Ex Nuns

The Existential Self in Society explores the ways in which we experience and shape our individuality in a rapidly changing social world. Kotarba and Fontana have gathered eleven original essays that form an exciting contribution and an ideal introduction to the emerging field of existential sociology.

Impressionistic and dreamy, a nine-year-old girl immediately feels that she might be called by God when a Catholic missionary speaks to her third grade class at a Catholic school. The idea of this calling embeds itself into her, haunting her through elementary and high school, after which she chooses to enter the convent. Her story follows the five years she spent as an Adrian Dominican nun struggling to balance her desire for a secular life with her great fear of turning her back on God's call. Her stories are sad as well as joyous, inspiring as well as unsettling.

This book is a sociological inquiry into the nature of an emergent role passage. The book's focus is on 30,000 Roman Catholic nuns who left their convents to secular roles and lifestyles. It is the first work to consider systematically the substantive and theoretical dimensions of this type of role passage. In doing so it raises important questions about the salience of religious life in modern society, the transformation of women's position in social life, and the dynamics of role change in adulthood.

Silvia Evangelisti presents the story of the women who have lived in religious communities, from the dawn of the modern age onwards - their ideals and achievements, frustrations and failures, and their attempts to reach out to the society aroundthem.

This Dutch case study examines, historically and ethically, Catholic charity in the 19th and 20th centuries. The nuns embodied a spiritual model of devotion, and theorists offered theoretical models for interpretation; but how to integrate the perspective of care leavers?