A Catholic administrator's narrative of her spiritual education

• Main Author: Dunne, Maureen E.
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 1998
• Subjects: Newfoundland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/12301; http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/tape17/PQDD_0007/NQ35152.pdf

grantor: University of Toronto In this autobiographical narrative thesis I seek to understand the awakening of my personal spirituality as it unfolds within the institutional authority structures in which I have lived and worked in a Roman Catholic school system in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. The thesis traces my developing spirituality from my childhood to the completion of the thesis and follows a narrative thread of relationship to authority. The chapters are linked by a structural metaphor and move through a discussion of narrative theory, provincial narrative history, early transcendent images of God, cocreativity in the workplace, interpretation of the authority issues in the educational political turmoil in Newfoundland, synthesis of spiritual meaning and a narrative of the research process itself. The thesis employs a narrative methodology and a reflective consideration of stories of experience to identify the central dialectics operant in my life: the tension between masculine and feminine ways of knowing and being, the moral authority underlying sacred and secular values in education, the interplay between justice and care in moral reasoning, the shifting balance between external authority and internal autonomy. The field texts considered include personal journals, papers, poetry, interview transcripts, provincial government reform documents and local newspaper reports. In exploring the tensions in these dialectics, important insights unfolded. Learning occurred as reflection on the stories enabled me to tell new stories about the tensions within dialectics, retellings that restored continuity to my personal narrative. One of my most important learnings was that my development of self was moderated by my objectification of authority figures in I-It relationship and it was not until I experienced an I-Thou relationship with authority that I could claim an inner personal authority that strengthened my spiritual being and sense of self. In so doing, the thesis process inspired an awakening of a new personal spiritual consciousness, one that embraces both the convergences and the wholeness of the dialectics from which it emerged, and one that is beginning to comprehend the interrelatedness of spirituality and story. Ph.D.