It’s stunning, breathtaking and like living in the Twilight Zone. There’s an article in the National Catholic Reporter about the progressive grouping of Religious Orders scrambling to figure out how they will live as their style of relgious life comes to a conclusion. They’ve called in hospice, so to speak.
You can read the NCR article HERE.
But here is a statistic concerning how wonderful and effective it was, how liberal religious orders implemented what they thought was the spirit of Vatican II. It’s a stunning success (in the Twilight Zone):
The number of sisters in the United States peaked in 1965 at 181,421, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, and has declined dramatically to 39,452 sisters in 2021. Researchers at CARA expect the number of sisters will stabilize at more than 10,000, but whatever the number, the days of convents housing hundreds of sisters functioning as a church workforce are not coming back.
But wait, there’s more, and this will certainly revolutionize young Catholic women “nones” and even those somewhat formed well as Catholics who will be energized and on fire to join religious life:
(Sister) Zinn said there has been a change of culture at LCWR, a change she hopes happens throughout religious life, on issues such as racism and the environment.
"It's more than just recycling. I'm telling you, if bottled water showed up anywhere at LCWR it would be an uproar. It would just be intolerable," Zinn said. "There's a collective sense that we are just not going to behave in that way anymore. ... It's just intolerable now that we would not be very intentional….
8 comments:
I applaud the sisters for coming to the realizations noted within the attached piece. "A day late and a dollar short" came to mind while reading, but, I suppose better late than never.
The Church emphasizes money and in many instances, reasonably so. It takes money to open, maintain, heat, cool and feed those who call a parish, convent, or monastic situation home. What the Church might finally be coming to realize is that parishes will be fewer, staffed by fewer priests, likewise the convents and monasteries of those living a consecrated life. Having ballooned in size, and having the growth in physical plants of every type funded by pew-sitters only to watch the tide recede and properties be sold off to pay debts and law suits, the pew-sitters who remain aren't likely to return to funding capital campaigns as generously as had been the case. Diocese, those that survive, convents etc. are likely going to have to find their own way. Generations will have to go by before potential benefactors forget the absolute mockery the Roman Church has made out of previous generations. It saddens me greatly to be part of this segment of human history enduring what we're enduring.
I live in a heavily Roman Catholic part of the North East. Like many areas, attendance has declined and even more alarming, most funerals seem to be bypassing the mass as part of the acknowledgement. It's not just the children who aren't honoring their parents or "Aunt Millie's" final wishes. Their parents and "Aunt Millie" have already stopped participating. Their children and grandchildren seem to mostly be "nones" and only warm a pew for the increasingly few grandparents and "Aunt Maries" that still attend. The few who don't opt for a wedding venue, or destination, might still go for a church wedding and mostly will not be seen again until the baptism of their first child. The Church can synod until Christ comes again, and might well end up doing this and nothing is going to change except the glossy brochure telling everyone how "vibrant" a particular diocese feels that it is.
Coming back to this and reflecting on it some more, I have to wonder, looking at the offices and crowded conference room, what the hell have these sisters spent their lives doing besides presiding over the most epic Minnesota Goodbye in history? "Revert to prayer at retirement", rejection of the habit, governance over shrinking resources both physical and human....that's not what they signed up for! Regarding the habit, instead of looking extraordinary, countercultural and standing out as such, they look quasi-corporate and then, not poised to be successful in a way that's sustainable. I don't mean to sound radical, but at the same time, I struggle to feel sorry for the unwinding presided over by these women for decades. Part of the "fruits" is sitting the Catholic education system down on its duff never to recover as it's simply not affordable for either the Church, or most families in current form. What was intended as being inclusive has become exclusive only for the few that can afford it. By the dozens, schools here in the Northeast have closed. Is any of this fulfilling a ministry that should be lauded? I think my reaction is reasonable. Please correct me should this not be the case.
There are those, "traditionalists," in particular, who have pinned upon Pope Venerable Pius XII the beginning of the decline of women's religious orders.
They have done so as during the 1950s, Pope Venerable Pius XII had called upon women's religious orders to enter into modern times. That included radical changes to religious garb.
Here is a September 11, 1958 A.D. article from The Catholic Transcript (Archdiocese of Hartford) in regard to the above:
https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=CTR19580911-01.2.18&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN--------
CHANGES IN GARB OF WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS TAKING PLACE GRADUALLY
By FATHER JAMES I. TUCEK
Vatican City — (NC) — Although the modification of the habits worn by religious women as recommended by Pope Pius XII is proceeding slowly, officials of the Congregation of Religious say that there is a definite movement in many orders and societies' to comply with the Pope's wishes.
Father Agostino Pugiiese of that congregation declined to say how many or which groups had already effected changes, but he did reveal that “many religious orders of women have requested and obtained permission to effect a partial adaptation of their original habit.”
He repeated what the Holy Father said recently...that the religious garb is an external sign of a way of life, but it is not essential to it.
The religious habit Is governed by the canon law of the Church as well as by the civil law in many countries.
But, with permission, it can be radically simplified, even to the extent, in some cases, of making religious hardly distinguishable from laypersons."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Also from the September 11, 1958 A.D. article from The Catholic Transcript:
https://thecatholicnewsarchive.org/?a=d&d=CTR19580911-01.2.18&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN--------
CHANGES IN GARB OF WOMEN'S RELIGIOUS CONGREGATIONS TAKING PLACE GRADUALLY
By FATHER JAMES I. TUCEK
Vatican City — (NC) — The reasons for the suggested changes were clear from the Holy Father's address to the superiors of women's religious orders in 1952, when he said:
“We wish to serve Jesus Christ and His Church as the world of today requires us.
"It is not reasonable, therefore, to persist in the uses and forms that hinder this service and perhaps render it impossible."
Pax.
Mark Thomas
Vital, vibrant! Springtime is just around the corner. The Dominicans of Nashville seem to be doing fine
Captain Clueless has no concept of what Pius XII was asking for - modifying a habit is not the same as dispensing with one.
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