Habit?

[Teresita]

INRI:

If you go the websites of the two major groupings of nuns in the US, the LCWR and the CMSWR, you will notice immediately the difference. I don’t need to tell you which group is attracting vocations and which one is drying up. I’ve linked them below.

www.lcwr.org

www.cmswr.org

Let the nuns speak for why they wear the habit:
cmswr.org/spiritual_reflections/habit.htm

Mmm, yes. I searched right through the LCWR site looking for any of the following words: Father, Jesus, Christ, Holy Spirit, Mary (or titles), faith, hope, love/charity, saint(s), holiness, prayer, sacraments, Mass/Eucharist, adoration, worship, spiritual life, Pope/Holy Father, priesthood, nuns. (There are a couple of references to ‘God’, thank God.)

Some of them were to be found in the names of the religious orders affiliated to the LCWR; that was all. Instead, I found numerous references to struggle, oppression, solidarity, change (‘systemic change’) and, over and over again, ‘leadership’. One phrase in their mission statement sums them up: “In this time of God’s favor, we belong to a church whose members struggle to love the Church as both graced and sinful”. I bet they struggle to love the Church!

Also interesting that, of the many, many photographs of members on the site, there doesn’t seem to be anyone under 40, and roughly 80% are over 60. On the other site, most seem to be in their 20s and 30s. This means, of course, that the LCWR’s claim to represent 95% of women religious in the US will be changing fairly quickly: there’s no arguing with demographics.

The only thing they’re strong on, as far as I can see, is hubris. Here’s the preface to their ‘Call’ (a sort of glorified mission statement):

The Spirit of God is upon us.
God has anointed us
To bring good news to the poor
To proclaim release to the captives
To bring recovery of sight to the blind
To let the oppressed go free
To proclaim this, our age,
As a time of God’s favor.
– *Based on Luke 4: 18-19 *

To take a prophecy of Isaiah which our Lord quotes as applying to Himself, and then coolly to change it to refer to them, changing words as they fancy, seems appalling.

Sue

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[katherine2]

Teresita:

The only thing they’re strong on, as far as I can see, is hubris. Here’s the preface to their ‘Call’ (a sort of glorified mission statement):

The Spirit of God is upon us.
God has anointed us
To bring good news to the poor
To proclaim release to the captives
To bring recovery of sight to the blind
To let the oppressed go free
To proclaim this, our age,
As a time of God’s favor.
– *Based on Luke 4: 18-19 *

To take a prophecy of Isaiah which our Lord quotes as applying to Himself, and then coolly to change it to refer to them, changing words as they fancy, seems appalling.

Sue

Nothing innovative about that. Pious publications have done the same for centuries.

 

[mpav]

I must say that I miss habits, but since I’m not the one who was wearing a habit, I don’t know whther I would miss wearing one. I taught in a Catholic school for more than a few years, and thought it odd that these women who wore any clothes they liked, with nothing to identify them as nuns, dressed at such disparate levels of quality and fashion. One nun had a friend who gave her discarded designer clothes, several had family who outfitted them with expensive new clothes, while others shopped at the local discount store. I found it odd to think of them as “sisters”, when some dressed as if they were wealthy, while their “sisters” dressed as if they were below the poverty line. Meanwhile, the kids in the school all wore uniforms which brought students of widely varying economic resources to a level playing field, appearance-wise.

Garb needn’t have its origins in the middle-ages to be a habit.

 

[yinekka]

I can’t understand why, here in Melbourne, we rarely see a priest in clerical garb in spite of the fact that they are required to wear it, and never see a nun in a habit. Why don’t they wear the uniform of the company ? The kids who work at the local donut shop or stack shelves at the supermarket wear a uniform which lets everyone know whom they represent. Why not our priests and religious? As for habits not being practical, if we are talking about the medieval ones I agree. Today though, habits are uniforms and are more practical than lay clothes I think.

 

[puzzleannie]

I have asked my catechist to purchase a polo shirt with the parish logo that our youth group is selling, worn with black or khaki slacks, sounds like a perfect solution, I usually wear it with a skirt (I don’t bring my fat b— out in public in shorts or slacks) why don’t we come up with a contest to design a logo for a polo shirt for various religious orders?

 

[Fidelis]

As a member of the military and now in the fire service, I have been wearing uniforms in public every day of my working life for almost 30 years. It is no more inconvenient (and in some ways more convenient) than not wearing one. Actually, it has the effect of temporing your behavior because you are not only representing yourself, but who the uniform represents. The only concievable downside is that it makes you feel “different” from others and it limits your individuality in the sense that you can’t blend in and be totally anonymous. It is impossible to assign motives to others, but I suspect these nuns who have given up their habits are giving in to this desire to not stand out.

The argument that some give that they shouldn’t NEED a habit to witness to Christ begs the question. A firefighter doesn’t technically NEED to be wearing a uniform when he or she arrives on a scene where someone is in need, but it does have the effect of inspiring more confidence in his capabilities than if he showed up in a polyester pants-suit. Like others on this board, I find a nun in full habit to be inspiring – a witness to Christ and an symbol of peace and love in our over-individualistic world. We have Carmelites in our parish who wear a simple habit, and it is just a joy to see them out and about.

 

[mpav]

I have read (can’t provide citations) that orders of nuns which still wear the habit are attracting more new members than those who do not wear the habit.

 

[Mary1973]

I can understand modifying the habits but I would prefer a nun who wore distinctive garb. For some of them, it’s almost as though they are ashamed to be identified as a nun.

 

[cyprian]

A nun putting on a habit also says a series of prayers as she puts on the habit(stages). She is symbolically putting on Christ for others(visible proclaimation of the gospel), while clothing herself in Christ. This is what a nun told me and when I asked her why, then, she no longer wore the habit she went on about the inconvenience of ironing and temperature and BLAH, BLAH BLAH. The Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, I think, with a massive growth in vocations, site the wearing of the habit as one of the factors along with fidelity to magesterium TEACHING and adoration. Check them out on the web under thier name, truly an inspiration. God help our church in the U.S.