Vatican watcher Rocco Palmo flags the Wednesday release of a four-year-long study of women religious.
Even the most casual observer knows that many female orders are, well, in disorder. A particular virulent version of the post-Vatican II flu ran through various orders of nuns, and there has been a catastrophic decline in vocations.
The Vatican has named Archbishop Peter Sartain to the job of overhauling the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Although there are certainly some vital communities of women religious in the United States, far too many are moribund, often because they are dominated by an aging leadership that is far more liberal than even the ordinary liberalism of many lay Catholics–and often aggressively and bitterly so. That’s not a way to attract vocations.
Archbishop Sartain faces a tough job, and we should all be praying for success. The further renewal of the Church will turn on the renewal of religious life, including and perhaps especially religious life for women. In fact I’d say the same for renewal of culture in the West. We are heading into a crisis of sex, gender, and reproduction. Women in habits may be a very important witnesses in the midst of this crisis.
April 19th, 2012 | 5:37 pm
All during my college years (the late 1960s) and for a few years after that, the news from back home was that, one by one, almost all of the Christian Brothers from my all-boys high school left the order. I assume the same happened with the nuns from the all-girls school that drew from the same area. Both schools are still operating, but now they are entirely staffed by lay teachers. My parish grade school no longer exists, and kids from my old parish now attend a Catholic school that serves two other parishes as well. It was not just that vocations declined. A lot of nuns and brothers left. Why?
And what is going to make young men and women want to be brothers and sisters again? Will Archbishop Sartain be able to do whatever he is being called upon to do without losing even more women? I can only imagine that if things are as R. R. Reno describes them, any significant reforms will bring further departures. Things seem bound to get worse before they get better, if they get better at all. Does anyone imagine a day when there will be many more Catholic schools largely staffed by sisters and brothers who are skilled and dedicated teachers and who live inexpensively in communities as was done in the past? Or is that an educational model that is gone forever?
April 19th, 2012 | 7:20 pm
There are orders that are attracting many vocations, including teaching orders like the Dominican Sisters of Nashville. It’s no big mystery how they’re doing it . . . . (hint: they’re not members of LCWR).
April 19th, 2012 | 9:53 pm
There are two fundamental ways of being Catholic Christian and answering the call to holiness. In both ‘ways’ priests are present to minister and to support ‘the way’ they live.
The first is the way of ‘witness in the world’. This is the ‘way’ of the laity. The laity are the Church-in-the-world. Diocesan priests live out their own spirituality in much the same manner and mostly although not exclusively minister amidst ‘the witnesses’.
The second ‘way’ are those who through the vows enter a ‘martyrdom’ of sorts and ‘die to to the world’. Through the three vows they are separated from the world to be an eschatalogical witness-a witness that our ‘citizenship is not ultimately in this world’ and the life of ‘the world to come’. From among the ranks of men religious men are ordained in order to minister to those living out this life
Of those in this second way, the vowed life, there are two basic forms in which this life is lived: those totally separated [cloistered] from the world and those while in some manner living apart, nonetheless serving in some manner in the active life.
The recent announcement is a major turn of events, a new chapter in the history of women religious in the Church in America. We need to recognize, affirm and ‘congratulate’ those countless graced and gifted women in the past and present who have given their lives, gifts and talents to Christ and His Church.
No doubt, there will be various tensions and issues over the next months and few years as the leadership structures of the women religious go through change and transformation. Change is never easy-for any of us. However, a new beginning is taking place, a new springtime, and we join with all the women religious in faith, prayer, hope and most of all charity.
April 20th, 2012 | 12:22 am
An astute Catholic psychologist, William Kirk Kilpatrick, long ago wrote a penetrating book ( a collection of his essays), called “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.
In it, he describes the destructive work of Carl Rogers and his devotees and how Catholics imported their poisonous “values clarification” approaches into schools, parishes, seminaries and convents.
The other thing eagerly imported into seminaries and convents was even more toxic and destructive ; it was the technique of encounter groups.
I understand that both of these techniques are still in use in many schools, universities, seminaries and convents.
Carl Rogers is also the father of “outcomes based education” which has been the curse of education ( rather than training ) in the Western World for so long now that I fear there can be no recovery from its ill effects.
Kirkpatrick’s book is well worth a read. His preciously dry wit cuts to the bone as he reveals the strange philosophical foundations and twisted psychology of these techniques.
Our Lord said that the gates of hell would not prevail against his Church. Rogers and his followers came about as close as anyone could to such destruction. But the greater fault surely lies with those Catholic wolves who opened the gates, inviting these psychologists in for slaughter of the innocents.
Most of the wolves soon left the Church behind a long trail of wounded members of the flock. But quite a few wolves stayed in the Church and continue their destruction, now as less visible white ants.
As Tiny Tim said : God bless us, every one !
April 20th, 2012 | 9:36 am
A new springtime? Maybe, after a period of painful pruning. I believe some congregations will sever ties with the Catholic Church and continue as non-canonical, even non-Catholic, communities. Sadder still, to me, will be those commnities with a divided membership–some who value communion with Rome pitted against our own sisters who are so hurt and angry they want to “move beyond.”
Don’t loverlook some other reasons for declining vocations: smaller family size among Catholics, student debt that precludes acceptance, and–I think this is one of the keys–the post Vatican II theology that consecrated life is just as admirable and virtuous as the married or single life. The theology is sound, but when people think of the Golden Age from the 1930s to the mid-1960′s, don’t discount the allure of embracing a way of life that many Catholics believed to be intrinsically more holy than the lay state. Someone remarked about the many departures. Some of those brothers, priests and sisters realized they had responded to the allure and not to a true calling.
Finally, please give up the tired stereotypes of the ultra feminist sister vs. the pious nun in habit, as well as the misogynist bishop vs. the heroic one trying to save women’s religious life. We are not charactertures and it’s a mistake to generalize about us based on a few highly visible members. We strive to live the vows and our charisms with integrity and weep over the divisions within our Church.
April 20th, 2012 | 9:55 am
Thank you sister for your response, insights and most especially sharing your talents and gifts as a religious woman in Catholic health care!
April 20th, 2012 | 10:09 am
Finally, please give up the tired stereotypes of the ultra feminist sister vs. the pious nun in habit, as well as the misogynist bishop vs. the heroic one trying to save women’s religious life.
Catholic Health Care Sister,
I am so glad you said that! There were never as many brothers as there were sisters (no doubt because men can become priests), but the sharp drop in numbers of brothers and sisters was proportional. I don’t think the sharp decline in number of, say, Christian Brothers had anything to do with feminism!
Some of those brothers, priests and sisters realized they had responded to the allure and not to a true calling.
One of the Christian Brothers at my high school became a personal friend of my family, and when the brothers began leaving in large numbers, he said that one major reason was that a huge amount of their time that had formerly been scheduled (communal prayer time, and the like) had been made optional or done away with. He said many people then realized they were lonely. That, of course, is just one person’s opinion, but it has always sounded plausible to me.
April 20th, 2012 | 11:07 am
There seems to be some confusion here between two different “investigations.”
The appointment of Archbishop Sartain to oversee the LCWR is a result of the CDF investigation of the LCWR. The LCWR is the umbrella organization that enables the superiors of religious women’s orders to collaborate on things like development of formation materials and, um, lobbying.
The Apostolic Visitation of the orders themselves was carried out under the auspices of the Congregation for the Institutes of Consecrated Life. The contents of their report have not been made public, but Cardinal Braz de Aviz and his staff have suggested that the prayers of the nun-bashing pseudo-traditionalists for an orgy of public humiliation will probably go unanswered.
Archbishop Sartain can’t make anybody put on a burka, resign her professorial appointment, prostrate herself at the consecration or witness to the exclusively affective nature of the feminine genius. All he can do is decide whom LCWR can invite to speak at their conventions, withhold approval of the formation textbooks, forbid them to hire NETWORK, things like that.
April 20th, 2012 | 11:50 am
“nun-bashing pseudo-traditionalists”
I can’t help but wonder what Felapton is talking about. I have no idea what this phrase means, let alone to whom it applies.
April 20th, 2012 | 1:08 pm
I have heard a few nuns and former nuns also attribute a decline in sisterly vocations to the laxity of practice and witness some communities engaged in post Vatican II.
Going to civilian clothes instead of keeping habits, making prayer of the Divine Office optional or severely relaxed, making the sisterhood about secular ministry and a 9 to 5 job no different than a lay person’s…some women said they said to themselves, “What am I doing as a sister that I can’t do as a layperson?”
Religious life is supposed to be RELIGIOUS life, not secular+smattering of religious window dressing.
April 20th, 2012 | 2:29 pm
If a layman is bashing nuns, he can hardly be considered a genuine traditionalist, can he?
Because it is a venerable old Catholic tradition to show respect for nuns; irregardless of what they’re wearing, how old they are, how much they weigh, whom they vote for, where, when or what they do in their apostolate. Basically, the Catholic tradition is, if you don’t have anything good to say about them, just keep your mouth shut. (Especially if there are any non-Catholics around to hear you.)
People are free to call their own personal preferences and prejudices “traditions” if they wish; but that doesn’t make them Catholic traditions.
April 20th, 2012 | 4:48 pm
“nun-bashing pseudo-traditionalists”
I can’t help but wonder what Felapton is talking about. I have no idea what this phrase means, let alone to whom it applies.
I think it refers to people who get offended by nuns practicing Wiccan ritual in church buildings.
April 20th, 2012 | 6:47 pm
Truthfully, time is the best ally in terms of reform. And what I mean by that is, the worst of the worst offenders here (who give religious life a bad name) are not drawing vocations.
The proof is really in the pudding: let’s look at the sisters in Ann Arbor and Nashville and ask ourselves the constructive question, “What are they doing right, such that they constantly need to be building additions to their facilities?”
Reform should be life-giving, not life-sucking; and yet — sadly, as I mentioned previously, since it will involve the disappearance of countless orders in this country — this problem will take care of itself within a generation.
But then you’ll see an outward expansion again, true to the Church’s M.O. throughout history, especially in the 19th century in regard to women’s religious orders: the Church must often grow small before it can grow larger again, as Pope Benedict once said.
April 20th, 2012 | 7:07 pm
Felapton,
I’m still puzzled. Just who are these pseudo-traditionalists and how are they bashing nuns?
April 21st, 2012 | 1:45 am
David Nickol One of the Christian Brothers at my high school became a personal friend of my family, and when the brothers began leaving in large numbers, he said that one major reason was that a huge amount of their time that had formerly been scheduled (communal prayer time, and the like) had been made optional or done away with. He said many people then realized they were lonely.
I don’t doubt it, but I would be curious whether he agreed with the following interpretation of that experience.
Many priests will tell you that they hear a lot about loneliness from the other side of the confessional. Quite a few priests will add that loneliness is precisely the consequence of relaxing the life of prayer too much — not because they were lonely before, but because that relaxation led to their walking away from their One True Companion. Some speak from painful, personal experience. Many never walk back.
Naturally, relaxing the communal life has the same effect. The companions you make in the order, who once helped God fill that hole in your heart, are no longer so important as they once were.
I certainly don’t think that’s the full explanation; no doubt some of those men really were in the wrong place. But I recall that the more successful monasteries and religious houses I’ve known were the ones who enforced both prayer and recreation quite stringently.
(This being America, there doesn’t seem to be a problem getting the men to work! ;-))
April 22nd, 2012 | 8:11 am
I think Jack Perry and David Nickol make an excellent point about loneliness and lack of support.
The diocese of Paris, where I spend a lot of time, now has more religious that diocesan priests and it is worth recalling that both the Hildebrandine reform of the 11th century and the Post-Tridentine reform of the 17th encouraged the formation of communities of canons regular and priestly congregations devoted to parish work, like the Oratorians.
Links
Blogs
Find Us
Contact