Where Do We Go from Here? The Changes in the Sisterhood

Photo Credit: (clockwise) The Times, UK; Catholic Diocese of Fort Worth; Ursuline Sisters of Cleveland

The recent decision of the Sisters of Charity of New York not to accept candidates for their community has stirred questions among Catholics and even non-Catholics as to the future of religious communities of women. Most people are aware of the closing of Catholic schools or the handing on of their staffing and administrations to the laity. Catholic hospitals are striving to retain the faith-based charism without the presence of the nuns who ran them and ministered as caregivers. To many, especially those of the corporate and profit mentality, this looks like a plunge in sales or the result of making a poor investment in resources. The margins have widened, and the core of members has diminished significantly.  

I hope the following ‘answers’ to frequently asked questions might help you understand where we, the sisters, are and what is happening to our communities.

When did the diminishment start and why? Did the absence of the habit cause the decline of religious? The decline in membership started in the mid-to-late sixties partially as an outgrowth of the Second Vatican Council which encouraged nuns to update their lifestyles, their rules, and their mission identity. As early as 1958, Pope Pius XII told a group of American Superiors in Rome for a meeting with him that they should seriously consider giving up the religious habit for purposes that would allow the communities to relate to the laity they served. 

The history of the religious habit is fraught with inane practices. But it is not the major reason for the diminishment of today’s religious order. If you were a member of the Seventeenth Century mendicant orders (beggars), like Franciscans, you wore one habit all the time—even with holes in it and frayed edges and layers of dried dust because you seldom washed it. If your order was founded by a widow (and most active ones were), you wore the customary ‘widow’s weeds’, a black woolen long dress with a head covering. Over the centuries, habits became more stylized and more hygienic but still they were replicas of the foundress’s clothing. By the nineteenth century, the habit was almost a competitive symbol more than a religious one. As communities grew, they designed their habits to distinguish one community from another. In later centuries, pastors of parishes often chose an order to teach in their schools if they liked the habit a certain community wore. It became a symbol of fear and curiosity, and frequently a symbol attracting a well-intentioned person to unplug his or her conscience and give a donation to a religious cause. This is a very simplified history of the ‘holy habit.’

Now Sisters are happy to get their clothes in resale venues or as gifts and the occasional retail store when there’s a sale. Competition is gone; the symbol is authentically religious in the medal or cross a sister wears and in the simple overall attire. It is now probably what it would have been had the foundress not been a widow!!!

What does culture have to do with diminishment? More than likely, this is a major reason for communities not growing traditionally. Young women have many more opportunities to have exciting careers without thinking of religious life. However, this life is a call, a vocation, so there are women still being called to it. I have talked with many women who express regret that they never responded when they could have. Still, there are others who are fearful of taking the step to enter a community. The call is truly about relationship, a relationship with God that requires daily a deep exploration in prayer and spiritual study. It is expected that the relationship will expand to include everyone and address the needs of others. A nun brings everyone into her fold, her wheelhouse of love. To do this, she must minister where she is called and do things that she never thought she could do so that others “may have life and have it more abundantly.” There are women in the world, called to do this and they will continue to enter communities, but the communities will be very different.

What, then, is the future of religious communities? Only God knows. But you won’t find many nuns fretting over this. They are too busy no matter how old they are. If they are retired, they’re tutoring, visiting the sick, teaching in prisons, raising bees, volunteering for the needs of immigrants, planting and harvesting food for the poor. If they aren’t retired, they’re teaching, nursing, counseling, consulting, engaged in political advocacy and more. And at certain times every day they are all praying for the world and specific people and asking for guidance on how to stave the hemorrhaging of hatred and division which we once called sin. 

I believe, as most nuns do, that what is happening to religious communities is the canary in the coal mine for the rest of the Church. As our communities go, so goes the parish, the chancery, the hierarchy, the seminaries, all of which are also communities, but which have not faced the swirling waters surrounding them as the people of God move on. Every nun I know is tearful about her personal losses but realizes that the Spirit is leading us to a new horizon. We must pray for and dialogue with Church leaders so that they might find the courage to penetrate the fortress of what has been and to accept what is new and challenging ahead.  

Reflection

Maybe the greatest witness the nun of today can give is to demonstrate—with humility—that our brothers and sisters can face and do something about the diminishment in our Church resulting from rigidity in gender issues, clericalism, marriage. I won’t cite the statistics available from many research organizations, but the Catholic Church is in need of reform as well. Pope Francis alludes to it often and he is working in quiet ways to effect reform. It seems you and I should pray and speak up for theological renovation rather than insistent pleading for the past to return. 

How about this week we give special prayer time to ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit for all religious communities seeking guidance for their futures and for our Pope, especially as he initiates the Synod coming in October. Change must come.