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The paper characterizes four Polish and Italian Catholic organizations that operate within the ecological field. The study of these organizations zooms in on the process of "greening of Catholicism" in Poland and Italy taking place. Studied Catholic organizations in Poland and Italy operate within different social and religious contexts. They face challenges, including resistance from traditionalists who view ecology as a leftist notion. To overcome this, the organizations studied frame ecological issues as religious duties, drawing on diverse traditions within Catholicism and emphasizing figures like John Paul II. They use religious resources such as Catholic identities, values, and symbols to appeal to a broader audience beyond traditional activists. Yet, their emphasis on Catholicism hinders cooperation with secular environmental groups and limits engagement with left-wing environmental politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I present the main findings of an empirical study about contemporary spirituality in Italy begun in 2017 by reasoning about the analysis of twelve case studies which are particularly eloquent concerning the different spiritual worlds emerging in Catholic Italy. I argue that three main narratives—the spirituality of nature, wellbeing, and mystery—are useful to synthesize the heterogeneousness of groups, communities, festivals, and organizations engaged in the Italian "holistic milieu". In order to address this reflection, firstly I will trace the international sociological debate that has accompanied the concept of contemporary spirituality and the relationship between spirituality and religion, a couple which I have named "frenemies". Then, I will extend the analysis to the concept of the secular, examining the intertwining of the spiritual, religious, and secular spheres. After illustrating the landscape of contemporary spirituality in Catholic Italy more broadly, I shall focus on the case studies taken as examples of the spirituality of nature, the spirituality of health and wellbeing, and the spirituality of mystery. In the Discussion and Conclusion, I shall raise some fundamental questions that the study of contemporary spirituality poses for the sociology of religion with reference to secularisation, one of its most classic and yet contested paradigms. I shall claim that future research paths could further contribute to strengthening the idea, raised in this article, that secularisation can also be understood not only as an antithetical force to religion but as the process in Western history that has led to the emergence of a secular social space in dialogue with the religious sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we design a preliminary genealogy of yoga in Italy, showing its positioning within the growing field of "contemporary spiritualities", their premodern, esoteric and theosophical roots and Catholicism. Our main claim is that yoga and contemporary spiritualities as practiced in XXI-century Italy are neither entirely new nor are they clearly an alternative to more established religions. We rely on the methods and tools of a "discursive study of religion" approach to unpack the intricacies, genealogical roots and definitional boundaries that yoga, contemporary spiritualities and religion in Italy share. More specifically, we question the novelty of contemporary spiritualities in Italy, unveiling some of their esoteric, theosophical and anthroposophical roots, presenting, in turn, a preliminary genealogy of yoga in Italy, discussing its positioning amid Catholicism and contemporary spiritualities. We conclude by reflecting on the creation, use and limits of sociocultural theorizing about interpreting and understanding the spiritual and religious field, with a specific emphasis on the overlapping and porous boundaries between the concepts of religion, contemporary spiritualities, Western esotericism and modern yoga. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Users show a growing interest in expanding the implementation of digital tools as a support of technical and management issues in healthcare. This medical care has focused on telemedicine but does not include the recognition of needs as an important part of patient-centred healthcare. Nurses interact with patients at critical times in their life journeys, including birth and death, which are historical events linked with religious beliefs. Furthermore, large migration flows have led to multicultural societies in which religion and spirituality are experienced in distinct ways by different people. Finally, most healthcare professionals lack the proper skills to handle the spiritual needs of their patients, especially for core and digital competences. This article shows the results of qualitative research applying as a research tool an open-ended questionnaire, which allows detecting the educational needs for nurses' interventions aimed at providing spiritual support to their patients using digital tools. The results obtained reveal that nurses need education and training on fundamental spiritual concepts and digital competencies to meet the multiple demands of their patients' spiritual needs. Finally, we present an open digital educational proposal for the development of competencies for nurses and other health professionals to provide spiritual care with the support of digital tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Religious freedom" has many different meanings, and its social perceptions vary depending on different factors, including different understandings of the role of religion in society. In this paper, we contribute to the analysis of the intersections between the institutional definitions and the social perceptions by comparatively analyzing the practices and discourses on religious freedom in the fields of healthcare and school canteens through regional and municipal case studies in Italy. Results allow exploring the role of individual actors and local and sectoral cultures in enforcing specific practices in the broad area of "religious freedom". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Receiving an organ is an event that marks a turning point in the patient's life trajectory, not only because it marks the beginning of a new phase in the therapeutic process, but also because it opens up an unprecedented existential perspective in the recipient. This perspective is typically told through an autobiographical narrative marked by an implicitly religious or spiritual vocabulary centred on the feeling of rebirth and the sacredness of organ donation. Starting from the analysis of a corpus of qualitative interviews, the article aims to show the spirituality implicit in the autobiographical narratives of a group of members of the Associazione Nazionale Emo-Dializzati (ANED) of Turin (Italy). The data indicate that this implicit dimension is the product of a co-construction between patients and health workers in the context of the specific organizational culture of the hospital ward. This finding suggests possible directions for the implementation of spiritual care interventions in clinical practic [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of the article is the survey of neo-paganism in Italy and of its explicit and implicit political expressions. After having identified the theoretical framework in which the different forms of neo-paganism in Italy shaped and developed and having drawn a basic map of main groups and organizations, we will analyze their production of political contents. Can we detect specific political models shared by the different forms of contemporary paganism in Italy? Which theoretical and practical means are adopted by groups in order to shape individual and collective identities? How are activism and participation in the political life of nation expressed within the perimeter of Italian neo-paganism? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our case study is the Federation of Damanhur, one of the most long-lived spiritual communities in Europe, located in Catholic Italy. Every year, Damanhur hosts thousands of visitors who experience the community thanks to daily tours, weekly stays and seminars. These visitors can be simply curious, sympathizers or spiritual seekers. In this paper we present the 'ten days Amine experience', a participant observation performed by one of the authors during the summer of 2016 in a group mainly composed of spiritual seekers. This experience is here analyzed through a performative approach that is particularly suited to analyzing the Damanhur site and which presents itself as a hierarchy of spaces designed for one or more performance modalities. The research highlights the existence of a dialectic between the motivational characteristics of Aminè spiritual seekers, on the one hand, and the communitarian and esoteric characteristics of Damanhur, on the other, which determine a gap between the expectations and the degree of satisfaction of these spiritual seekers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The intention of this study based on analysis of the series of European Value Study (1990, 1999, 2009 and 2018) is to investigate, using a comparative, diachronic approach, the relationship between modernization and the gender gap in religiosity in Italy. In line with the theoretical perspective which valorizes the role of culture in explaining this relationship, our hypothesis is that the most modernized areas demonstrate a more contained gender gap. We expect that differences of religiosity between men and women are more contained in the country’s north-central zones – characterized by higher levels of modernization – compared with the south. Furthermore, since the distance between the levels of modernization in the two areas has not increased noticeably over the last three decades, we could be forgiven for expecting that the difference between them in the religious field would not reveal important changes. To our surprise, the findings of the analyses offer but limited support to our hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses, from a sociological point of view, the relationship between the religious and economic dimensions of one of the most long-lived spiritual communities in Europe, the Damanhur Federation. It investigates this nexus, starting from the criticism of one of the most recent theoretical-analytical models in the study of the economics of intentional communities, that of the ‘good’ or ‘ethical’ economy. This model fuels the rhetoric according to which the economics of religious communities are ‘good’ to the extent to which they seek—inspired by the principles of reciprocity, sociability, solidarity and ideal, ethical, religious and/or ecological values—solutions to economic problems based on spiritual values. However, this thesis presupposes a one-way influence of religion on the economy in the sense that the latter is only a mere reflection of adherence to the proclaimed principles of a religious doctrine. I propose an antithesis which I consider sociologically more far-seeing: that of the ‘performative’ economy. In line with Victor Turner’s idea of ‘performance’, I argue that economic activity is not only driven or influenced by the ethical, moral, and spiritual values of the community, but it retroacts on, and modifies, them. I show not only that Damanhurians’ working life is guided by ethical and spiritual principles derived from their doctrine, but also that economic activity offers them learning opportunities which induce them to modify, re-adapt, and confer new meanings upon the community’s rules, including those concerning spirituality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to present the results of a sociological study on everyday life within a female cloistered monastery. This is a radical form of religious life, highly routinised, distanced from the outside world and conducted in community yet in almost total silence. By elaborating upon the concepts of everyday and lived religion, the scope of our examination complements dominant sociological approaches to the study of this religious phenomenon. By addressing the following research question: 'Do cloistered monasteries de-individualise and totally regulate the life of nuns?', we discuss selected aspects of everyday life in the institution and its contemporary transformations related to, among other things, new communication technologies and new generations of nuns. We show that in this highly institutionalised place nuns remain reflexive individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many studies have shown that women are more religious than men, a difference long accepted as an established fact in the sociology of religion. But some recent research has revealed that this difference is not 'universal', varying in space and time. However, only a few scholars have focused on religiosity gender-gap trends over time, either on the theoretical or empirical levels. The aim of this article is to help fill this gap by analysing the progress of gender differences in religiosity from 1981 to 2009 in Italy, an interesting cultural context because of the gradual penetration of secularisation and the high level of gender inequality. Our empirical analysis is based on a longitudinal approach, using data from the European Values Study. The findings show that the gender gap in Italy was quite stable in regard to many aspects of religiosity, with three noteworthy exceptions: the gender gap decreased in beliefs, in intergenerational transmission of faith and in adherence to the Church's doctrines on prostitution, abortion, divorce, euthanasia, suicide and adultery. Contrary to expectations, in most cases this narrowing came about because of an increase in men's religiosity, not a decrease in women's. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to reflect on the spirituality concept which, although part of international sociological debate for about three decades, has still not become central to Italian empirical studies. Based on an analytical survey of this debate, we argue the heuristic usefulness of the spirituality concept in order to understand forms of religiosity emerging since the 1960s - both within and without traditional religions. We shall also claim that the religion and spirituality spheres, albeit analytically separate, reciprocally influence each other, benefitting from a relationship of exchange, loans and assimilation producing non-stop transformation and innovation within the religious field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article has a twofold aim. The first is to examine relations between women and religion in Italy in order to discover whether women contribute to the process of Italian secularisation as described in the literature. The second is to explore relations between secularisation and secularism among Italian women. Our main theme is that the women’s loosening relationship with the Catholic Church has been accompanied by their greater flexibility on moral and ethical questions. Since these questions have frequently been the object of intervention by the Catholic hierarchy, they are a valuable lens through which to examine secularism, revealing how far Italian women have distanced themselves from the Church’s mandates. With this end in view, we shall focus on Italian women’s opinions about topics (such as abortion, divorce, sexuality and reproductive rights) relating to “morality-politics” which are intrinsic to the “emancipation of women from the domestic sphere”. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the dynamics of success in a monastery and its consequences for monastic life, regarding both internal organization and relations with the outside world. The opportunity to reflect on these topics comes from events taking place in Bose (Piedmont, Italy), one of the best-known and most lively NMCs in Europe. Based on field research carried out between 2011 and 2014, I review the history of the institutional, organizational and economic changes which it has undergone – from poor, anonymous and under suspicion of deviance to well-off, media-friendly and exemplary – and I analyse the repercussions of these changes for the monastic community. Leading questions are as follows: Why and how has Bose changed throughout its history? What strategies has the founder adopted to accomplish these changes? How has he built up his charisma? How are his agency and his charisma linked and how do they influence each other? Finally, has Bose’s success led the community astray from the spirit of the founding aims and values? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how organization members manage institutional contradictions in their everyday life without aiming at change-oriented agency. Drawing on interviews, observations, and archival data from four religious communities in Italy, we find that when organization members experience institutional contradictions between two logics that provide conflicting identity prescriptions but to which they are emotionally attached, they engage in identity work that helps them ameliorate – but not eliminate – tensions that surface when identity elements do not align. More specifically, identity work proved integral to reaching a temporary identity truce, or reconciliation of experienced contradictions, through distancing from illegitimate others and embedding of one’s identity within an established tradition. These findings draw attention to the role of contradictions in institutional maintenance, extending theory that has tended to focus on the experience of contradictions as a source of institutional change. We discuss implications for managing institutional contradictions in everyday organizational life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The gender aspect has been largely ignored in analyses of secularisation processes, although the latter subject has been widely debated by sociologists o f religion. Italy is no exception: whereas the little research done into the topic from a diachronic perspective has generally focussed on the population as a whole, the studies analysing men's and women's religiosity separately have been characterised by a synchronic approach. This is why we know little or nothing about the secularisation process among women in Italy. This article aims at filling in the gap by presenting an initial analysis o f female religious change over three decades from the various dimensions constituting the concept of religiosity. The 4 waves o f European Values Study supply the fundamental data used. The analyses show that in the period under investigation female secularisation did not increase, which finding is here interpreted in the light o f specific theoretical perspectives on female secularisation applied to the Italian context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In sociological discussion the relationship between traditional religion and alternative spirituality has been variously defined on the basis of two main theoretical positions which perceive them as either mutually exclusive - according to the 'spiritual but not religious' formula - or as interdependent. This debate, mostly taking place in Northern Europe and the United States, does not take into account the specific characteristics of other geographical areas such as Southern Europe. The aim of this article is to fill this gap in empirical research by presenting data from a sample survey and interviews with young people in various Italian cities. A qualitative/quantitative analysis of the data shows, on one hand, that alternative spirituality is defined under the cultural influence of traditional religion, which is to say Catholicism functioning as an exemplary model of reference and, on the other hand, suggests broadening the focus of reflection to the religion-spirituality-secularism triad, interrelated fields competing to shape young Italians' beliefs and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion often reduces the conflict between the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius X founded by Marcel Lefebvre (1905-1991) and the Holy See to the problem of the Liturgy and the Latin Mass. The difficulties related to the return of the Fraternity to the Catholic Church, even if it was sustained by Pope Bene-diet XVI, show that the salient reasons for the conflict do not concern the liturgy, but the politics, as well as the notion of a confessional Catholic state for which Lefebvre's heirs continue fighting against the teachings of the Second Vatican Council. This article aims to explore this conflict on the basis of interviews carried out with priests, members of the Fraternity, and an analysis of the correspondence between the Fraternity and the Holy See. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Half-way along the continuum linking religious and secular organizations can be found quasi-religious organizations, an example of hybridization characterized by the concurrence of commercial activity and symbolic practices connected with an implicitly religious dimension. Amway Corporation (a company operating in the direct-selling sector) is a representative example. This article presents the findings of ethnography carried out in Amway's Italian context. In particular, it dwells on qualitative interviews conducted with sales operatives. From an analysis of the textual corpus, it becomes clear that belonging to the organization implies an experience of identity-transformation analogous to that of religious conversion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the start of the twenty-first century Catholicism is still the prevailing belief system of most Italians, but a recent project on Italian religion and spirituality, carried out in 2006, has found that Italians are now more interested in spirituality, that they might describe themselves as 'spiritual, but not religious', and that they privilege the 'God within' rather than the transcendent God of traditional Catholic belief. This article presents the findings of The Italian Religion and Spirituality Project and focuses on what Italians mean by a 'spiritual life'. After an overview of the growing interest in spirituality in the Italian socio-cultural setting, various aspects are illustrated: Italians' self-assessment of religiosity and spirituality; meanings of spirituality; involvement in church and/or in holistic activities; various attitudinal variables, such as preference, beliefs, identification, and willingness to lead a religious and/or a spiritual life. A typology is then elaborated to study the profiles of four groups: (1) neither religious nor spiritual; (2) religious, but not spiritual; (3) spiritual, but not religious; (4) both spiritual and religious. Two key concepts, intra-religious spirituality and extra-religious spirituality, are introduced to examine some of the ways in which spirituality finds expression in the context of contemporary Catholicism. After describing the different ways Italians understand the term 'spirituality', I identify three profiles of spirituality: 'ethic', 'religious', and 'inner-self'. Finally, the significance of the 'God within' is discussed, a phenomenon that is perhaps more readily associated with Protestant forms of holistic spiritualities, but is surprisingly also significant within Italian Catholicism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of the paper is to furnish a framework for the organizational analysis of the New Religious (Roman Catholic) Communities which arose in the wake of the Vatican Council II. Three issues of particular importance are addressed. The first concerns the criteria with which to construct a typology able to comprise the extreme variety of the New Communities in existence today. Adapting a classic distinction drawn by Weber, the paper introduces and discusses a model which distinguishes among communities according to the twofold criteria of ascetic and mystical, and innerand other-worldly. The second issue concerns the connection between the missions of New Communities and their internal organizations. The paper argues that this connection is in many respects the result of unexpected contingencies interpreted by the founders of communities as signals of divine will. From this it follows that comparative examination of communities should focus, not on their static features, but instead on the existence of "homogeneous sets of fortuitous events" to which the leaders of the communities themselves have given especial importance. The third issue concerns the recognition that the New Communities are able to obtain from the Catholic Church. It is argued that such recognition often involves negotiations made lengthy and tortuous both by the controversial nature of the institutional, organizational and liturgical innovations adopted by the Communities, and by the existence within the Church of several sources of legitimating authority. Torn between the duty to disavow excessively radical innovations and the desire to prevent open conflicts, the ecclesiastical bureaucracy often resorts to forms of ambiguous legitimation, where it is not clear whether the Church's silence amounts to tacit condemnation or tacit approval of the New Communities. The paper concludes by warning that the three issues identified may prove to be interwoven and interdependent when field research is conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catholic women's movements, networks and initiatives have a long history of advocating for an equal role in the Church—especially in the North American world. In recent years, their presence and visibility has been increasing in Europe too, also in relation to a series of initiatives and events, such as the Mary 2.0 campaign in Germany, which led to the launch of the Catholic Women's Council (CWC) in 2019. This article focuses on the emerging discourse on women and gender promoted by the developing network of initiatives related to the role of women in the Catholic Church in different European countries. After reconstructing the map and history of this network, the contribution explores its emerging discourse, drawing on a triangulation of data: key-witnesses' interviews; the magazine Voices; social network pages and profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

New Monasticism has been interpreted by its protagonists as an answer to the challenges of the future of Christian monasticism. New Monastic Communities can be defined as groups of people (at least some of whom have taken religious vows) living together permanently and possessing two main characteristics: (1) born in the wake of Vatican Council II, they are renewing monastic life by emphasising the most innovative and disruptive aspects they can find in the Council's theology; and (2) they do not belong to pre-existing orders or congregations—although they freely adapt their Rules of Life. New Monastic Communities developed and multiplied in the decades during which, in Western European countries and North America, there was a significant drop in the number of priests, brothers and sisters. Based on our empirical research in a new monastic community—the Fraternity of Jerusalem (a foundation in Poland)—we addressed the following: Why are New Monastic Communities thriving? Are they really counteracting the decline of monasticism? What characteristics distinguish them from traditional communities? We will show how they renew monastic life by emphasising and radicalising the most innovative and disruptive theological aspects identified in Vatican Council II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]