What happened to nuns?

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SacredHeartBassist

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In my mom’s day there were many religious sisters. So many that whole catholic schools were taught by nuns. Now it’s a rare occasion that I actually see nuns. Why aren’t women choosing to be sisters anymore?
 
It’s my impression that some women are still choosing to join religious orders, but they are gravitating more towards smaller or newer orders and less into the old established orders. @Cloisters perhaps can give you better information.
 
There was attrition in lots of orders post-VII. But other orders are growing. Check out the Nashville Dominicans, for example.
Families are small now, and few families support or encourage a child who wants to be a nun or priest as in previous times. Nor does society, of course.
 
We really do have to take demographic shifts into account. The fact that families are small does contribute to catholic school attendance and the number of vocations.
 
It’s a downward spiral. As as our culture becomes increasingly sexualized and less religious, fewer and fewer people elect to choose a path that follows the exact opposite of these things. With fewer and fewer women going into religious life, there are fewer and fewer examples to young women so living as a religious seems an option only to men since priests are so visible, and even priests are on an alarming decline.
 
Women have the choice to live as single women outside their parents’ home without causing a scandal. That was bound to lower the number of women who joined religious communities. (There was a time when people didn’t think that a single woman choosing to live alone was entirely decent.)

Vocations to both mens’ and womens’ religious communities have dropped, probably for the same reason that the rate of marriage has dropped. More people resist making a lifetime commitment, particularly one in which they concede control of their lives to a community instead of to just one person. They want to be free to change their minds about the direction of their lives.
 
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Nuns are cloistered. Sisters are not. There is a difference between the two that @nunsuch might explain;better.

There is a good population of religious, including nuns and sisters in my country
 
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For a few decades, active communities of sisters – teachers, nurses, etc. – were looking more and more like single women working in the world. Many of them gave up any semblance of a habit, many stopped living in community, many even stopped praying together as a community. Some congregations presented a face to the world that seemed more concerned about social justice issues than living in a relationship with Christ.

In other words, many communities of consecrated women religious didn’t have much of a draw to young women, because young women could already do the same things those communities were doing – teaching, nursing, working with the homeless, etc. – without having to live single, celibate, and with very little community support.

Gee, sign me up. :roll_eyes:

When a women feels called by Christ to be a consecrated religious, she feels called to be completely and totally His, and to give all of herself and her life to Him for the sake of love. But many religious congregations of women were downplaying that part of their vocation, emphasizing care for the earth, and putting an end to social injustice instead, to the point that women with a calling wanted nothing to do with those groups.

Hence the growth of communities like the Nashville Dominicans, the Carmelite Sisters of Los Angeles, and so many others that both ask everything of their members, and understand that their members give all and serve all for the love of Christ!

Our love of Christ is put into action in our service. But if we love people because we are secular humanitarians, then we aren’t serving Christ, and our well may soon run dry. That’s what I think happened to many religious communities in recent decades.

Just my two cents.
 
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The decrease in vocations coencided exactly with the various liberation movements which came to fruition in the 1960’s. During the same time period, the Church, itself, underwent a post conciliar transformation which de-emphasized longstanding concepts within the Church such as hierarchy, conformity, obedience, sacrifice and authority. These factors rendered for many the traditional roles of the religious and clergy within the Church nearly unrecongnizable if not totally undesirable.
 
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Yes, you are right that there is a technical difference between sisters and nuns. Generally speaking, nuns take solemn vows and are cloistered, whereas sisters take simple vows. But this is not absolutely the case. For example, most monastics are “nuns,” but not all monastics are cloistered. There are many Benedictines, for example, who are “nuns,” but who do apostolic work (mostly teaching but, in some cases, also nursing, etc.).

Of course, in common or popular usage, most people–including vowed religious–often use “nun” to mean any woman in vows. When I use the words synonyously in scholarly writing, I always have a footnote which explains that, yes, there is a technical difference, but I am using the terms interchangeably in a popular sense.
 
Women today have options that weren’t open to women of the past. As a result, fewer might consider religious life as a possibility. And as one sister told me, women who are interested in religious life today often want to be priests, not “merely” sisters. When that option isn’t available, they walk away from the whole thing.
 
Do you still have hope though about it, your post does seem a bit sad.
 
Despite these trends, do you still have hope also if I may ask?
 
I actually agree with your thoughts, here. You put into words exactly what I have pondered for years in seeing my female friends discern.
 
As I see it, Vatican II raged against rising (now rampant) secularism - winning some battles and losing others. Many orders practiced licentiousness and shed their habits. Some degree of holiness went along with it. Now, some orders are little more than flannel-shirted, blue jean wearing social workers. Why join that? The government pays better for the same work.

Rather, those which remained loyal to the Magisterium and maintained holiness inside which was made manifest outside, tended to do much better.

Take for example the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. They began in 1997 with 4 sisters and now have 120 or so. They are joy-filled, absolutely faithful to the Magisterium - and growing in holiness and in number.

And, they are teachers, praise God!

Well worthy of support.
 
At my church - women do it all - except say mass.
The singer.
The organist.
The altar person helper.
The podium lector.
The Eucharistic minister.
The majority of the crowd.
But Solomon strangely says
one woman in a thousand he has not met Ecclesiastes 7:28
Maybe he was speaking of nuns ?
Jesus - it seems to me - adores - nuns !
Tremendous writings / books - too ❤️
 
I was recently at some meetings at my parish and found out later that several nuns were in attendance. I didn’t know as they were not wearing any type of habit - regular women’s clothing.
 
Well, sure, some orders have a habit and some don’t.It has been like that for a long time now.
 
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