The National Religious Retirement Office at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has projected that an estimated 300 Women Religious Institutes will likely phase out of existence in the next decade.
The estimate is fueled by the fact that the overall number of Women Religious has declined by 75 % since 1965 with no change in the trend expected.
Bishops, Women Religious, Canon Lawyers and others discussed the future of Religious Life in a two-day workshop recently held in Oakbrook, Illinois, outside of Chicago.
The workshop, “Fidelity to the Journey: Together in Communion,” was sponsored by the Resource Center for Religious Institutes.
Mercy Sister Sharon Euart, the resource center’s Executive Director, said participants agreed not to invite the press to the workshop to allow for frank and open discussion but to release a report afterward.
About 50 people attended the gathering, including Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, Chairman of the Bishops’ Committee on Clergy, Consecrated Life and Vocations. It was the first national gathering among Bishops and Women Religious to discuss diminishing vocations.
The number of Women Religious in the United States has declined from a peak of 181,421 in 1965 to 47,160 in 2016, National Religious Retirement Office statistics show.
About 77% of Women Religious are older than 70.
As many as 300 of the 420 Religious Institutes in the United States are in their last decades of existence because of aging membership and declining vocations, officials said.
The demise of Women Religious Institutes represents an incalculable loss to the Universal Church and the local Churches as well in the witness so many heroic women provided in the life of virtue and service they offered the Body of Christ.
The sadness is that this “diminishment”, the term now being used to describe the declining numbers of Religious Institutes, is the direct result of a radical feminism that entered many Communities and fundamentally changed the both the mission and charism of the various Institutes’ founders.
Community life is all but gone as individual Women Religious have chosen to establish residences in private homes or apartments.
Truth be told, there is an almost open hostility and resentment with which many Women Religious engage with the Clergy.
After the Second Vatican Council, in their haste to reform their Communities, radical feminism and accommodation with the secular world replaced the vision which inspired the founders of these Institutes to usher a call to women to abandon the values of the world and offer themselves as servants, indeed as brides of the Lord Jesus and His Body the Church.
In the end, the Institutes that survived the massive defections which many Communities suffered became so identified with the radical feminist agenda that they offered nothing of value or difference to young women seeking fulfillment in a life personal sacrifice and service.
But none of this reality is ever admitted by Women Religious themselves and dare not be spoken ever by the Clergy.
Rather, than considering a return to the charism of the founders which inspired and nourished Women Religious Institutes for centuries, the recent workshop addressed topics such as planning, care of members and use of resources, governance issues, and what it all means for local Churches and Dioceses.
There seems to be an eagerness to accept the demise of Women Religious Institutes as attendees chose to speak of both the peace as well as the grieving among their members following decisions to leave ministries, to sell motherhouses, and to move forward.
I’ve always believed that when the Sisters left the classrooms and hospital rooms for positions of leadership in the secular world, when they abandoned their modest habits and chose to be indistinguishable in their presence, when they adopted attitudes of power rather than service, their days were numbered.
The Church is poorer for their loss, that is for certain.
I shall miss their presence as I recall the precious gift of Catholic Faith the Sisters passed on to me, my family and my parish as teachers in the school.
We can only pray that, someday in the future, the same Holy Spirit Who inspired the great founders of Women Religious Institutes in the past will touch the hearts and minds of other women who, by their character and commitment, revive a truly ancient and critical gift of witness and service to the Church.
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