Becoming Apostolic

Catherine Sexton, completed her Ph.D. at the Margaret Beaufort Institute of Theology, Cambridge, in 2018 and is a Research Fellow at Durham University’s Centre for Catholic Studies. She has been researching religious life for women for the past fifteen years. Her most recent publication is a chapter in Female Faith Practices: Qualitative Research Perspectives (Routledge, 2023).

Abbreviations



1 Women in Apostolic Religious Life

 1.1 Introduction

 1.2 From Active to Semi-monastic Life: the Historical Context before the Second Vatican Council (1962–65)

 1.3 The Second Vatican Council and Apostolic Religious Life

 1.4 Implications for the Women in This Study

 1.5 The Significance of the United States’ Context for the Discourse on Religious Life in the United Kingdom

 1.6 United States Writing: Two Articulations of Apostolic Life for Women

 1.7 Discourse on Religious Life in the United Kingdom, 2000–18

 1.8 Rationale for This Study

 1.9 Structure of This Book



2 Treading on Holy Ground: Listening for Absent Voices

 2.1 Introduction

 2.2 Theoretical Basis for Research Design

 2.3 The Centrality of Women’s Experience and Attendant Challenges

 2.4 Reflexivity

 2.5 My Engagement with Religious Life

 2.6 Insider/Outsider Stance

 2.7 Method as Holy Listening and Sacred Reading

 2.8 Holy Listening: Encounters with Religious Women

 2.9 The Second Component of the Method: Listening for the Voice through Sacred Reading

 2.10 The Third Component of the Method: Thematic Analysis

 2.11 Conclusion



3 Framing the Apostolic Becoming

 3.1 Introduction

 3.2 Making Meaning of Vocation

 3.3 Narratives of a Changed Understanding

 3.4 Naming Their Way of Life

 3.5 Conclusion



4 Becoming Apostolic as Themselves

 4.1 Introduction

 4.2 The Context

 4.3 Free to Become Oneself

 4.4 First Set of Narratives: Claiming and Asserting Identity

 4.5 Second Set of Narratives: Fulfilment and Frustration

 4.6 Using Voice to Exercise Personal Agency: from Obedience to Discernment

 4.7 Encouraged to Be Themselves

 4.8 Conclusion



5 Being With and Being For

 5.1 Introduction

 5.2 Context

 5.3 Ways of Being Apostolic

 5.4 Facing towards Others

 5.5 Ministry as Gift: Fit for Purpose?

 5.6 Self-Gift

 5.7 Conclusion



6 Ministry in Old Age: Apostolic to the Very End

 6.1 Introduction

 6.2 Ministry in Old Age

 6.3 Forms of Ministry in Later Life

 6.4 Ministry of Presence

 6.5 Ministry to Each Other in Community: Sacramentality of Relationships

 6.6 Ministry with and for Their Carers

 6.7 Obedience of Detachment and Relinquishment

 6.8 Conclusion



7 Theologies That Speak to All?

 7.1 Theology for Ageing Religious or for Apostolic Religious Life More Widely?

 7.2 Theology of Religious Life or Theology for All Those Ageing?

Bibliography

Index