Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Reading about a Community's Slow Death (and the author seems to revel in it)

No, I am not talking about a town or location filled with all sorts of toxic chemicals. It is about how one nun, seems to rejoice in her "freedom" but does not realize that she is really killing her community, just as many others are, with toxic thoughts and actions.

I take this story from Fr. Z's blog and write about it, only because it takes place in this Diocese. Some of you may know her. I don't but I feel sorry for her.

Confessions of a Modern Nun
The Vatican visitation prompts reflection on a religious divide.
Ilia Delio OCTOBER 12, 2009 (America Magazine)
Religious life among women is undergoing a massive evolutionary change that can only be described as cataclysmic. The Vatican’s apostolic visitation of congregations of women religious in the United States and the recent investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious indicate that Rome is unhappy with so-called post-Vatican II nuns who have donned secular clothes and abandoned traditional community life. The current statistics show a trend. The number of religious sisters and cloistered nuns in the United States was almost 180,000 in 1965. In 2009 there are just over 59,000, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University. A steady decline in the number of women religious, together with the fact that their median age is 75, is a sign that religious life in the United States is a dying institution. Yet new communities have sprouted up in which women religious don a traditional habit and follow a daily schedule of prayer and service. These communities are attracting youthful, vibrant vocations. On the surface, the future of religious life seems to be on their side.

To read more, go here.

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