Living in community was spiritually invigorating and comforting: that’s from their lips. Because numbers decreased in many orders, the physical facilities closed as well, resulting in smaller clusters, the dilution of mission among those who remained (branching out into additional and sometimes too-broad missions), and eventually resulting in living alone & isolated, with occasional coming together in community – much too occasionally.
I do support the realistic need for all people, including nuns and priests, to follow an appropriate personal occupation, not just a vocation. Thus, I do not disagree with Sondra Schneiders that a witness in academia is just as important as other roles. And if you can’t teach or hate teaching, you shouldn’t teach. Same for social work; same for medicine. That’s why orders used to specialize and should specialize again. Each active order should have a specialized mission, limit itself to that, combine in numbers and benefit from living in community. It means that there will be fewer houses, whereas now you can often settle or resettle in a neighborhood near you once your formation is complete. But when you do that, your witness is diluted, esp. if you are not wearing a habit. The public preivously did not just identify a particular nun; they identified a whole Order. The Sisters of ________ meant something to the surrounding area and often nationally as well.
I see nothing un-21st century about this. In fact, it certainly makes more sense environmentally & economically. The absurd situation of any sister trying to “make it on her own” with subsistence pay does not work well. Frankly, many of them have to take side jobs to make ends meet and are often depressed and filled with anxiety about their mere survival. Tell me that doesn’t get in the way of their mission. Anyone who has experienced both living alone and living in a family (or with a roommate) understands immediately how much more expensive it is to live alone. I have heard some complaints from modern nuns about conflicts over lifestyles and personalities: well in that case, you don’t belong in religious life, because that is an essential element (priests as well, even diocesan ones): living in community.
It would take a saint to be truly effective and to keep one’s morale high while living a self-sacrificial life & materially-derived life outside of a community. And how many great saints lived alone? Some, but not a whole heck of a lot. Some founded communities; some were from existing communities, but the vast majority did not live alone.
So Orders, name your mission, singular, and attract others & confirm others who share that mission because they have discerned that mission fits their talents & secondary calling (K-12 teaching, higher academia, medicine, or the some phase of social work that you have a special witness for **and which is not being filled by any lay group or groups. **) There is way too much duplication of social work between religious and non-religious, and most of that social work is being done by individual religious in isolation, which seriously diminishes its effectiveness and its witness.
Choose a limited number of consolidated communities. If there are “lifestyle” or age issues, you can compartmentalize within those communities if necessary.
And I would hope that current or prospective religious would also have an eye to what the nation and world needs, not just what they as individuals need, in forming or reforming a mission. There are hundreds of sisters in my area, for example, doing individual social work in an area overrun by willing lay social workers, but that same area is in far greater need of Catholic school teachers & principals who can impart & witness to a true spirituality. It’s difficult for me to believe that there are not enough excellent teachers among those sisters who are young enough, capable enough, talented enough to staff at least 3 already existing schools. And the problem with poor catechesis in the Church? This should be addresed with a combined effort of priests and sisters in their existing geographical locations. They should oversee catechesis and contribute directly to it.
I regret that the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction of what Religious originally were: answering to a call beyond themselves. The language of too many of them in my area focuses on self-fulfillment as the priority – which also frankly is additionally a result of no longer living in community, but living in isolation.
If I were an active religious traditionally oriented, I would be looking to Rome to help streamline and fund my (our!) mission as an Order, so that I could more successfully answer my calling. That could be a valuable outcome of a Vatican visit. And from Rome’s perspective, from a strictly dollar viewpoint, I think it has every right to question roles and living styles in order to know what it might be helping to fund, let alone what is going on there in the name of Catholicism. If anything, perhaps Orders should have been saying (if they haven’t yet), look Rome, this is what we need to complete our mission. If individual sisters or Orders do not want to be in communion with Rome, and/or abhor transparency, then they cannot expect moral, practical, and economic support either. It’s the same way individual secular businesses work.
Not to say that all nuns who wore habits were completely Catholic and hadn’t had any influences of new age, etc., however for the most part that is what I saw.
