Question About Entering a Convent Straight Out of High School

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Striving_Catholic

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I’ve been looking on some websites for different convents and religious orders lately, and I had a question that wasn’t very clearly answered by those websites. My question was this: if girls enter the convent straight out of high school, will they still be allowed to go to college to get a degree after entering? Or is that the end of their education other than an education in theology? And if they are allowed to go to college after entering, do they go in the early stages (postulant, novice) or do they have to wait to take vows before they can receive a college education?

God bless, and thank you.
 
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I don’t know but may God clearly guide you to the right vocation and guide you
 
Different communities do things differently. You would need to communicate with the community you actually want to enter.
 
Different communities do things differently. You would need to communicate with the community you actually want to enter.
This. Please be sure to inquire about this, and ask them to post their policy on their website. In a way, it’s forward thinking to have a couple of years in one’s own apartment with a job. One may end up a superior some day, and will need to know how to budget.

Blessings,
Mrs Cloisters OP
Lay Dominican
http://cloisters.tripod.com/
http://cloisters.tripod.com/charity/
http://cloisters.tripod.com/holyangels/id9.html/
 
It depends on the community. If you’ve tried a cloistered community probably not, but if you enter the Nashville Dominicans then you will receive a college education in order to become a teacher and it would occur during formation ie before final vows. Some communities may send you to further your education so that you can be more helpful in a certain ministry or apostolate, but it would is different with each community, so you would have to ask them.
 
It seems to me you would need to ask individual orders.

However, having said that, and without any personal knowledge, I SUSPECT it’s like the US Army: They ask you to choose 3 areas you would like to be trained in (let’s say communications, auto repair, and cryptology…) and when it comes times to sign on the dotted line you notice a little sentence along these lines: “The US Army is not bound to follow the assignment requests of any recruit. Recruits will be assigned at the direction of the commander…” In other words, they can do whatever they want. Your wishes are irrelevant unless they coincide with the Army’s wishes.

Of course the difference is that if you join the Army, you are in it by force of law. If you join a religious order, you can leave whenever you want. But you probably wouldn’t want to put yourself in that position, right?
 
Different orders do things differently. I do know some communities will allow you to get education. Good for you for thinking about religious life!
 
Most communities today, especially active and in the US, REQUIRE their sisters to have or get an education. Some will not consider candidates who don’t already have a college degree, but most will. Quite a number will expect their sisters to attain at least an MA eventually; one community I know requires it before final vows. Generally speaking, communities which expect or require substantial higher education (i.e., beyond a BA or just a basic teaching or nursing degrees) will not accept candidates right out of high school, as they need to be able to count on a fair amount of both mental and personal maturity.
 
Education would depend, too, on what profession the sister will be entering.
Our community has had both Sisters who did not get advanced degrees and those who have.
Some education might be obtained during certain stages of initial formation, though I would doubt that a novice in her canonical year would be a full-time student in secular studies since that year is devoted so strongly to prayer, spiritual study and introduction into the community’s history and spirituality, etc.
~ Sr. Christina Marie, OSF

 
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