Vocation for travel. Catholic priestly training in Sri Lanka

Brown, Bernardo E.

doi:10.1080/0048721x.2020.1810818

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Contrary to received arguments in both academic and popular literature that the expectation of access to resources or social mobility and their poor family backgrounds are the decisive motivations for young women to join convents (Brown 2020;Ambika 2019;Joseph 2005), many of the nuns tell stories of negotiation and struggle, as their families objected to their decision. Calling narratives reveal that belief, religiosity, and an individual's complex connection with God form a major reason in her decision to embrace the religious life.…”

Section: What Is a Religious Call?mentioning

confidence: 81%

“…What for ordinary persons, even Catholics, might be coincidences or inexplicable incidents, are linked together in the minds of the potential novice, and understood and narrated as connected and meaningful events. As Lester (2005) and Brown (2020) note, a reordering or rearrangement of one’s own life events often entails this process where a new understanding and narrative becomes inevitable in constituting oneself as a religious subject. Thus, in the experience of calling, discernment is an important process.…”

Section: Calling Narratives: “Event” and The Subjectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Called to God: Event, Narration and Subject Formation in the Vocation of a Catholic Nun

ANTONY

Robinson

2022

Critical Research on Religion

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The literature emphasizes institutional formation in the process of a young woman becoming a nun or sees her motivations as stemming from expectations of social and economic mobility. This article focuses on the nun’s call as event ( Badiou 2001 ; Humphrey 2008 ), revealing its truth to the subject and reconstituting her by her fidelity to it. However, its validation and realization are only accomplished within the structured formation and discipline of congregational life. Through an ethnographic analysis of the lives of nuns in two indigenous Catholic convents in Kerala, South India, the article shows that they often have to struggle against their families to embrace their call. The congregation endorses the authenticity of a young woman’s call while requiring its constant reexamination through prayer and meditation. Thus, a nun’s call is encoded in formulaic structures through institutional formation, but its sensory and imaginary experiences are uniquely hers. Analytically distinguishing the calling event from the narrated event, the article integrates a Foucauldian understanding of disciplinary practices with Alain Badiou’s idea of the singular event for a grounded ethnographic grasp of the subject formation of a nun within her calling.

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Section: What Is a Religious Call?mentioning

confidence: 81%

Section: Calling Narratives: “Event” and The Subjectmentioning

confidence: 99%