Search Results (11)

Introduction: Religious practices can shape lifestyles, influence health choices, and help individuals cope with illness and suffering. Understanding which aspects of religiosity support health-promoting attitudes is particularly important. This study explores how belonging to a religious community affects health and well-being among religious sisters. Materials and Methods: An anonymous survey was conducted among 463 women from international, apostolic Catholic congregations in Poland and 33 other countries. The questionnaire included questions on lifestyle, physical health (including diet, physical activity, sleep, chronic conditions, and medication use), and perceptions of how community life influences health and encourages health-conscious behaviors. Results: Overall, 57% of participants reported following a healthy lifestyle, most commonly sisters aged 65 and older (73%). Non-Polish sisters and those living outside Poland were more likely to report healthy habits. Among sisters who saw their community as beneficial for health, 69% led a healthy lifestyle. Retreats, a sense of belonging, communal prayers, and vacations were consistently rated as having the most positive impact on well-being, particularly among older sisters and missionaries. Conclusions: Life in a religious community appears to support health both directly, through structured daily routines and shared responsibilities, and indirectly, by providing social support and fostering a sense of purpose. Spiritual practices, rest, and close interpersonal relationships emerge as the most influential factors for well-being, while formal obligations such as wearing religious attire or attending formation meetings were rated as less impactful. These findings highlight the important role of communal life in promoting both physical and spiritual health among religious sisters. Full article

Education, understood as the process of forming the human person in their integral dimensions—spiritual, intellectual, moral, and social—occupies a key place in the reflection on the evangelizing mission of the Church. This article presents education as a form of integral evangelization based on the thought and activity of the Polish religious sister and mystic Blessed Marcelina Darowska (1827–1911). The initial part outlines the development of the concept of “integral evangelization” in the teachings of the Catholic Church and its relation to personalist pedagogy. The following section presents the figure of Blessed Marcelina Darowska and her educational initiative, situated in the 19th-century socio-historical context of partitioned Poland. The main section of the analysis focuses on Darowska’s concept of education as the formation of the whole person, encompassing the discernment of talents, intellectual, religious, and social development, and preparation for responsible family and civic roles. It also considers to what extent this vision of education can be identified as an expression of integral evangelization in accordance with the criteria of contemporary Church teaching. This article further presents the development of Blessed Marcelina’s educational work and its impact on forming generations of women conscious of their identity. The conclusion offers a reflection on the relevance and potential of this educational method in the context of contemporary social and religious challenges, particularly in the work of new evangelization. Full article

Dialogue needs provocative interlocutors. Instilling a grave and shuddering awakening to the conscience, Emmanuel Levinas has provided a corpus of writings unveiling an immemorial horizon and divine calling of infinite responsibility before the other, the brother/sister stranger. Roger Burggraeve has animated Levinas’ writings within a Christian theological horizon as a source of formation in the service of promoting biblical wisdom and love in the life of faith. The writings of Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis together portray a Catholic theological gravity to bring dialogue into a spiritual, practical, and social domain. Accordingly, this article develops the notion of dialogue within a Jewish and Christian lens by introducing the sense of the non-reciprocal character of dialogue, an asymmetrical relation of responsibility to the other evidencing the preconditions of dialogue. Levinas’ notion of non-reciprocal dialogue, taken further by the writings of Burggraeve, reveals a pre-original affectivity or ‘dialogical’ character of interpersonal relations of commitment respecting the other’s mystery and unknowability. This means that the dialogical relation is a pathway of ethical transcendence, a holy ground evoking an integral human ecology of maternity and fraternity. Such covenantal alterity in spiritual theological terms signifies an affectivity of atonement and redemptive love. In this way, the movement towards dialogue reveals a synodal path and holy ground to walk together and imagine an integral ecology of difference and mystery to transform words into sacrifice and truth into redemptive love. Journeying together upon such holy ground witnesses to a spiritual theology of dialogue envisioning a place to hear the “good news” (Lk 4:16) and encounter “the hunger and thirst for righteousness” (Matt 5:6). Full article

This article discusses the enculturated Catholic ethics of martyrdom embodied by the Martyrs of Fraternity of Burundi, a group of students whose cause is now before the Vatican’s Congregation for the Causes of Saints for refusing to separate into Hutus and Tutsis during Burundi’s 1993–2005 civil war. Engaging Fratelli Tutti from a local African perspective, it considers how the conviction that all human beings are brothers and sisters is to find concrete embodiment. Its argument develops Emmanuel Katongole’s assertion that the African church provides a living witness of what hope looks like in contexts of violence and war, drawing on Burundian scholarship and more than sixty interviews conducted in Burundi from 2018 to 2024 to develop a thick narrative of fraternal martyrdom and the ethics of Ubuntu. By placing sacrificial solidarity rather than violence at the center of the story of the Martyrs of Fraternity, Burundian Catholics reimagine their civil war in ethical terms. This Burundian embodiment of an ethics of sacrificial solidarity, solidly grounded in its original cultural substratum, stands as a resource for a world increasingly engulfed by war, refusing to let violence have the last word in a story of fraternal love hallowed by sacrifice. Full article

Defining successful aging continues to be a challenge, given the more recent transition from a bioscientific definition to a more comprehensive and holistic perspective. The holistic perspective may include more subjective aspects of aging. Research has shown that certain factors, such as lifestyle practices of spirituality, religious practice, meditation, communal support, and purposeful living, may be as influential as genetic factors in helping aging adults diminish age-related limitations. Spirituality and religiosity as lifestyle practice resources may assist older adults to mitigate the circumstances of chronic disease and positively impact aging, life quality, and well-being. Religious and/or spiritual communities, such as Women Religious and other clergy and monks, may provide insight into specific practices that promote social exchanges, life meaning, meditative practice, daily prayer, belief in the divine, communal living, and homogeneity of lifestyle that ultimately promote successful aging and resiliency into older age. Research has shown that lifestyle factors may mitigate diseases such as Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia in older age. The population of older adults has grown consistently on a global level since the turn of the century. This article review seeks to examine aging and emphasize, through research, which lifestyle practices and communities may impact the experience of aging in a more beneficial manner. Full article

In late modernity both religion and sexuality are being elaborated in terms of reflexivity. In this article, we present findings from our research on the topic of constructions of gender, intimacy and sexuality by sisters and brothers in Catholic monasteries in Poland. The findings are based on the mixed-method transformative connection between qualitative (n = 92) and representative sample quantitative research (n = 1543) conducted in 2020. We studied reflexivity on gender, intimacy and sexuality within Catholic religious communities in Poland in order to understand how gender, intimacy and sexuality are presented in the institutionalized framework of religious life. Our study demonstrates that reflexivity on gender, intimacy and sexuality is highly institutionalised and deeply privatized within Catholic religious communities. The article shows that reflexivity of consecrated persons in Poland on gender, intimacy and sexuality is strongly shaped by religious norms (chastity) and subordinated to their religious roles. Full article

Since Jessica Mitford’s 1963 scathing critique of the mortuary business in the United States, there has been an ongoing debate about how best to honor and dispose of the dead in ways that do not exploit people. However, the backlash to predatory mortuary practices led to an impersonal and detached process culminating in online purchasing of post-mortem services. More recently, this discussion has expanded to consider the resulting psychological and spiritual detachment around end-of-life, and a return to natural, simple, and fully engaged burial practices, known as “Green Burial”, are being reintroduced and practiced. While many Catholic cemeteries still call the use of embalming and concrete vaults “traditional burial”, these expensive and unnecessary practices are only 150 years old and have significantly affected the natural environment. A different “traditional burial” is possible when using the model of Francis of Assisi himself who offers a more intimate model of dying and death by embracing his own death and calling it, “Sister Death”. This article will use the interdisciplinary approach of Christian Spirituality to explore the Franciscan concern with creation and link it to the burgeoning practice of Green Burial. A discussion of a Franciscan congregation that initiated the practice for their own sisters, the FSPA in La Cross, Wisconsin, will offer a concrete example of rationale, best practices, and challenges for those considering this as a personal option or as a community endeavor. Full article

During the war with Shining Path (1980–2000) violence in Peru was brutal and extensive. Massive violations of human rights were common, with victims from all regions and social classes, but were particularly intense in rural areas like Ayacucho where the insurgency began. The churches supported and defended rights by providing organizational space, legal defense, publicity (through their radio networks) and by remaining among populations in danger, working with them and often sharing their fate. Important elements in the churches including leaders, priests, members of religious orders, sisters catechists, and ordinary people working through church organizations, were prominent among the victims. They were attacked both by Shining Path (who saw them as competitors) and by army and police forces, who saw their commitment to social justice and collective action as subversive. The choice to defend human rights in theory and action is rooted in a long term process of transformation in the church which drew strength and inspiration from the “option for the poor” articulated at the Catholic bishops meetings in Medellin (1968) and Puebla (1979), and in numerous statements and organizational efforts since then. The process of violence in Peru and the role of the churches is documented in the reports of the Peruvian Commission for Truth and Reconciliation and others from the Peruvian church as well from as regional and local groups. Full article

Background: Sometimes prayer life can be difficult even for very religious persons, who may experience phases of “spiritual dryness”, which may have a negative effect on their well-being. Methods: To address this topic, we analyzed three contrasting groups of persons (religious brothers and sisters (RBS), n = 273; Catholic lay persons (CLP), n = 716; other lay persons (OLP), n = 351) with standardized measures and investigated how often indicators of spiritual dryness were perceived within these groups and how the perception that private prayers go unanswered could be a result of this. Results: Spiritual dryness was highest in RBS compared to RLP and OLP. For RBS, perception of being “spiritually empty” was the best predictor of prayers going unanswered, indicating emotional/spiritual exhaustion, while in OLP, the perception that God is “distant” was the best predictor, indicating that, particularly in this (younger) group, spiritual doubt is of particular relevance. For CLP, feeling that God is distant, feeling abandoned by God, and feeling “spiritually empty” were similarly relevant predictors of feelings that prayers go unanswered. Conclusions: This knowledge may help psychologists/psychotherapists, pastoral workers, and spiritual advisors to differentiate the underlying causes of spiritual dryness (in terms of “discernment”) and thus support persons struggling with God, their faith, and life. Full article

Catholic religious orders that have education as part of their mission have often used visions of the afterlife in theatre productions as vehicles to transmit a message of conversion, especially to those who, because of age or illiteracy, would not benefit as much from Scripture readings or complex sermons. In this article, I look at how such visions of the blessed and the damned, of heaven and hell, of angels and demons, were used in educational theatre in Italy by the Jesuits in the 16th century and the Salesian sisters in the 20th century. The historical background for the Jesuit and Salesian plays I analyze also reveals a propagandistic layer of meaning in their representation of the afterworld, as the Jesuits’ tragedies date to the years of the Counter-reformation, while the Salesian sisters’ plays belong to era of the cold war. Thus, the Jesuit and Salesian theatrical depictions of heaven and hell provide insight not only into the religious understanding of the eras, but also into the social and political concerns of the times in which they were composed, as well as the diverse educational messages transmitted to young men and young women. Full article

This paper examines the corporal forms of discipline and techniques of resistance exercised through and by Catholic women religious (sisters/nuns) in Ontario, Canada. Borrowing from Foucault’s conception of controlled activity as a technique for disciplining the body, as well as Cvetkovich’s notion of repetitive activity as imbued with possibility for knowledge and hope, this paper demonstrates how Catholic women religious, due to their unique position as both leaders and subjects of the institutional church, have been agents of, and subjected to particular forms of disciplinary ritual, both in the Church and in their lived religion. Drawing on the experiential accounts of thirty-two current and former women religious in Canada, the paper demonstrates more or less overt forms of embodied, ritualistic discipline and the extent to which women have resisted this disciplinary power both in convent life and in their later years. The paper sheds light on how women’s perception of discipline is related to disobedience and compliance, nuancing the well-known “old norms” of convent life before the Second Vatican Council. Full article