Religious
Life The
religious calling: to hang out with the young
By PATRICIA LEFEVERE
Special Report Writer
No one is at home to take your call
right now. If you would like to leave a message for Sr. Ursula, press 1. For
Sr. Mercy, press 2. For Sr. Loretta, press 3.
Anyone who has called a convent or house of sisters, brothers or
religious order priests in recent years may have heard a similar response.
Thank God for voice mail! It shows that religious life is as plugged in and as
personal as health care, banking and the airlines.
It also reveals that nobody is home. With the number of religious
women having fallen from 181,000 at its peak in 1965 to around 80,000 today,
few communities have a receptionist, porter or housekeeper designate. The same
applies to houses of religious men.
But can an ordinary answering machine say more than the words on
its message tape? Might it suggest that religious life is becoming more
invisible and religious men and women less accessible as their numbers dwindle?
Vocations directors have been trying to frame that question more positively.
Hundreds of them met last September in East Rutherford, N.J., where they looked
at ways to build bridges between themselves and young adults. For four days
members of the National Religious Vocation Conference rubbed heads, shoulders
and prayers together and shared ideas on how to be more open to young
Catholics.
Generation X Catholics number 20 million and comprise one-third of
the church, but they are absent in the thousands from religious orders. Rather
than faulting the culture or even Catholic parents for this, the vocations
directors have begun to scrutinize their own houses. Are they interested in
young people and familiar with their culture? Are they willing to hang out with
youth and invite them to visit, even overnight, in their houses?
Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Mary Johnson has spent hundreds of hours
with the young. A sociologist at Emmanuel College in Boston, she has worked on
two national projects: Young Adult Catholics, to be published by the University
of Notre Dame Press in June, and a forthcoming study of post-Vatican II
entrants in religious congregations. Dean Hoge and Bill Dinges, both of
Catholic University, and Juan Gonzales of California State University at
Hayward co-authored the Young Adult study. Johnson has also studied
generational differences in religious life, surveying 69,000 sisters in
hundreds of orders.
Young people yearn for community, for intimacy,
relationships, spirituality, for the chance to serve and to be challenged and
accountable, Johnson told NCR. Religious life can fulfill these yearnings
if it can connect to GenXers. It can offer them a unique and
distinct way of life, in which contemplation and action are integral, she
said.
Were mired and tired. Were workaholics,
Johnson said, noting that many religious miss the uniqueness of their own lives
because were so busy in our ministries. Often they seem
unapproachable, and their lives look impossible to the
young, she said.
Johnsons work revealed that post-Vatican II entrants prefer
a community of between four and seven sisters. Yet 80 percent of U.S. houses of
sisters are comprised of one, two or three members. She hoped that
congregations would not let the housing market determine the size, availability
and distribution of their communities. Its doable if orders
start looking for larger units, she said, noting that many young entrants have
made their decision on the basis of such living arrangements.
Harder to change are the attitudes some communities hold that
become barriers rather than bridges to the young. Some doubt that
religious life will continue, that it has anything to offer the young, that the
ministry of vocation work is even worthwhile, she said. Even those
who say they believe sometimes make decisions that undercut their words
and then are shocked when the order next door gets new members.
Defensiveness and a fear of returning to the past stifle growth,
Johnson said. They are subtle but poisonous barriers that can sap our
hope, our optimism and our belief.
She has met religious who treat the yearning of young interested
people or newer entrants as if it is pathological. She recalled a
nun who told her: If you expect me to stay home and baby-sit these people
who are looking for the family they never had
According to her survey, a quarter of young adults had attended
eucharistic adoration and more than half had said the rosary during the past
two years. Yet many religious label such piety as conservative and
thus refrain from talking about what these practices mean to the young --
not what they meant 35 years ago. Johnson likened this response to
committing corporate suicide.
When the young attend eucharistic adoration, hardly any of them
talks about a theology of Eucharist, the sociologist said. Instead they
describe the experience of quiet and stillness, how their heart rate and
breathing slowed and how they can finally listen after the noise and speed of
their day. Theyre not contrasting these experiences with what happened in
the wake of Vatican II reforms, Johnson said. Theyre contrasting
their time with the wider culture. They see this as an example of
distinctiveness.
Johnson pointed to new weavings in religious life and
the imbuing of old symbols with new meaning. One sister observed this when a
group of students on her campus met regularly to say the rosary before they
left to demonstrate at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga.
She saw the link between the rosary and civil disobedience.
But another was uncomfortable with such habits. A nun in an
elementary school told Johnson that shed intended to join a weekly prayer
group of mothers who feared that in that particular neighborhood, their
children could be abducted. She demurred when she discovered they prayed the
rosary as it reminded her too much of the past, Johnson said. When
Johnson asked the mothers what the rosary meant to them, they said they
prayed to a woman who understood what it was like to be frantic with
worry while looking for her young lost son.
Johnson urged religious to admit that the past is affecting
our future more powerfully than we care or dare to admit. New vocations
will require faith, she said -- faith in God, in our way of life and
mission and in young adults.
It also demands a faith in the people that religious serve.
They hope we succeed, that we can continue to be sisters and brothers to
them. The ones who need a brother or sister in this country and beyond are the
abused, the neglected, the impoverished the uneducated, the ill, the dying, the
homeless, the demeaned, the despised, the imprisoned. Our lives are for
them, Johnson said.
Religious men and women can give a distinct gift to
the young and to a world that struggles with generational
misunderstandings and tensions, she said. The care of older religious by
younger religious has a larger message for the culture, Johnson said. It shows
that fidelity is possible, that vows can be made and commitments kept a
lifetime despite vast changes in the church and the world, she said. Older
sisters are reservoirs of unconditional love. They prove that
people can live together, care for one another, share memories and continue to
grow, she said.
These pioneers who sacrificed much and built and
serviced many institutions are now able to let go of so much and to make
light of it all, Johnson said. In a day of rage, they exude a
palpable peace and a profound acceptance of aging and
diminishment. In a society that denies or disguises aging, they age with
gorgeous grace.
As a researcher of senior sisters, Johnson found herself asking:
How -- in a society that says the one, at the time of death, with the
most toys, wins -- can people with no property, no children and no status have
so much and exude such joy?
But theologian Tom Beaudoin noted that before young people even
meet elderly nuns, all too often they see another public face of religious
life. He said he could point to 30 women who have told him during the past
year: I dont want to be an angry nun. The stereotype of nuns
for many young Catholics is that of women who sacrifice, bear their cross and
are frustrated, said Beaudoin, a graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and
the author of Virtual Faith: The Irreverent Spiritual Quest of Generation X.
He hoped that religious women would find a way to deal with rules,
resentments, regrets and things that didnt happen that doesnt
poison the face and image of religious life.
Another stereotype youth hold is that priests and nuns dont
have a body. In Beaudoins research, young Catholics think celibacy is
about denial, ignorance and forswearence of the body. This image does not jibe
with a health conscious youth who are into running and sports, he said.
They want to relate to their bodies spiritually. Its time, he
said, for religious to develop a spirituality of the body.
At the New Jersey convocation, Beaudoin also encouraged vocation
directors to become spiritual directors to young adults, especially those in
lay ministry. Religious have valuable experience about how to discern a
religious calling, he said. He hoped they would share it with those considering
religious life and with the parents of the next generation of sisters and
priests.
GenX nuns and priests will never have the influence of Baby Boomer
religious because of their much smaller numbers, said Beaudoin, a doctoral
student at Boston College. But he urged all orders to call a national, regional
or local day when all three generations could gather. Each generation would
speak for 20 to 25 minutes with no crosstalk and no
interruptions -- on topics such as family, sexuality and religious
identity. Young people could be invited to these presentations, which he hoped
would prove healing and reconciling and exhibit the give and take of avowed
religious life in community.
Five young religious brothers and sisters who spoke with NCR and
who addressed the vocations convocation spoke of the delights and the
difficulties of being one of the few persons in their congregation under age
40. For their stories, see the profiles on pages 32 to 36.
National Catholic Reporter, February 23,
2001
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