Retired Missionaries and Faith in a Changing Society offers a sociological study of the Irish missionary diaspora. It draws on a series of interviews with female and male Catholic missionaries, mainly nuns and priests, who have worked in Asia, Africa and Central and South America, and who have returned to live in Ireland. The chapters provide unique insight into their experiences, exploring how they have navigated life-course changes in the context of changing church and changing societies. Retired missionaries have several vantage points from which to communicate their understandings, having worked across cultures and encountered some of the most challenging global social problems. Responding to significant changes in the Catholic Church, in Irish society, in their host countries and in mission work itself, their lives offer valuable perspectives on what it is to be Christian in contemporary society. The rich narrative data illuminates deep and complex processes of meaning-making as missionaries have sought to integrate their religion and spirituality in dynamic and diverse settings. The book suggests that the holistic character of the work of missionaries raises important questions about the different ways of being ethical, religious and acting justly in the world today. It will be of particular interest to scholars of Christianity, missiology, and the sociology of religion.
Introduction
1 Irish Catholic Missionaries: Their life course in a changing world and changing Church
2 Missionary focus: What missionaries inherited and how mission evolved
3 The missionaries themselves: Pathways to becoming a missionary
4 The missionaries themselves: The realities, challenges and joys of mission life
5 Interculturality
6 Changing Church - what Church?
7 Approaches to mission – different ways to serve
8 Life stories of retired missionaries: Perspectives for contemporary Irish society and for the Catholic Church
Appendix 1 Profile of the missionaries
Appendix 2 Participant information sheet
Biography
Carmel Gallagher is an Emeritus Research Fellow at Technological University Dublin, Ireland.
“Retired Missionaries and Faith in a Changing Society gives voices to women and men whose lives and experiences have been almost erased from public consciousness. It explores how the island’s social and religious cultures first produced missionaries, but then changed so much that their contributions abroad continue to be overlooked. Most intriguingly, Gallagher argues that these retired missionaries have something fresh to say in the island’s debates on social justice and the meaning of life. This is a fine sociological study that contributes to such debates.” Gladys Ganiel, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland
“The cumulative experience and wisdom of more than a thousand years of life in overseas missionary work is scientifically distilled in this book, based on extensive interviews with a wide range of retired or semi-retired Catholic missionaries. Carmel Gallagher has demonstrated how, over the past fifty years, Irish religious sisters, priests and lay people have enriched their understanding of Catholic missionary work, and have put it into practice in their work in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Retired Missionaries and Faith in a Changing Society is a valuable and interesting resource for both church and society in present-day Ireland.” Donal Dorr, missionary theologian and author
“The Irish missionary movement could perhaps be described as Ireland’s most influential global project yet few people aged under 40 are aware of its extraordinary reach across continents and generations. Carmel Gallagher brings important and original insight to this movement at a critical juncture in its history. The interviews she carries out with returned Irish Catholic missionaries reveal these women and men to be far removed from religious caricatures – their honesty in appraising both their life’s work and the role of Catholic Church has much to teach us, whether you are a person of faith or not.” Joe Humphreys, Assistant News Editor and Irish Times journalist, author of God’s Entrepreneurs: How Irish Missionaries Tried to Change the World
“This is a timely, urgent and necessary work that tells an important chapter in the history of Catholic Ireland. By recording and retelling the stories of returned, retired missionaries, Carmel Gallagher documents the tales of our forgotten spiritual army, once the pride of Ireland. Like the Irish veterans of the First World War, they returned to a different society that was indifferent or even hostile towards their remarkable achievements. The research upends assumptions about Catholic religious orders abroad and how bravery and creativity were far more on offer than cowardice or rigidity. These stories offer a tempting alternative history – what-if they had stayed? – while staking out future possibilities for a more mature and post-clerical Catholicism – lay-lead, autonomous. These missionary stories, of real Christianity lived far from this country, highlight an uncomfortable truth: that the worst excesses of Catholic Ireland were more Irish than Catholic.” Derek Scally, journalist and author of The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship
