear that this new-found freedom put strain on sisters: some found it hard to self-determine, while others redefined their mission within education, or changed the direction of their lives. This kind of change sent shockwaves through convents, and many – if not most – sisters simply never talked about it. An aside made by some sisters, usually voiced after the ‘official’ interview had concluded, was that they had never been asked to talk about their lives before. Some said that, because they had spent a lot of their lives living in communities together, it would have felt almost self-indulgent to want to talk about themselves. Today, however, congregations of teaching sisters the Ireland are now in the final stages of the decline that began in the late 1960s, and there many sisters who want to talk about their lives. Additionally, the impact of the global pandemic has given a certain urgency to their need to record their experiences. Oral history gives them a voice.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of the sisters who provided oral history testimonies for this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deirdre Raftery

Deirdre Raftery is professor of the history of education at the School of Education, University College Dublin. An elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, she has been a research fellow at several universities including the University of Oxford, the University of Toronto, and the University of Southampton. She held a Fulbright at Boston College in 2015, and has lectured and published widely. Her most recent book is Teresa Ball and Loreto Education: Convents and the Colonial World (2022).

Catriona Delaney

Dr Catriona Delaney lectures at the School of Education, where she has held two post-doctoral fellowships, working with Professor Raftery and the UCD Convent Collections research team. She is co-author of Nano Nagle, the Life and the Legacy. Her work has appeared in many journals including History of Education, and the Journal of Education Administration and History.

Notes

1 Under the codification of Canon Law (1917), the term ‘nun’ came to define contemplative orders of women religious who took solemn vows. The term ‘sister’ was commonly used to refer to religious who took simple vows and worked outside the cloister. However, in contemporary scholarship, the terms ‘nun', ‘sister', and woman / female religious are frequently used interchangeably.