Academia and Aggiornamento: The Social Sciences and Postconciliar Reform among American Sisters

Academia and Aggiornamento: The Social Sciences and Postconciliar Reform among American Sisters Amy Koehlinger T hough the postconciliar reform of religious life in congregations of women religious in the U.S. is well-documented by historians, the influence of the social and behavioral sciences on the transformation of American sisters in the conciliar era is less studied and understood.1 This is unfortunate because the academic fields of psychology and particularly sociology left distinct imprints on the institutional transformation of congregations of American women religious in the period surrounding the Second Vatican Council. Though social-scientific ideas influenced diverse changes that sisters implemented in their congregational customs and rules—from dress and daily schedules to the apostolate—the most profound and complex effects of the social sciences on sisters were evident in the decision-making processes that religious congregations embraced in the 1970s as antiauthoritarian theories and “small group” models that developed in academic spheres after the Second World War contributed to a general shift among sisters from hierarchical models of authority toward more egalitarian leadership structures. This essay explores this shift within two congregations of sisters in the Pacific Northwest by analyzing the relationship between the self-study tools utilized by each congregation 63 1. For further reading on the post-conciliar changes to religious life in congregations of American sisters see Lora Ann Quinonez and Mary Daniel Turner, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992); Mary Jo Weaver, New Catholic Women: A Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985); Sr. Marie Augusta Neal, From Nuns to Sisters: An Expanding Vocation (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990); Sandra Schneiders, Finding the Treasure: Locating Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context (New York: Paulist Press, 2000), Helen Rose Ebaugh, Women in the Vanishing Cloister: Organizational Decline in Catholic Religious Orders in the United States (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1993), and Patricia Byrne, “Saving Souls and Educating Americans, 1930-1945,” “Success and the Seeds of Change, 1945-1960,” and “A Tumultuous Decade, 1960-1970” in Transforming Parish Ministry: The Changing Roles of Catholic Clergy, Laity, and Women Religious (New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 1990). and the subsequent changes to congregational norms that sisters formulated and implemented as a result. In the early 1950s Pope Pius XII initiated a series of limited reforms within congregations of women religious. Making the effectiveness of apostolic works by sisters a priority, Pius XII called on women religious to eliminate outdated rules and improve the professional training of religious in ministry. The pontiff also asked religious superiors to form national conferences to study and discuss common challenges .2 In August 1952 over two thousand American religious—sisters, priests, and brothers—gathered at Notre Dame for the First National Congress of Religious in the United States. “The purpose of this Congress,” advised Francis J. Connell, CSsR, in his opening remarks to the assembly, “is to inspire in us a deeper love for our religious vocation, and a more ardent desire to fulfill the obligations we accepted on the day of our profession, to give one another encouragement, to exchange ideas about problems common to all religious societies.”3 Through the 1950s women religious in the U.S. religious created a host of similar assemblies and conferences where superiors and other religious met to discuss common concerns and strategies for reform. These organizations included the Conference of Major Superiors of Women’s Religious Institutes (CMSW), as well as the Sister Formation Conference (SFC), and the Sisters’ Institute of Spirituality (SIS).4 At the same time that the Catholic Church entered this period of sustained reflection and transformation, the academic social sciences were developing and disseminating new concepts and tools for interpreting corporate human relationships. As the study of human behavior in groups became more sophisticated, arenas outside the social sciences began to recognize practical applications for the theories of human interaction that had developed within academic spheres. Through the 1950s and 1960s the federal government, educators, and political activists experimented with ideas and models borrowed from sociology. Professional consultants and experts versed in the analysis of group dynamics emerged to apply sociological theory to...