Why did so many Religious leave after Vatican 2?

[Oneofthewomen]

For the new comers to this thread, I am reposting this coment I made when this thread first posted.

I highly recommend reading the document I link to and searching Br. Jay’s resposes to this question on numerous other threads.

There is no one answer, and blaming VII is not going to get us anywhere. It would probably be best if people really understood what religious life is and is not before we start speculating on why the decline happened, and when.

Br. JREducation has posted about this frequently. If you do a “search” you might be able to find out some more answers, but one big reason the Chruch saw a many religious leave after VII was because all the orders we called to go back to their original charisms, and for some that joined orders in the US between the 1920’s until the 1960’s, that was not what they “signed up” for.
For example (from what I remember Br. JR saying) the Franciscans were founded to serve the poor, yet, during this time frame, many Franciscans were serving what had become the middle/uppper middle class, so many of them pulled out of parish work and went to minister to the poorest of the poor.

If you read this document from Vatican II, it will give you a better idea of what the Chruch had in mind.