Women religious not complying with Vatican study

[redrosetea]

I have a question…If a nun decides to leave the order and she has spent decades in it, what are the orders obligations to her financially?

Do they have anything like a pension plan?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Ridgerunner…

You have many good points. Be careful, however, regarding the highlighted portion of your quotation; canonically, it is simply not that easy to “throw someone out”. For professed religious, the Church, via canon law, has protections in place to guard against such a thing. Now, if the member were not professed, dismissal would be quite easy, but not for professed members of a religious institute. Also, feasibly, life could be made very difficult for one who goes “against the grain”…s/he could be made miserable enough that s/he may ask to leave, but dismissal is much more serious and much more difficult.

I have no reason to question this. From those I have talked to, “be made miserable” may be more accurate, though I have heard “thrown out”. “Thrown out” could simply be a shorthand way of saying “made miserable”, as I never got the details on “thrown out”, but some on “made miserable”. Perhaps the most memorable was one; a teaching nun, who was told she had to go live in an apartment by herself and be self-supporting in every way, yet contribute to the community as well. That was a little more like “starved out”.

On the other hand, I know one nun who, notwithstanding that she is a practicing attorney living on her own, still considers herself part of her “community”. So, perhaps for some that sort of thing is desired, while for others it’s not so desirable.