Quest for a Moral Compass

This research study explored moral experiences using personal interviews and oral history narratives gathered from adult participants. The purpose of the research study was to seek a deep understanding of students’ moral development in Roman Catholic schooling and the sustainability over time. The study focused on former parochial school students’ perspectives of their moral experiences as children in Catholic parochial schools of the 1950s and 1960s. The participants responded to open-ended questions about their memories of childhood events, such as how the moral experience affected them when it initially happened, and how they feel it has shaped them as adults. Data collection utilized interviews, which were coded for evidence of specific cardinal virtues(prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance). These virtues provided an organizational tool from which to understand moral beliefs and actions over time. One key result of this study demonstrated that the majority of participants learned to think independently and critically about the meaning of many tenets from the Catholic Church doctrine in relation to their own moral growth.