Catholic nuns and sisters in a secular age

Britain, 1945–90

Carmen M. Mangion

• Publisher: Manchester University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781526140487
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

This is the first in-depth study of post-war female religious life. It draws on archival materials and a remarkable set of eighty interviews to place Catholic sisters and nuns at the heart of the turbulent 1960s, integrating their story of social change into a larger British and international one. Shedding new light on how religious bodies engaged in modernisation, it addresses themes such as the Modern Girl and youth culture, '1968', generational discourse, post-war modernity, the voluntary sector and the women's movement. Women religious were at the forefront of the Roman Catholic Church's movement of adaptation and renewal towards the world. This volume tells their stories in their own words.

1

Before the Council: post-war modernity and religious vocations

In this crisis of vocations, be watchful lest the customs, the way of life or the asceticism of your religious families should prove a barrier or be a cause of failures.¹

Introduction

Thirty-something Catholics Edna John and Doris Andrews met while working at the Catholic Truth Society. In 1936, they realised they had something in common: both felt drawn to a vocation to religious life but were hindered by family responsibilities and poor health. During the Second World War, like many civilians, they ‘did their bit’ and became air raid wardens. In between their waged employment and war work, they sketched a plan to support women such as themselves, women waiting to enter religious life. They obtained episcopal approval in 1942 to form the Helpers of Our Lady of Good Counsel, a lay religious society aimed at developing strong female vocations from ‘weak’ ones. Twenty years on, this lay society became a religious congregation known as the Vocation Sisters.² Dressed in forest green A-line dresses and simple veils, they represented the modern face of religious life. This was more than a new look; their ministry used contemporary approaches to tackle vocation recruitment. In a piece that appeared in the British press in the 1960s, the Vocation Sisters were introduced as a ‘modern’ element of the Church. Their ministry was described as transitioning ‘would-be nuns to the life behind the veil’, and ‘selling’ vocations to the public. The article asserted that they ‘act very much like public relations officers, giving talks and film shows, advising, teaching, answering questions and helping girls to acquire a general knowledge of the life of a nun’.³ They used modern technologies to reinvigorate the vocations of those who ‘needed just a little encouragement and assistance; those who lived with a family having [an] anti-Catholic atmosphere, unsympathetic surroundings – in Catholic homes even vocations were not always encouraged’.⁴ In 1948, their religious adviser, Benedictine Ambrose Agius, intimated that religious institutions had become stagnant in their recruiting efforts. He chided religious institutes with ‘I respectfully invite a wider and intenser [sic] co-operation in the work on the part of the many convents in this country. The time has gone by when it is sufficient to sit still and twiddle our thumbs and wait for vocations to drop into our lap.’⁵

Why did vocation promotion seem so crucial from the late 1940s? Some religious institutes reported experiencing a boost in postulants after the war, but for many, this was short-lived. And many more religious institutes, both enclosed and active, acknowledged a shortage of vocations. The discourse on the decline in vocations, both religious and clerical, became more pronounced in the 1950s. Was this vocation shortage simply a response to the greater needs of a growing Catholic population? Or was this indicative of a decline in entrants into religious life? This chapter addresses these questions, first, through an examination of the decision-making process of women entering religious life in the 1940s and 1950s. Next, through an analysis of discursive and quantitative data which demonstrates that some congregations and orders were experiencing a decline in vocations. Lastly, it addresses two top-down responses to this decline. The response from the Holy See was Pope Pius XII’s apostolic constitution Sponsa Christi (1950) and the subsequent international congresses encouraging ‘adaptation’ and ‘modernisation’. In Britain, the response was the development of a more direct, public-facing and professional form of vocations promotion: vocations exhibitions. This chapter acknowledges the growing global, national and institutional awareness that fewer women were saying ‘yes’ to religious life in the 1940s and 1950s.

Modernity is often marked by a shifting social, cultural, economic and political environment and a questioning of the past.⁶ Women entering religious life in the 1940s and 1950s were in the midst of a post-war British world feeling the push and pull of modernisation. They experienced life differently from their mothers and grandmothers; the post-war modern world held the potential for new encounters and worldviews. Women of all social classes during the war had experienced diverse forms of war work, more financial independence and greater occasion for relationships with men and women inside and outside their social class.⁷ Women’s rights campaigner Vera Douie observed:

In one way, perhaps, the war may have made a permanent difference to life in Britain. Women have moved in a wider world, and mingled with men and women of every type.⁸

The feminine ideal that centred on home and domesticity did not disappear but women experienced meaningfully serving their nation as workers, citizens and political actors.

Post-war, career options for young women were expanding. Flipping through the pages of Girl magazine, a ‘New Super Colour Weekly for Every Girl’ launched in 1951, readers found an exciting array of options for careers in the ‘I Want To Be’ section. These included traditional female roles of nanny, nurse and secretary and more extraordinary options, such as kennel-maid, plastics designer and architect.⁹ The magazine My Home also included a series on ‘careers with a future’ reflecting the rising proportion of women in long-term employment.¹⁰ Financial means gave young women a degree of autonomy and consumer power. Historian Claire Langhamer suggests that many young women from the 1920s to the 1950s experienced their pre-marriage youth as a ‘golden age’ of leisure and independence.¹¹ The materialism of the world often discussed in this period suggests the enticement of recreational culture. The 1950s anxiety about ‘the problem of leisure’ came about as more statutory holidays and shorter working hours led to increasing consumption of activities such as television, cinema, sport and holidays. Historian Brian Harrison has written that ‘technological change, improved transport, growing affluence, and (for many) reduced working hours, were opening up hitherto unimaginable cultural and recreational opportunity’.¹²

And yet, despite this bevy of career options, many women ended their waged working lives just before or shortly after their wedding day.¹³ More women were likely to marry in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s than in the 1920s and 1930s. Age of first marriage for women was also consistently dropping each decade, from 25.5 in 1921 to 22.6 in 1971.¹⁴ Historian Pat Thane has claimed a new ‘normality’ of a long-lasting marriage. Marriages became almost universal with an average of two children the norm. Family and a home-centred society was one central feature of the 1950s and Britons were bombarded with ideals of marriage, home and family which reinforced the primacy of the role of wife and mother. Wage dependability and social welfare policies encouraged family stability and security.¹⁵ Both middle- and working-class families believed their children could improve in social status and education.¹⁶ Home life for women was still labour-intensive, but improved housing, smaller family sizes, modern labour-saving conveniences and the potential of creating homely interior spaces led to a domesticity with room for self-fulfilment.¹⁷ Motherhood was also less isolating for the post-war mother; a growing number of women combined being wives and mothers with waged employment. In the years before Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique (1963), the future looked brighter for women who married.¹⁸

The post-war Catholic ‘fortress church’ was changing too. Fuelled (again) by immigration, the Catholic Church appeared ascendant as mass attendance rose, requiring the building of new schools and churches. This was particularly striking alongside a public discourse of secularisation, with Protestants battling declining church turnout.¹⁹ Catholic self-confidence, fuelled by its growing numbers of adherents in Britain, also came out of influencing national legislation.²⁰ Yet, there was little time for complacence. Ecclesial reactions to the post-war world with its state-supplied health care and social welfare were negative; bishops feared the long arm of the state would damage Catholic family life by removing parental (and clerical) authority. Kester Aspden’s study of English Catholic bishops suggested parochialism, where fears of leakage, materialism and intellectualism led to increasing clericalism and nil sine episcopo (nothing without the bishop).²¹ Despite this antipathy, the Catholic laity were benefiting from these initiatives and becoming more educated,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Preface and acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Before the Council: post-war modernity and religious vocations
• 2 The Modern Girl and religious life
• 3 Governance, authority and ‘1968’
• 4 Relationships, generational discourse and the ‘turn to self’
• 5 The world in the cloister and the nun in the world
• 6 Local and global: changing ministries
• 7 Becoming a woman
• Conclusion
• Select bibliography
• Index