Radial ball bearings include opposing inner and outer races that form an interior raceway for containing a complement of precision rolling balls. The balls maintain separation between the races and reduce rotational friction between them. Typically, the inner race is attached to a rotating component of the assembly (e.g., a cylindrical shaft), and the outer race is attached to a stationary component (e.g., a housing or hub containing the shaft). The bearing device mounted between these components permits relative rotation between them with low friction. Ball bearings are exceedingly versatile devices because they can be configured to bear both radial and axial loads. Yet, ball bearings tend to have lower load capacity than other types of bearings due to the smaller contact area between the balls and races, and can also be easily damaged from significant misalignment of the races. These limitations of ball bearings are further exposed when the balls are composed of a brittle material, such as a ceramic. Ceramic bearing balls, while more subject to fracture, are superior to their metallic counterparts in high temperature implementations because they are more dimensionally stable (i.e., they do not anneal or soften like metal balls). Given these conflicts in fundamental design characteristics, there is an inherent difficulty in providing bearing solutions for high temperature, low friction rotary applications involving significant angular shaft deflection.