Column Associates represent a booster shot for traditional forms of
religious life
By TIM UNSWORTH
Religious life as we knew it when
Ingrid Bergman was a nun may be on the wane, but the ripple effect of those
charismatic founders and their followers still bathes souls with the elusive
graces that flowed from their lives. Today religious life needs new channels to
allow those rivers of grace to keep flowing
The North American Conference of Associates and Religious is one
such new channel. An associate is a layperson who affiliates with a
religious congregation (in varying degrees of formality), seeking to apply the
community's charism and spirituality to his or her life and work in the world.
Laywoman Jean Sonnenberg, co-executive director of the national
conference along with Sister of Charity Ellen OConnell, considers the
phenomenal growth of the organization a plot on the part of the Holy
Spirit.
She could be right. The conference is arguably the fastest growing
Catholic lay movement in the United States. Like Moses, it is leading often
weary and diminishing religious communities higher up on the mountain to
God.
Organized rather casually in 1980 and not meeting formally until
1989, the group now has an estimated 20,000 members in the United States and
another 11,000 in Canada. It's Peter all over again, strengthening his brothers
and sisters in their faith. The group may, indeed, be a vital booster shot to
traditional religious life.
Precise figures are hard to come by. Not every religious
congregation with an associates program has signed up with the organization.
The conference has only Jean and Sr. Ellen as part-time employees and, thus
far, neither has had time to count the house. However, the associates of the
women's congregations alone now number nearly 15,000 in the United States.
The conference doesn't file its rather loosely gathered figures
with official agencies of the church, and it dreads lockstep organization lest
it fall into the clutches of a chancery file cabinet and be declared a
canonical society. Like Sarah in the Hebrew Scriptures, conference members are
open to the unexpected.
The associates are part of religious life,
OConnell said. They are part of the critical mass that will
continue religious life. Many are doing much the same work as members of the
organization. OConnell moderates the associates connected with her
congregation -- just over 50 members, including one priest.
Last spring in the national conference gathered in Fort Mitchell,
Ky., just outside Cincinnati. They met for three days, 265 associates and their
religious siblings. Representing over 69 religious congregations from 33 states
and tow Canadian provinces. At round tables, members discussed ways and means
of finding a deeper relationship with God through the charisms of the
congregations represented.
Religious vocations continue to decline relentlessly. In the past
decade, total numbers of religious sisters, brothers and priests in the United
States have dropped nearly 21 percent, from 138,818 to 110,057. Studies show
that all the billboards and brochures in the world won't reverse this trend.
Some congregations haven't had a candidate in 10 years. Novitiates once bulging
with eager members are now retirement homes where aging religious wait for
God.
There are now more nuns over 90 than under 30. It's a new world.
The habit day processions of white veiled novices and peach-fuzzed brothers and
seminarians of pre-Vatican II days are long gone. However, the charism of the
congregations they served continues to imbue others like the smell of a nun's
serge sleeves.
The separate congregations have their distinct personalities,
mission and spirituality. John Paul II's efforts to enhance the image of
religious life by canonizing its founders have been greatly appreciated, but
they have not left lines outside convent or monastery doors. The associates
conference, in fact, doesn't intend that the associates will rush to put their
hands to plows. It seeks only to use the charisms of both the founders and
their congregations to pass on the gifts that inspired the parent
congregations.
Associates study the mission and charisms of their congregations.
They want to live these things out. They also seek a commitment of some kind.
They are looking for the mutual support of prayer and the involvement in some
kind of ministry, doing something for others. They can go much deeper
spiritually than their parish may allow them and they have a lot more freedom
to develop.
The Congregation of Christian Brothers (formerly called the
Christian Brothers of Ireland) may be typical. The Brother Rice Associates now
has 100 members, 40 of them in the United States. The remainder are attached to
the province's Peruvian schools.
According to their director, Br. John Jerry McCarthy, in 1998 four
new members have been made a commitment, perhaps a dozen others are considering
it. We call them the Brother Rice Associates in order to emphasize the
relationship with the spirituality of the congregation's founder, Blessed
Edmund Ignites Rice, McCarthy said.
Four of our people are priests; only seven or eight are not
married. They range in age from 29 to 79, and 50 percent are men. (An
unusually high number. Nationwide, some 90 percent of the associates are
females.) At least eight of the Brother Rice Associates have earned doctorates,
a reflection of the teaching mission of the congregation.
Sonnenberg is an associate of the Bon Secours Congregation, now
based in Marriottsville, Md., which came to the United States from France in
1881 and is involved in health care. Typically, its associates tend to share
the same mission as the congregations to which they are attached. However,
there is little bar coding.
They are just seeking a deeper relationship with God,
Sonnenberg said. They feel called to mysticism and a prophetic
stance.
The associates are determinately noncanonical, and they do not
commit themselves to specific periods of service. Some members, indeed, are not
Catholics, and some Catholics have an interest in Buddhist spirituality. About
20 percent are former religious, still tied to their congregations by bonds of
faith and loyalty. It's a challenging bouillabaisse.
The church has never viewed laity as being capable of
prophetic prayer, Sonnenberg said. The associates give them the
courage to live the gospel.
Congregations that are predominantly priests have been slower to
embrace associates. Only about 10 percent of the present roster is from
priest-dominated congregations. There remains a tendency among clerical
congregations to view such groups as allergens. Further, some congregations
view the pope's dictum to return to their roots as a warning to be
uncontaminated by any new ideas.
Associate groups share a few things in common. The national
conference asks that all members spend at least 15 minutes each day in some
form of centering prayer or meditation and that each associate perform some
form of volunteer service (soup kitchens, hospital volunteer and so on).
By and large, the associates are not involved in the
administration or government of the congregations to which they are attached.
I can barely balance my own checkbook, one associate said. I
don't want to try to balance theirs, and I don't want them looking at
mine. However, some congregations invite associates -- and former members
-- to their periodic provincial chapters as nonvoting members.
We just want to share in their mission and ministry,
Sonnenberg said. Vatican II issued a call to the laity. Now,
circumstances are such that they have no other choice but to invite the laity,
and it's like putting a key into a lock. It fits.
The concept is hardly a new one. Any visitor to a Catholic high
school can uncover lay teachers so imbued with the sponsoring congregation's
mission that they outshine a few of the religious themselves whose great yes
has been followed by an infinite series of little noes.
Barring a personal appearance from the Vatican balcony by the Holy
Spirit, religious life will probably continue to decline both in number, in
apostolates -- even in spirit. However, the bewildering mix of missions and
charisms that marked the uncounted congregations of the past few centuries
could energize the parent congregations and lead to new models of new religious
life that could enrich the church.
The North American Conference of Associates and Religious can
be reached at (410) 442-2115 or NACAR@erols.com.
Tim Unsworth writes from Chicago. His E-mail address is
unsworth@megsinet.net.
National Catholic Reporter, September 4,
1998
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