Staying faithful: Challenges to Newfoundland convents

This thesis explores processes of identity construction among nuns in the Roman Catholic Congregations of the Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary of Newfoundland. Research involved a combination of open-ended interviews, archival research and participant observation.;The Vatican II call to renewal in religious life prompted a period of self-conscious change that continues in the present. Sisters have replaced the apparent uniformity of the past with an openness to diversity and a willingness to experiment with new approaches to active religious life. The displacement of a seemingly unambiguous code for living in religion brought a certain amount of anxiety and conflict; at the same time there was a sharp decline in the sisters' population.;I explore what it means to be a Religious Sister of Mercy or Presentation now that the apparent security of the past has disappeared. I suggest that religious identity is constituted through fidelity to certain elements of religious life. Rather than being instantiated in the detailed behavioural code of the past however, these are flexible enough to accommodate a range of lived interpretations.;While it was the Church hierarchy that first asked sisters to rethink the vowed life, many sisters feel that elements of the hierarchy have become hostile to the Vatican II message; sisters must accommodate their commitment to the Church with their critique of its strong conservative component. Similarly, many sisters are dissatisfied with the Church's official attitudes toward women. They enact their dissent within the discursive horizons of the Church in ways that allow them both to challenge the Church and to maintain a meaningful religious identity. (Abstract shortened by UMI.).