Contested Professionalism and Spiritual Legitimization: Catholic Religious Education Teachers and the Theme of Spirituality in Contemporary Italian Schools

Guillaume Silhol (2024) Religions, 15(1). Open access Abstract. Based on observations and in-depth interviews with Catholic Religious Education teachers in Italy, this sociological study tackles ‘spirituality’ as a register of legitimization in their professional settings. Compared with more established topics of “religious culture”, the motives of “spirituality” appear as a lesser category of justification in teachers’ discourse in two significant aspects: teaching about ‘spirituality’ as a...