I CAN'T HEAR YOU:
BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION IN THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CULTURE

Angela Coco
University of Queensland
Brisbane, Queensland Australia
a.coco@mailbox.uq.edu.au

Abstract.This article reports findings from a larger study entitled Catholics' meaning-making in critical situations (Coco, 1998) and is based on interviews with forty informants. Analytically, I have combined the Sense-Making Methodology's concept of situation movement state and a typology of communicative strategies to describe how and why participants negotiated dissonant situations with respect to their Catholic faith. One particular situation movement state, wash-out, is analyzed in detail and a summary compared with summary findings of three other situations. Catholics were unable to mobilize such communicative strategies as mediation and consensus. This meant they withdrew physically, emotionally and/or spiritually from stress causing situations. It was found that participants were re-defining what it means to be Catholic.

Introduction

An increasing sense of urgency is developing in Catholic politics as official bodies in the church maintain a rigid stance on Catholic dogma, retracting many of the forward looking initiatives created by the Second Vatican Council in 1965. One example was the Council's promotion of unprecedented levels of lay involvement in Catholic ministry and church decision making processes. However in a 1997 document, Vatican authorities drew tight boundaries of interpretation around the subject of roles of the laity and clergy. The injunction entitled, Instruction on certain questions regarding the collaboration of the non-ordained faithful in the sacred ministry of the church (John Paul II, 1997), was calculated to eradicate such common practices as the delivery of sermons and the habitual ministering of the Eucharist by non-ordained people. Democratic parish decision making processes were also targeted thereby re-asserting the power of the priest as ultimate authority on all issues. It is well known to the Vatican that believers, both individually and collectively, are questioning a worldview that they find inadequate and dehumanizing. The study reported here sought to identify the procedures which people engage to make sense of life experiences that challenge the veracity of their understandings of current church teaching and practices.

A plethora of scholarship in the areas of theology, biblical studies, discourse analysis, sociology, ethics and women's spirituality has demonstrated grass roots dissatisfaction with the way church authorities deal with lay people and their lives, yet this dissatisfaction has made little impression on the decisions of those who wield power. This failure to hear the issues raised by concerned Catholics has been articulated by scholars including feminist theologian Mary Grey (1993) and feminist psychoanalytic researcher Naomi Goldenberg (Harvard University, 1993). For these reasons I sought a research approach that could elucidate how mechanisms of power are kept in place by individuals participating in different levels of church functioning. Adopting a phenomenological perspective I considered the Sense-Making Methodology developed by Dervin (1983; 1992; 1999) the most useful way to go about investigating Catholic persons' meaning-making. Data were collected using the Sense-Making interviewing approach, and analyzed using analytical categories developed as part of the methodological approach.

The findings reported here form part of a larger study entitled Catholics' meaning-making in critical situations . [1] The aim of the present article is to contribute to existing substantive literature by identifying the procedural and justificative rationales employed by Catholics when they encountered a blocking situation in which the knowledge wrought of their life experiences contradicted their understandings of church teachings and practices. I will begin by providing a selective reporting of the literature and discuss how that literature aligns with and provides a platform from which this study moves. I will then briefly outline the methodological rationale of the study both in terms of the interviewing approach and in terms of the analytical categories extracted from Sense-Making. This will be followed by a discussion of two cases which illustrates the way data were analyzed and compared.

Review of the Literature

Existing research into the political situation in Catholicism tends to focus on the outcomes of people's meaning-making. It is often reported according to standard categories derived from parameters set by the religion itself, for example, mass attendance, frequency of prayer, assent to dogma or beliefs about God. Where authors do discuss some reasoning process, this tends to provide illustrative material rather than be the focus of analysis. In reading existing research then, it was necessary to delineate studies that were somehow conceptually related to the kinds of processes people were likely to discuss when asked to focus not merely on outcomes, but on the processes that led to those outcomes, that is, to the very attentions mandated by the Sense-Making approach.

Studies related to the substantive content of this research are those that address contemporary Catholic identity formation and those that explore lay/hierarchy relations. I review only selected works from United Kingdom, Australia, the United States and New Zealand. Similar studies conducted in France (Michelat, 1990) and Italy (Pace, 1996) are not discussed for reasons in accordance with those articulated by Bailey (1995). In those countries Catholicism has been the national religion. Therefore the methods used to interpret Catholic culture and the meanings attached to observations will quite likely differ from countries like Australia in which citizenship composition differs historically and where there is a more diverse cultural and religious mix. I do not review the many empirical studies conducted in countries where the primary language spoken is not English. The colonizing history of these countries and resulting accommodation of Catholicism varies greatly from those of the United States, Australia and New Zealand where indigenous peoples have been decimated.

Hornsby-Smith (1987) and Yip (1997, pp.165-170) in Britain, and Greeley (1990), D'Antonio (1994) and Dillon (1996) in the United States identified three salient themes: pluralism in Catholic beliefs and practices, Catholics' difficulties with the church's repressive attitude towards sexuality and their rejection of hierarchical authoritarianism. Taking a slightly different approach, Greeley (1990) asked why Catholics stay in the tradition. He argued that they remained because they possessed a `poetic imagination,' which had been developed in early socialization. This imagination was characterized by a sense of the importance of community, institution and hierarchy as well as by ritual, story and the variety of social rituals that accompany such events as first communion. D'Antonio (1994) and Dillon (1996), and McLaughlin (1999) in Australia, also reported the continuing value of communal identity amongst Catholics.

Membership in a marginalized group appears to generate a set of issues peculiar to that sector of the Catholic community. Three works reviewed examined Catholic women and power relations. In a study of Women and the Australian Church, Coco (1991) advanced the notion that differences between lay women and nun women reflected patriarchal structuring. Under stressful conditions, such as that pertaining to decision-making about the future of the project, these differences were likely to re/inscribe unjust practices between women, thus dividing them against each other. Power was mobilized on behalf of women when nun women instigated the Women and the Australian Church (WATAC) project, but patriarchal structuring became the force that put the brakes on progress when religious orders withdrew their support in 1989. Because of WATAC's increasingly public stance for women and its open affiliation with the Anglican Movement for the Ordination of Women, nun women could not afford to be seen to support it.

Ebaugh's (1993) research supports this analysis of nun women's strategic interventions and withdrawals. She suggested nuns have negotiated `patriarchal bargains' since the end of Vatican II by which they manage a degree of social mobility within the institution. These bargains have changed as religious women have redefined their visions, become more highly educated and embarked on professional careers. Currently, nun women's service is characterized by their involvement in social justice issues, their withdrawal from parish work and their advocacy on behalf of Catholic women.

When Catholic women seek to adopt leadership positions in the church, they inevitably come under scrutiny and/or attack. Wallace (1992) examined the attitudes towards, and acceptance of, women pastors, nine lay women and eleven nuns, in their parishes. These women faced difficulties in dealing with stereotypical behaviors of parishioners (mostly male) and priests. For example, they were expected to do the church cleaning (priests are not). Wallace's work indicated that, where parishioners have to adjust to the idea of a woman pastor, in time they come to withdraw their support for the patriarchy and gender discrimination.

Other work demonstrates that some Catholics were taking control of their spiritual health by establishing networks and support groups relevant to their needs. Two studies, D'Antonio (1994) and Winter, Lummis and Stokes (1995) examined the attitudes of Catholics who participated in faith communities outside of official church structures. Catholics participating in small faith communities found parish life to be unsatisfactory (D'Antonio). Participants in women's spirituality groups in the United States relied on their own inner authority and took personal responsibility for their spiritual and religious lives. They began to make a distinction between `religion' and `spirituality' (Winter et al., 1995). According to Winter's feminist interpretation of the situation, women suffer at the hands of "dysfunctional authority figures who use their role as a means to control rather than free others in their relationships with God" (p.105). These two instances reveal that sometimes people remain within the church but on their own terms.

Whether religious or lay, women most often were contesting constructions of spiritual reality. In this they shared similar concerns with homosexual Catholics. Surveying gay and lesbian Catholics, Yip (1997, pp.165-170) observed a "discrepancy between the respondents' personal faith and the Church's official teachings" on such issues as "homosexual acts, artificial contraception, and compulsory celibacy for clergy." Celibacy enshrined in the Catholic hierarchy seems inextricably connected with authoritarianism and the inability to allow laity to participate in generating a Catholic worldview. However it would seem some priests share these concerns about the church's authority.

In a longitudinal study, Hoge, Shields and Griffin (1995) reported levels of satisfaction and institutional attitudes of Catholic priests in the United States. Two findings were outstanding. First, that parish life has changed with the shortage of priests. Priests now report overwork and the rising expectations of laity as their main problems. Second, an issue that remained the same across the surveys in each time period was priests' dissatisfaction with the way that authority was exercised in the church. Celibacy, though investigated, was not identified as a predominant issue. This research complements literature that samples a range of mostly lay people. In some cases it is unclear in the literature whether clergy or former clergy were included or identified in questionnaire design.

Regardless of the section of the Catholic community being surveyed the main issue that emerges for Catholics across the Western world is the manner in which authority is exercised. For those who are not clergy or religious, the construction of sexuality is also a salient issue. The failure of the patriarchy to address matters of authoritarianism and the construction of sexuality has led many Catholics to construct spiritualities independently of doctrine relating to these matters.

Focus of this Study

Research on Catholicism tends to focus on discovering the `whats' and `whens' of people's beliefs, values, attitudes and practices, describing them in detail as evidence for or against particular hypotheses. The trends towards pluralism of beliefs and practices, and dissatisfaction with authority also were quite evident in the research reported in this study. However, observing the outcome of a change process, or lack of change, provides us with little information about `how' and `why' the changes came about, or failed to eventuate. It is this kind of information that will provide strategies for change because it brings together the multiple ways social agents have successfully managed moral issues and negotiated a transformation in their environment. This research differs significantly, both methodologically and analytically, from previous work in that it pre-eminently focuses on `how' the system is maintained and/or challenged: on what invisible behaviors subvert and/or promote attempts to change.

Some of the studies reviewed above adopted a mailed survey or questionnaire technique (Coco, 1991; D'Antonio, 1994; Dillon, 1996; Greeley, 1990; McLaughlin, 1999; Winter et al, 1995; Yip, 1997). This usually has the advantage of reaching a wide range of people in different life situations, though in the cases of McLaughlin (1999), Yip (1997), Dillon (1996), Winter et al (1995), and Coco (1991) theoretical sampling was used. Unfortunately, these approaches were restricted to static information acquired through responses to specific questions already defined/confined by the researcher. Even with use of pilot studies where samples are usually small, there is a limited number of questions that can be put on one questionnaire. There is also no scope for respondents to introduce the question/issue that makes a difference. Some people provide space for other comments at the end of questionnaires but there is a sense in which the preceding questions have already set the patterning for the kinds of connections people are likely to make. That is, the researcher cannot help but convey a mindset. I am not suggesting that it is ever possible to avoid conveying a mindset, only that this method allows limited potential for deconstructing it. Sense-Making Methodology provides a comprehensive typology of experiencing upon which the interview is structured, but which at the same time requires the participant to supply the substantive information. Further, the Sense-Making interview method is such that new and chance connections between bits of experiencing can be identified.

Those researchers utilizing a qualitative approach, Wallace (1992), and D'Antonio (1994) who combined qualitative and quantitative techniques, enabled considerable diversity to emerge and were able to give more complex readings of the data. They described the meanings of participants' perceptions on particular pre-chosen issues. In reading about the narratives they reported we gain some idea of the ways people thought about how they came to their present positions on issues. But these dynamics were not the foci of analyses. Researchers focused on `whats' and `whens' of the data, reporting outcomes. They did not turn analytical attention to the `processes' of participants' coming to particular attitudes and/or understandings. In studies where groups were chosen on some dimension of identity such as gay, lesbian, women, men and/or women in particular groups, priests, nuns, research often proceeded with the assumption of homogeneity, only to find that, for example, homosexuals had diverse attitudes to sexual morality (Yip, 1997). Dillon (1996) observed that "interpretive ambiguity surrounds religious identity" (p.170).

It would appear then that the use of static categories as sampling technique, as interpretive strategy or as theoretical premise is inadequate for understanding the ways social agents negotiate their spirituality and/or religiousness. Further, the studies reviewed relied on reported perceptions. They rely on cognitive epistemology. Positing Catholics' `poetic imagination' and suggesting Catholics remain in the tradition because they like being Catholics, Greeley (1990, p.63), unlike others, is leaning towards the idea that affective and spiritual knowledge contribute to religious action. Work in the sociology of emotions and altered states of awareness suggests that affective and spiritual epistemes also contribute to religious persons' meaning-making and agency. There is then a thoroughgoing oppositional logic intrinsic to traditional theories, hypotheses, analyses and/or interpretations in the study of religion, which I attempt to bypass in this research. It is not enough to create more categories, if our worldviews and the theories generated within them are still built upon dichotomous notions: homosexuals vs. the church, priests vs. laity, stayers vs. leavers, researcher vs. researched, pluralism vs. uniformity, secularization vs. sacred canopy. What is needed is a worldview that assumes movement, that permits theories and empirical work which may discover the procedures people engage as they attempt to move from one meaning place to another, psychologically, physically and spiritually.

All studies reviewed above included persons who remain within the Catholic tradition however tangentially. However, the research reported in this article includes participants who had moved beyond their Catholic faith, a location that provides insights not available from other positions. The present research attempts to uncover participants' thinking/feeling and spiritual history. Dynamic experiential processes were accessed when Catholics were asked how certain aspects of their experiences with the church helped or hindered their sense-making processes. Therefore, rather than just focusing on people's present meaning/action structures, I am analyzing how and why they adopted those positions.

Sense-Making Methodology was utilized because of its potential to analyze the sense-makings of a diverse group of individuals and to generate data from three domains: cognitive, affective and spiritual. It is hoped that sensitizing people to these dynamics will enable change agents to identify just where interventions need to be positioned, and what forms those educative processes might take.

Methodological Rationale

Feminist philosophical and sociological critiques of religion and the sociology of religion theorize the effects of the philosophical body/mind split on women's and men's sense of self. This work is crucial since the Catholic hierarchy adopts a biological determinist rationale, which claims men and women, because of their assumed biological capacities and motivation to procreate, are `different but equal'. This then provides the grounds for prescribing traditional gender roles, that is motherhood or consecrated virginity, as the only `proper' functions for women. Tomm (1990), Caine, Grosz and de Lepervanche (1988) and Ruether (1987) call for theorizing that rethinks this split, encompassing body/mind/spirit as integrated aspects of human reality. Gatens (1995) has re-iterated the need to step outside of the dualistic frames of western thought. An alternative reading of reality is required to address these issues. Further, from a phenomenological point of view one needs to work with an holistic notion of the person where ethical, spiritual and corporeal aspects of experience are examined in their inter-relatedness. Sense-Making Methodology is capable of engaging these issues. Further it permits the researcher to attend to specific feminist research concerns with positing the centrality of the actor's point of view and the need to adopt research methods that are empowering to those being researched (Dervin & Shields, in press; Shields & Dervin, 1993).

My aim was to study the sense-making that led Catholics to taking particular positions vis-à-vis the church. In a series of in-depth qualitative interviews, varying from thirty minutes to three hours in length, I interviewed forty people from a wide range of social positions within the Catholic milieu including married and single people, nuns and former nuns, lesbian and gay Catholics and priests and former priests. Participants were selected by a combination of snowball and purposive sampling. Follow-up interviews also were conducted to ensure accuracy of representation and pursue relevant issues that had been missed during the first interview. I selected the Sense-Making approach as a comprehensive methodological framework which informed both interviewing and analytical stages.

Sense-Making Methodology enables one to investigate participants' experiences from many angles as well as at a number of levels of understanding. Further it provides a method for investigating the gaps in understanding between micro and macro social situations. A researcher investigates and describes patterns in the ways people negotiate discontinuities in experience. In its interviewing approaches, Sense-Making mandates that researchers elicit from informants their recollections and constructions relating to the facing of critical incidents or ongoing situations. For the purpose of this study the broad description of a situation to which the Catholic participants responded was `a critical incident or ongoing situation in which they found their life experiences and choices in conflict with their understanding of Church teaching or practice.' A modified version of the Micro-Moment Time-Line interview, Sense-Making's foundational interviewing approach (Dervin, 1992, pp.61-84), was used to explore people's experiences. The interview protocol followed this basic outline:

Each participant was asked to describe her critical incident or ongoing situation in time-line steps:

* What happened first? What happened next? What happened next? And so on.

Then for each time-line step, participants were asked:

* What thoughts, questions or confusions did you have at this time?
* Did you have any reactions, emotional or physical at this time?
* How did these thoughts, (reactions etc) connect with your past life?
* Were there any spiritual awakenings or communications with God at this stage?

Answers to each of these four questions for each time-line step were pursued further with:

* How did these thoughts etc (reactions, etc., connections etc., spiritual awakenings, etc.) help/facilitate or hurt/hinder/constrain you?

Each interview concluded with attention to demographic details such as age, level of education, and social markers. In addition participants were asked

* Do you call yourself Catholic? Why/Not?
* What does being `raised Catholic' mean to you?
* Do you attend church? Yes/no? Please elaborate.

Approaches to Analysis

Sense-Making as an analytical framework mandates attention to communicative step-takings or procedurings (Dervin 1993; Dervin & Clark, 1993), that is, on how people negotiated gaps and the related helps and/or hindrances they encountered. It is this aspect of Sense-Making's analytical frameworks that I applied to my interviews. My aim was to provide tentative answers to the question, `how do Catholics move to reduce the tension that arises when their life process is blocked or stopped by their understanding of church teaching and/or practice?' It is important to note at this point that while the Sense-Making interviewing instrument I used focused on Time-Line steps in a critical situation, my actual unit of analysis is the person. In most Sense-Making studies, the unit of analysis would be the sense-making instance or the time-line step. In essence, then, I used the time-space foci of the Sense-Making interview as a means of obtaining a deep, materially anchored, procedurally connected, and at the same time interpretively rich account of situation-facing.

The situation in Catholicism can be characterized as a breakdown in communication between people at different positions in the political structure. However, people may apprehend dissonant situations in different ways. Sense-Making's programmatic literature has identified eleven situation movement states (Dervin, 1983). Participants revealed their experience of five of these states in this research: barrier, decision, wash-out, problem and spin-out (See Figure 1 for situation labels and definitions).

When categorizing situations, three factors were taken into account: focus, emotional tone and type of block. The attention to emotional tone led me to name three new categories: effete, drifting and tight-rope. The effete category refers to a situation of resoluteness where people had given up subjecting themselves to a tradition whose procedures they felt lacked vigor or any potential to become life-giving. The `drifting' label is similar to Sense-Making's existing category `observing' but people in the `drifting' category do not exhibit the sense of continuity of attention that the former implies. The `tight-rope' situation is similar to `waiting' which is described as a situation movement state in which people were passing time waiting or hoping for a change in circumstances. However, `tight-rope' conveys a tension filled waiting, and being conscious that one could fall from one's position within the system at any time.

In my larger study, mentioned earlier, a series of steps was involved in grouping and then applying a procedural analysis to the data. Firstly, participants' narratives were grouped according to the type of situation movement state that they described. Figure 1 lists the eight situation movement states identified in the Catholics' meaning-making study accompanied by their respective definitions and illustrative examples.
 
================================================================================

Figure 1. Descriptions of situation movement states with definitions, illustrative quotes, and number of the 40 persons interviewed whose narratives were identified with each category.
================================================================================

After interview data were grouped each situation movement state was analyzed using a typology of communicative strategies. In moving through situations people may employ a variety of communicative strategies to acquire information and to develop understanding. Communicative moves identified in the Sense-Making literature include: attending, creating ideas, expressing, finding direction, finding connectedness, confronting, opposing, mediating and recalling (Dervin & Clark, 1993, pp. 116-119). I have included a category labeled `symbolic and conceptual realigning'. The latter refers to processes of revising one's concept of the sacred and aligning one's concepts of self and others to fit with the new or revised symbolic religious order. Figure 2 provides descriptions of communicative strategies accompanied by illustrative examples.

================================================================================

 
Figure 2. The communicative strategies, with defintions and sample quotes gleaned from informant narratives.

================================================================================

Dervin and Clark (1993, p. 116) argue that communicative strategies will vary according to people's focus of attention. For example, an individual who is attempting to relate to self will use different communicative strategies than a person who is attempting to relate to a collectivity. With this presupposition in mind, grouping of situational definitions according to the primary focus of people's communicative activity seemed a useful way to organize data for the purposes of discussion. Grouping in this way reveals what communicative strategies were held within and amongst situation movement state, as well as showing those places where they differed.

As the focal questions asked people to focus on Catholic beliefs and practices, the situation movement state that they described were grouped according to whether the primary focus of the person's attention was the collectivity, other people, or the self. In terms of Sense-Making situation-defining strategies the collectivity refers to a situation where the person's communicating focus is on participating in a collectivity that can be seen to move as one. In this study the collectivity was referred to by such terms as the church, institution, hierarchy, authority structure and/or the rules. As part of the definition of `collectivity' or `institution' I have included references to those persons, such as priests or nuns, who are talked about as being representatives of the institutional church and therefore promulgating its precepts.

Individuals relating to others are focusing on other individuals, learning about them, comparing themselves with others and connecting or disconnecting with them. Catholics focusing on others talked about specific persons known to them who contributed to their respective blocking situations. They focused on activity in local parishes.

When individuals relate to self they are mainly concerned with arriving at personal sense and understandings of self through thinking, creating and observing. Participants focusing on self in this study were those who continually weighed up the emotional costs and benefits of belonging to the Catholic institution. (Figure 3 shows the Sense-Making definitions of the primary foci with illustrative quotations from the Catholic study).

================================================================================

Figure 3. Primary foci, with definitions, illustrative quotes from informant narratives, and number of 40 persons interviewed whose narratives were identified with each primary foci.

================================================================================

Half of the participants were focusing primarily on the collectivity whereas smaller proportions of participants focused on self or others (Figure 3). As they form the largest group, I have chosen the situations where people focused on the Catholic institution and its dogma to discuss the procedural strategies participants adopted when they encountered a blocking situation in the conduct of their faith.

Reading of situation movement states was guided by the model provided by the interview structure, focusing through the lenses of cognition, affect, and spirit, as phenomenologically, all of these taken together contribute to action whether it be a move in inner or outer reality. Before proceeding, some clarification needs to be made regarding the way I have construed the idea of 'movement'. Identifying and describing procedurings as Dervin & Clark (1993) suggest sets the scene for a rather strategic, instrumental version of the way people negotiate their realities. Sometimes movement does not occur as a result of deliberate volition; we do not always have clear questions to which we consciously seek answers. The conditions for movement sometimes simply happen or emerge (Smith & Pope, 1992).

We could say one angered or one spiritualized, verbing the words as Dervin (1993) proposes, but this obscures the relations between body and mind. It privileges mentation at the expense of other aspects of meaning anchored in history by the relations between body, senses, and cognitive activity. The argument thus far may seem like a modernist retraction into dichotomous notions of activity/passivity, but it is not. Passivity in the Enlightenment sense has implied non-productivity, non-doing. In fact experientially, invisible and seemingly passive phenomena have consequences for social relations. Self-feelings (Denzin, 1984), for example, of `feeling let down' can not be considered procedural in the way anger-ing may be. `Feeling let down' might give rise to anger and resentment but the feeling itself can arise in a non-volitional way. In proceeding with the analyses then we keep one lens on what is not done, the seeming absence of response or activity, and another on the levels of cumulative emotional effects.

In what follows I will discuss only that group of situation movement states for which the main focus was the institution or collectivity. These were wash-out, barrier, decision and effete. I have chosen to use the wash-out situation as an illustrative example mainly because it includes only two people which makes for a shorter piece of writing. I provide an in-depth reading of the wash-out situation identifying the main procedural moves used by participants and then discuss themes and related strategies that were common to the four situations.

Analyzing the Wash-Out Situation Movement State

Dervin (1983) defines the wash-out situation movement state as one in which people had been on a road which suddenly disappeared. Catholics in a wash-out situation believed they had practiced Christian ethics but discovered, as a result of personal trauma, that their understanding was misguided and their charity misplaced. This means that a way of proceeding that was usually taken for granted suddenly was no longer an option. Elaine, aged forty-seven years, and Iris, fifty-two years of age, described relational situations which caused their entire belief systems to fracture. Iris found herself no longer able to cope with an emotionally abusive and manipulative parent who severely damaged her relationships with her siblings and her own children. Non-comprehending peers blocked every attempt she made to remove herself from the entanglement. Iris and Elaine continually referred to church teachings and theological explanations which they felt had failed them as a means of understanding their experiences. They attempted to gain help from Catholic experts -- priests, nuns and counselors whom they understood as representing the church. The failure of these persons to help Elaine and Iris find a way forward was perceived as evidence of the ways the collectivity had failed them. Elaine related her situation as follows:

Well it was during my marriage to an alcoholic I just realized that everything I was brought up with and had been taught, was nothing there. I just felt nothing. Everything had come adrift, my whole life was coming apart. And you were brought up ... you know, people did things for you, and nobody did. I mean I can still remember these two people standing across the opposite side of the road, who were Catholics, went to church, did everything, and nobody did a thing. ... I'm walking around bawling my eyes out crying. ... I just did not know what the heck to do.

It was just within my whole self. ... we were taught about the saints ... Elizabeth that visited Mary and did things and those sort of things within the church. You know, that's in the bible ... and yet when it came to reality that just didn't happen. ... my whole life was crumbling as it was, I didn't know where to go or anything.

These two women recognized in hindsight that they had lived their lives according to Catholic principles learned and interpreted in childhood. Both also told of emotionally and psychologically abusive family backgrounds.

Elaine and Iris detailed instances of being blocked over long periods of time no matter where they sought information or support. They first attempted to find direction by appealing to Catholics they knew. When Iris began to question the morality of the ways she was being undermined by her mother she sought out a priest:

I did try to talk to a priest and the priest I talked to was very concerned but he had no idea what I was talking about. ... he had nothing to offer me.

Elaine explains that the usual channels, family, church and neighbours were unhelpful:

I was just going round in one big vicious circle, thinking my father's not there for me, my mother's not there for me. There was no-one. No-one in the church was there for me. Okay Solo parents was an outlet, Al Anon [a self-support group similar to Alcoholics Anonymous for people who are relatives of alcoholics] was an outlet ...

Elaine and Iris felt that people often did not listen and did not understand the kinds of situations they faced. Particularly, they felt others could not grasp the state of powerlessness and desperation that they experienced in structural conditions which limited their options. Iris found herself solely responsible for her mother's welfare:

There was just no one else to come in if something went wrong. It was my responsibility, and don't tell me you have any choice. They keep telling me I have a choice. I keep saying ... [when something goes wrong] you do nothing. When she's ill ... what should I have done when she discharged herself from hospital against medical advice?

Further, the behavior of others did not enable the necessary conditions for choice to become real. The first time Elaine had the courage to leave her violent, alcoholic husband, a nun at the local parish school attended by her children played a significant role in convincing her to return to him, to the extent of organizing a truck to help her move her belongings back. In reality Iris's and Elaine's attempts to resolve extremely traumatic situations frequently added to their powerlessness. Iris reflected on her encounter with a Catholic counselor:

I went to a counselor at Canossa who is not there any more. I was devastated. ... because she obviously had utter contempt for me being such an easy victim. It took me years to get over that.

Both of these women noted that they habitually discounted their own feelings in order to play the role of peacemaker and harmonizer and eventually became unable to feel anything:

I mean I couldn't feel, I had no feeling, I couldn't feel. I didn't feel until I hit rock bottom eight years ago (Elaine).

The inability to give a direct naming to a feeling question was evident in the interviews. For example, the following is an exchange with Iris:

I said, `Now that I have talked it over [my mother] will act, she will think about it'. She did think about it, she went underground and she was even worse.

[How did you feel about it?]

I did not find that out till later. Much later but I suspected it.

They expressed the ways they initially denied the enormity of their predicaments:

I'd been badmouthed everywhere ... my denial that she was conscious of it was really me just trying to reduce the stress on myself. Because I had to deal with her and if I could believe she wasn't conscious of it, it was easier. But I couldn't any more. (Iris)

Elaine and Iris underwent prolonged periods of high stress. Both experienced health deterioration as they suppressed their own concerns in the cause of placating abusive relatives. This compounded the frustration of receiving no recognition from others that would validate their reality and help them form ideas for finding directions out of their predicaments. Iris suffered ongoing intestinal problems as well as several conditions that hospitalized her. Elaine says she got skinnier and skinnier and suffered a breakdown after finally leaving her husband. It was the severe deterioration in health that forced these women to take notice of what was going on with their personal lives.

Women in the wash-out group understood their behavior towards their first abusers in terms of Christian perseverance and compassion for others:

I just did not have a sense of myself outside of how these people were feeling. ... I thought that this was what compassion was, this sort of total identification. This was what we were asked to be. ... I wasn't allowed to be the individual I was, and I believed that this was good. I believed that this was what the church had taught. (Iris)

Elaine ventured into various church groups and denominations in the hope of finding someone with whom she could identify:

... I'm still screaming out `where do I fit in? Where do I fit in? Someone be there for me, understand me'. ... Now I can open my mouth and express myself but to me nothing's marrying up .

Gradually they found avenues and encountered people who were able to empathize and recognize the nature of the dilemmas they were facing. This attention helped them to gain perspective on their situations. It slowly dawned on Elaine and Iris that their circumstances were highly problematic and that their own learned understandings and behaviors had contributed to the situations they described. Al Anon and Emotions Anonymous helped Elaine:

Going to Al Anon I guess I started to realize I really had a problem, that he was alcoholic. That it was far worse than I ever envisaged. Well it just made me realize that he was violent and that the only thing I could do was go to the police, but they couldn't do anything because this was a domestic situation. ... I guess I slowly but surely realized that there was no hope.

But the part that scares me is my behavior. I mean where before I could do things and things never worried me. Now those same things seem to worry me, the insignificant things seem to worry me because they were never dealt with. You know, separating my parents in an argument and calling the police, or just putting up with a whole pile of horrificness without even having any feelings that I was to be considered. I didn't even know what it was like to feel umm --- what's the word - not `disappointed' umm ---- yeh I felt disappointed but `embarrassed'. I had this garbage for so long.

Early Catholic socialization legitimated the abusive behavioral patterns both women experienced and, in adult life, added to their existential confusion. Elaine and Iris said they were trying to find a way to be heard and gave many examples of encounters with priests, nuns, other ministers of religion and lay religious practitioners who responded with incomprehension and contempt. This prompted them to re-evaluate their own faith, which they described respectively as the simple faith (Iris) and a very childish faith (Elaine). Both women had experienced and practiced their religiosity through attendance at services and involvement in other church related activities such as prayer and liturgy groups. As their meaning structures disintegrated so also did the plausibility of these ritual relationships. Iris said:

I was still going to church, I was still taking the children to church. In fact I kept taking them to church until they all gave up, and then finally I gave up. I kept trying to hold on because my religion had been so important to me .

Disruptions in interactions with people in parish settings prompted the creation of personal narratives counter to their existing beliefs and meaning-making patterns. At these points in their journeys Elaine and Iris suffered a loss of faith, and a complete void spiritually:

... what I think it is, is grieving that part of my life ... grieving that faith part of my life, the faith that I was brought up in. Something's gone out of the window, there was a change but there's been no direction there ... just to do things. (Elaine)

This loss was described at the spiritual level by Elaine as:

... [being] virtually spiritually bankrupt without my knowing it,

dark night of the soul.

In different ways Iris's and Elaine's capacities for compassion and selfless service had been co-opted by significant others in their lives and legitimated by church teachings in a way that perpetuated patterns of abuse. On mature reflection they recognized the parts they themselves played in continuing self-annihilating practices. However, they did not find any wisdom in contemporary Catholic teaching or practice that challenged or subverted the meanings with which they were raised. Iris concluded that her understanding of compassion was destructive both to herself and others, and to her this was real sin. Elaine observed that she did not know how she was going to change her learned behavior, that the issue was a personal thing with me and god .... These women were consciously searching beyond the Catholic tradition for help with the resolution of their spiritual questions. Their decisions to manage this kind of transition, nevertheless, were not simply or easily adopted nor were the issues resolved to the satisfaction of either woman when last we spoke.

In a wash-out situation movement state, participants were neither confronting nor opposing, simply surviving. They felt profoundly let down, adrift in a sea of confusion. The netherworld of identification with abusers had created interactive behaviors that precluded connections with others. Mis-recognition of their contextual difficulties, from people who might have been expected to help them find direction, perpetuated their isolation. Elaine's and Iris's heightened awareness of the mechanisms of power and control in defining reality, which they had learned to identify in their abusive situations, led them to recognize these same patterns in Catholic ideology. There was no resolution in sight from within the tradition. Both women were in the midst of psychological dis-orientation when we spoke. The interview process helped a little in their self-reflections. Iris felt it helped to talk with someone who really listened. Elaine told me during the follow-up phone call that she was motivated to express her anger at the failure of her faith to support her by talking to her local parish priest.

Iris's and Elaine's main communicative task was to discover and re-connect with self. Their identification with Catholicism was so enmeshed that when their identities shattered so also did their relationships with church members and the precepts they ostensibly embodied. They did not have, nor could they find, a model of virtue that could speak to an enraged, devastated, confused and searching mode of being. Nor could the Catholic prototypes they encountered offer a way forward. They were searching elsewhere.

The discussion of the wash-out situation movement state demonstrates the way the set of communicative strategies was used to explore how participants moved through dissonant situations. Iris and Elaine were recognizing, seeking direction, judging, anger-ing, despairing, suppressing, stressing, reflecting, evaluating, creating, losing, surviving, naming, acting, raging. The analyses of the other situation movement states were conducted in a similar fashion. Viewing the data this way enabled me to identify those strategies common to all situations, thus signifying where rigidity is occurring in Catholic relations.

Comparison of Strategies Used by People Focusing on the Collectivity

Three broad themes threaded through the set of situation movement states in which people were focusing on the collectivity: balancing of personal needs with doctrinal stipulations, authoritarianism, and freedom and choice. In various ways the people describing narratives which focused on the institution were concerned with meeting emotional, spiritual and material needs. Secondly, they took issue with the model of authority operating in Catholicism, and this was related to the third theme regarding freedom and choice.

In the effete situation movement state people recognized the repeated failure of the tradition to accommodate and provide meaning for socio-biological and psychological transitions. All came to an emotional/psychological state where they decided it was not worth the battle when the requisite support could be gained elsewhere. People in the barrier situation movement state temporarily compromised some of their personal needs in order to further or promote justice from within the system. They continued, but were wounded and wary from the experience. The issue of personal need was central to the meaning-making task for participants in the decision situation movement state. They needed to work out how to prioritize personal and relational needs and weigh these against Catholic doctrine. In stark contrast to these three groups, the two people in the wash-out group both recognized that an important part of their dilemma was that they had failed to take account of their own needs at any level. To their astonishment they found that their understanding of the way to live a moral Catholic life supported this practice.

Judging, prioritizing and revaluing were the predominant communicative strategies employed in relation to material and emotional needs. Exemplars are grouped under main Sense-Making categories in Figure 4. All participants judged the church's formula for meeting emotional and material needs to be inadequate. They found themselves struggling to find an ethically sound way of prioritizing their needs in comparison with the needs of others. The stories related are participants' testimonies to what appears to be a systemic failure to recognize the reality of material and psychological needs. Patterns of this inadequacy reflect each other throughout Catholic ideological, theological, and practical domains. They are mirrored in the second issue people raised, that of authority.
 

================================================================================

Figure 4. Examples of communicative strategies employed in the four situation movement states.

================================================================================

In the decision situation movement state people questioned the legitimacy of the church's authority in matters to do with sexuality and reproduction. Pronouncements in these areas were seen as the reflection of experiences of celibate men who are not considered to have the background to make anything they say on these matters morally binding on the lay community. Authority, per se, was not questioned by participants grouped in the barrier situation movement state. What they did question was the way it is structured. They perceived a system generating the kind of behavior that infantilizes people. Part of this power play is the telling and keeping of secrets. For the persons in the wash-out group, the church's authority was still in place; they did not question it theoretically or ideologically. They simply found its representatives as unhelpful as they had many others. People in the situation movement state had established and worked out of their own inner authority balanced by a self-constructed relational moral code.

Questioning, judging and removal of assent were the three main communicative strategies related to the issue of authority as it pertained to sexual relations and close emotional ties. Individuals relating to the collectivity all, at some point in time, came to a recognition of the necessary relativism of Catholic doctrinal authority which had once been perceived as absolute. In the cases of Elaine and Iris the issue of authority was not openly stated but, by their reported behaviors, we see them already acting on similar understandings. They were beginning to reconsider the choices they had made. The issue of `choice' is related to the third principle of importance in these situation movement states.

Participants in the barrier group exercised their freedom to challenge the constructs of reality being offered. In fact, they clearly understood themselves as contributing to the generation of communicative procedures that would promote more just and equitable practices. People facing a decision assumed choice of lifestyle was intrinsic to their human rights. That these rights came to the fore in their confrontations with certain Catholic doctrines is evidence of the fact that they perceived those same rights in danger of being violated. In their inability to re-assess the choices of adolescence, participants in the wash-out group forfeited their own rights and were fighting on all fronts to regain them. Persons in the effete group exercised choice as a conscious right, even if it went against the imperatives of church authority.

The main communicative strategies related to personal rights and choice were those of challenging and confronting received views of reality. However these challenges did not produce useful effects. No one in the four situation movement states outlined above was able to resolve their differences with the Catholic institution by remaining wholly within church precepts. Certain aspects of their beliefs, practices and self-perceptions were altered but this did not impact the material conditions that generated the conflict. People reduced tensions by removing themselves mentally, emotionally and/or physically from involvement at the levels that caused them stress.

Any withdrawal represents a decrease in internal assent to the institution; however, it may not represent a decrease in the visible support of it. Much energy is spent by those who remain faithful to the church; for example, most persons in the decision and barrier situation movement states maintain split levels of consciousness while demonstrating commitment. Politically, this enables the external structure to remain intact.

Conclusion

It should be recognized at this point that the findings reported here represent only half of the situations described by participants in the larger study. I have not discussed the other four situations in which people were either focusing primarily on self or on other Catholics with whom they associated. A discussion of these must await another publication. However, the overall findings are reflected in this article.

None of those interviewed successfully used mediation or consensus procedures to work through their issues. In some cases they compromised themselves only. The consistent failure to actually resolve conflict in an equitable way affects individuals in terms of any future action they might consider as well as generating the possibility of damaging self. The Sense-Making Methodology enabled a broad investigation and analysis of people's experience, giving evidence of prolonged and repetitive engagement with issues. Concerns were similar to those already noted by other researchers: the question of the nature of authority, a rejection of the prescribed models for sexual relations and a plurality of beliefs and values. The value of the procedural approach described in this article is that it reveals how people resolved, or were in the process of resolving, the issues for themselves and constructing a new way of being Catholic or leading spiritually uplifting lives, often outside of the tradition. It revealed that participants are sacralizing sexuality and close emotional ties and continuing to lead moral lives based on what they believe to be the firm foundations provided by their Catholic values. They are, in effect, redefining Catholicism.

Participants' actions illustrated that the existing political structure is unable by its very nature to foster real communication between its members. Those features of communication known to enable conflict to be resolved and meaning to be restored can not be mobilized because of one way communication is enshrined in the Code of Canon Law (1983) and maintained by the dichotomous nature of Catholic ideology which has formed individuals' Catholic consciousness. Structural constraints permit two different flows of communication. Rational/legal discourse is imposed from above and bears on many as an unrealistic burden, which cannot be integrated successfully with life experience. The emotion work of subordinates provides energy from below. This work is invisible while at the same time being positive in its effects because it accommodates rather than confronts the bodies that oppress. In these communicative practices participants were dis/empowered by the absence of the possibility of engaging communicative strategies that permit true dialogue: mediation and consensus, that is, confronting and being heard, anger-ing and being acknowledged and suffering and being recognized.

Note

[1] This article is drawn from the author's unpublished doctoral dissertation (Coco, 1998). Extracts were presented under the title "Using Sense-Making in phenomenological research" at the 1999 annual meeting of the International Communication Association held May 27-29 in San Francisco.

References

Bailey, E. (1995). Let's listen to the natives. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, (34)3: 391-392.

Caine, B., Grosz, E. A., & de Lepervanche, M. (1988). Crossing the boundaries: Feminisms and the critiques of knowledges. Sydney: Allen & Unwin.

Coco, A. (1991). Women and the Australian church: Project or proclamation? Unpublished honors thesis, Brisbane: Department of Studies of Religion, University of Queensland.

Coco, A. (1998). Catholics' meaning-making in critical situations. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Brisbane: Department of Anthropology and Sociology,University of Queensland.

Code of Canon Law: Latin-English edition . (1983). Washington, DC: Canon Law Society of America.

D'Antonio, W. V. (1994). Autonomy and democracy in an autocratic organization: The case of the Roman Catholic church. Sociology of Religion, (55)4: 379- 386.

Denzin, N. K. (1984). On understanding emotion. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Dervin, B. (1983). An overview of the sense-making research: Concepts, methods and results to date. Paper presented at the International Communication Association annual meeting, Dallas, May.

Dervin, B. (1992). From the mind's eye view of the user: The sense making qualitative-quantitative methodology. In J. D. Glazier & R. R. Powell, (Eds.), Qualitative research in information management, (pp.61-84). Englewood, Col: Libraries Unlimited.

Dervin, B. (1993). Verbing communication: Mandate for disciplinary invention. Journal of Communication, (43)3, 45-54.

Dervin, B. (1999, in press). On studying information seeking methodologically: The implications of connecting metatheory to method. Information Processing and Management.

Dervin, B. & Clark, K. D. (1993). Communication and democracy: A mandate for procedural invention. In S. Splichal & J. Wasko (Eds.), Communication and democracy, (pp. 103-140). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Dervin, B. & Shields, V. R. (in press). Communication: An overview. Women's Studies Encyclopedia, New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.

Dillon, M. (1996). The persistence of religious identity among college Catholics. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, (35)2, June: 165-170.

Ebaugh, H. R. (1993). Patriarchal bargains and latent avenues of social mobility: Nuns in the Roman Catholic church. Gender and Society, (7)3, September: 400-414.

Gatens, M. (1995). Imaginary bodies: Ethics, power and corporeality. New York:Routledge.

Goldenberg, N. (1993). A feminist psychoanalytic reading of the religious themes in The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, lecture delivered at Harvard University, Cambridge: 21 April.

Greeley, A. (1990). The Catholic myth. New York: MacMillan.

Grey, M. (1993). The wisdom of fools. London: SPKC.

Hoge, D. R., Shields, J. J. & Griffin, D. L. (1995). Changes in the satisfaction and institutional attitudes of Catholic priests. Sociology of Religion, 56(2), 195-203.

Hornsby-Smith, M. (1987). Roman Catholics in England: Studies in social structure since the second world war. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

John Paul II (1997). Instruction on certain questions regarding the collaboration of the non-ordained faithful in the sacred ministry of the church. London: Catholic Truth Society and Family Publications.

Michelat, G. (1990). The Catholic identity of the French: Dimensions of religiosity: L'Identite catholique des Francais: Les dimensions de la religiosite. Revue francaise de sociologie, (31)3, 355-388.

McLaughlin, D. (1999). The beliefs, values and practices of student teachers at the Australian Catholic University. Paper presented at an international conference entitled, Religiously Affiliated Schools, Colleges and Universities in a Multi-Cultural Society: Challenges and Objections. Catholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, Netherlands, January 28-30.

Pace, E. (1996). The paradoxes of the `Average' Catholic; I paradossi del cattolico 'medio'. Studi di Sociologia, Oct-Dec: 389-402.

Ruether, R. R. (1987). Asceticism and feminism: Strange bedmates. In L. Hurcombe (Ed.), Sex and God: Some varieties of women's religious experience, (pp. 229-250). New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Shields, V. R. & Dervin, B. (1993). Sense-making in social science research: A call to enlarge the methodological options of feminist studies. Women's Studies International forum, (16)1, 65-81.

Smith, C. A. & Pope, L. K (1992). Appraisal and emotion; The interactional contributions of dispositional and situational factors. In Margaret S. Clark, (Eds.), Emotion and social behaviour, (pp. 32-62) London: Sage Press.

Tomm, W. A. (1990). Sexuality, rationality, and spirituality. Zygon, (25)2, June: 219-238.

Wallace, R. (1992). They call her pastor: A new role for Catholic women. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Winter, M. T., Lummis, A. & Stokes, A. (1995). Defecting in place: Women claiming responsibility for their own spiritual lives. New York: Crossroad.

Yip, A. K. T. (1997). Dare to differ: Gay and lesbian Catholics' assessment of official Catholic positions on sexuality. Sociology of Religion, (58)2: 165-170.

Copyright 1999 Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, Inc.

This file may not be publicly distributed or reproduced without written permission of the Communication Institute for Online Scholarship, P.O. Box 57, Rotterdam Jct., NY 12150 USA (phone: 518-887-2443).