Women religious contributing to an ethic of compassion and social justice while responding to Catholic Church structures of authority

In recent years, women Religious (Catholic sisters) have been under the watchful eye of the Roman Catholic authorities. With clashes on issues of ethics, health care, official Church teachings, homosexuality, and the role of Christ in salvation, women Religious are in solidarity with their communities as they struggle to engage in ways that are authentic, meaningful, helpful, and true to their profession and their faith.;The purpose of this research was to examine, through the narratives of five American Catholic sisters, the ways in which they experience the phenomenon of living and working within the existing structures of the Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, the questions posed served to develop an understanding of what has informed the thinking of the participants with respect to their responses to the structural authorities of the Church as well as the personal, philosophical, and religious roots of their activism. Whereas the historical and contemporary literature associated with women Religious is extensive, there is significantly less written in regards to the lived experiences and responses to the hierarchal, patriarchal, and ecclesiastic structures of authority within the Catholic Church.;Using case study and a hermeneutic narrative approach to inquiry, semi-structured interviews elicited stories of American Catholic sisters and what it means to live and work within the existing structure of authority. Themes emerged from the narrative analysis of the participants’ collective stories and response to questions asked by the researcher. These themes included: (a) women’s agency; (b) trauma, suffering, and healing; (c) compassionate solidarity; and (d) conscious response to the Church structures of authority. The researcher examined the ways in which their Catholic faith, shared culture, and community serves to cultivate compassionate solidarity and represent and integrate claims of feminist theology, feminist identity, women’s agency, and Western Christian (and specifically Catholic) patriarchy.;The results of this research indicate that the future of women Religious in the United States as advocates for social change requires awareness and cultivation of compassionate solidarity, women’s agency, reclaiming their identity as women in the Church, and respectful resistance to the current Catholic system of patriarchal, hierarchal, and ecclesiastical structures of authority.;Key Words: women Religious, Catholic nuns, patriarchy, women's agency, compassion, social justice, Doctrinal Assessment, narrative, case study.