New study on Catholic Vocations and Religious Life

My NCR post in response to Ken Briggs’ NCR article on CARA:

“I agree that the study is a fine one.

And that when a man or woman is called to one order as opposed to another, that calling is **not** a “slap at LCWR” (or CSMWR). In this country, we have become accustomed to viewing actions and choices and preferences as “protest” actions, choices and preferences. It is time we challenge that assumption, that kneejerk reaction, that failure to truly see and hear our fellows and their values as distinct from us and our values.

I am discerning with an LCWR community. I am doing so because I believe that is where I am called by God. I do not believe God is calling me to an LCWR community as a “slap at” CMSWR communities. I know a woman who is discerning with a CMSWR community. She is doing so because she believes she is called by God to that community. She does not believe – nor do I – that she is called to a CMSWR as a protest action (by her or God) or “slap at LCWR”.

I believe it is time, in these discussions of Women Religious and their communities and vocation stories/experiences, that we acknowledge and respect the full spiritual and moral and intellectual agency of ALL Catholic women. I believe it is time that we understand and repect their choices as an expression of the free will God acknowledges and respects in each of us.

A woman who chooses a CMSWR community does, in fact, choose a CMSWR community. Others may want to manipulate her choice and represent as a choice AGAINST LCWR. That is disrespectful and dismissive of the woman and the relationship between her and God, between her and the movement of the Holy Spirit within her. Does any of us have the right to insert ourselves into that relationship, into that movement, to judge her expression of the free will that even God does not manipulate?

A woman who chooses a LCWR community does, in fact, choose a LCWR community. Others may want to manipulate her choice and represent as a choice AGAINST CMSWR. That is disrespectful and dismissive of the woman and the relationship between her and God, between her and the movement of the Holy Spirit within her. Does any of us have the right to insert ourselves into that relationship, into that movement, to judge her expression of the free will that even God does not manipulate?

This whole debate has taken on the partisanship of US two party politics, and it is ugly and inappropriate. We may be comfortable being Republicans in large part because we dislike Democrats or Democrats in large part because we dislike Republicans. But I sincerely hope that our relationships with God are not polluted with that kind of thinking. I hope that we respond to God affirmatively, with a full and joyful yes to the particular invitation God offers to each of us………………..I hope that we do not allow our individual and intimate relationships with God to be defined and shaped by our arguments with and disdain of others.

Each of us has the opportunity – in these discussions and debates – to honor God and the beauty, integrity and uniqueness of our individual relationships with God. I believe that the only choice that is “with God” is a decision to speak with respect and charity about each and every person’s relationship with and response *to* God as just that: a relationship with God and response to God. In this case, those relationships and responses may be expressed as discernment with and membership in LCWR or CMSWR (or neither). But that is not the same thing as a response to and against LCWR **or** CMSWR…………………and it is high time that everyone begin to acknowledge and respect that in every sentence they speak and write and pray.

Jean

Suzanne – I appreciate your thoughtfulness about this. When you say that the order you hope to join “wears a modified habit”, what specific dress are you describing? Does it appeal to you personally? Why? Why not? What is its meaning to you? To the sisters in the order? What have they told you about how they have arrived at that particular dress? What have they said to you about their preferences?

I ask the same question of the women hoping to join orders that wear what I describe as a traditional pre-VII habit. Would you consider answering the same questions about the habit your intended or hoped-for order wears?

The orders that I am drawn to as possible “homes” do not wear traditional habits as a rule. There are some older sisters wearing the style of habits they received as young women. The other sisters wear “lay clothes” with congregational rings and crosses/crucifixes, and there is a range of styles, some more conservative or more formal than others who are more trendy or more casual in their dress. They told very funny stories about their pre-VII habits and expressed relief that they are no longer required and, yet, some also volunteered taht they want to revisit the issue of visible witness through a consistent presentation/dress. I know that, as a 47 year old woman with long-established personal and professional communities that are very secular and very progressive, I cannot imagine myself wearing a traditional habit all the time. I think I would have little chance of being heard by those communities, personal and professional, of opening their hearts and souls and minds to the beauty of my life as a religious and to the beauty and comfort of a life with Jesus as its center. I do believe that Religious life is an evangelical life and I do not believe many of my communities could be evangelized by my wearing a traditional habit and believe, in fact, that the habit would be a barrier. On **me** in **my** particular communities. If I were much younger, I can imagine that I might feel the same and I can imagine that I might feel differently. As it is, I want my existing communities to hear Jesus in my voice and prayer, to see Jesus in my face and works and in my peace and my joy, and I believe that radical change in dress and a corporately-defined habit would be counterproductive.

I ****have**** learned, as I’ve visited communities, that it is my intention to develop my own simple “habit”, some combination of lay clothing that makes me think “modern day nun?” : blacks, browns and whites, 3/4 or long sleeves, simple and basic lines, visible Crucifix, simple haircut and no jewelry other than Crucifix/Congregational cross and ring. The addition of the Crucifix and the absence of the jewelry (I love jewelry) would be notable in my old communities but the rest is similar enough to my current “habit” (pun intended) that it would not be a radical and counterproductive change.

On the other hand, I also have some very traditional and much-loved Catholic communities who will struggle to hear and see Jesus in me and in my Religious life if I do not have a traditional habit. That has been a difficult likelihood for me to contemplate because these are the communities that welcomed me back into the Catholic Church of my childhood and they have worked very hard to stretch their experience of Catholicism to include my progressive social justice concerns and life experiences and they worked hard not to let me become alientated by their ways of being Catholic. My love for these people and these communities and their deeply spiritual Catholicism is profound. An article by Sister Laurie Brink OP pointed that some women joining “non-habited” orders are asking for habits to wear for specific occasions. Thus, I have recently realized that I need to find out whether I can have a habit to wear for Mass and other sacred ceremonies and in communnities where a sister’s habit is an important and cherished witness to Jesus and love of God. I cannot imagine, if my goal is to be a witness for Jesus and the Gospels, joining in community with my more conservative Catholic friends and not being in some form of traditional habit. It would be too hard for them to trust my witness and, for me, Religious life is about bringing Jesus’ presence with us wherever we go.

It is my job, I believe, to a witness who can be heard and seen. I will not alter the substance of my witness as I move from community to community but I have no problem – and think Jesus would “high five” me for it – dressing “like the Romans when in Rome” if that makes my witness more accessible. At times, the westside Romans and the eastside Romans in my life will intermingle and then I will hope and expect them all to stretch, to find the same old witness in different clothes. I believe this way of “living with the habit” is consistent with the particular call of the Holy Spirit to me specifically.

I would love to hear from other women about the style of dress of the order they ***personally*** hope to join and what is means to them and for them.

Jean

Hi Jean,

Those are very thoughtful questions. I’m professed to an ecumenical religious order that’s very theologically and liturgically conservative but very socially progressive. My community generally wears secular clothing but we do wear habits during Mass and while doing ministry/representing our order. Having the choice has forced me to examine why I wear the habit in different circumstances and whether or not it would be more effective for me to be in secular clothing. For the most part, in terms of the ministry that I do, wearing the habit makes a tremendous difference so I wear it. We do outreach to several marginalized and politically progressive communities that have experiences of rejection from various churches. It’s not intuitive that this would be a situation in which to wear a habit because of the automatic negative associations that people may have with it, but it’s the highly visible Christian witness in combination with our actions that can serve as a powerful counter-example to people’s past negative experiences. Usually people are surprised, then curious, then approach for a few questions, and we go from there. For me, wearing the habit is about what the people I serve need from me.

What struck me most about the reports was the observation that one of the most important factors in people considering religious life in general and with a particular community was meeting with religious from that particular community regardless of whether the community wore a habit or not. I like what you’ve said about the substance of your witness— it really is our lives and how we live them that attract—and without the authenticity of that, whether or not one wears a habit won’t make any difference.

I just read this post to NCR in response to the article about LCWR in New Orleans. I really appreciated the questions this former priest and evident feminist asks. His questions rely on the the rich complexity of the Church’s own context, and he clearly eschews ”good guy/bad guy’ reductions. I don’t know the answers to his questions but I appreciate them because, for me, they open and deepen dialogue rather than pencilling in, with even more opague and even blacker lead, the boxes of acrimonious and quickly failing-to-create-understanding debate. For me, they open and deepen dialogue in the same way the part of Sr Sandra’s discussion which answered, so beautifully, the question in the title of her essay “Why They Stayed”.

Anyway, I am very excited by this post and would be interested to hear others’ thoughts and questions. I could do without the last line (at least situated as the last line because I think it is open to all kinds of interpretation, most of which (I think) would mis-take this former priest’s intentions).

Anyone know what the reference is to “Butte, Montana” if it does not just mean “Main Street America”?)

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From NCR this week: “As a former religious priest, my heart goes out to the sisters, but I also have arrived at a number of conclusions after many years of struggling with the question of staying in my community or leaving. In the end, I left and was fortunate to be hired by another community to do pretty much the same things my former order had trained me for. I find myself close to the members of that order even today.

But one of the conclusions I came to revolves around a series of Catch-22s in the canon law of the church in regard to religious. First, in the case of orders of priests and brothers, religious life and ecclesial ordained ministry tangle wires for priest-members. That is a set of entanglements sisters don’t have to deal with. But there is a persistent problem that will not go away. If you want canonical recognition in the “Roman” Catholic Church, you’re going to have to deal with church authorities who want (1) theological orthodoxy — including the question of whether women can receive the sacrament of order; and (2) certain requirements to be followed. In days of yore, neither was much of a problem with either, but since Vatican II, both are.

I personally believe that the non-ordination of women in cultures such as ours is a scandal, which is not the same thing as saying that simply ordaining women into the present structures of priestly ministry is a solution to the deeper problem. That deeper problem is one of identifying ways to minister that work in our age. The “clergyman” model has more or less been taken over by “clergywomen” in many Protestant churches, and women have been no more successful than men in implementing it. Young Protestants leak out the side doors of churches that ordain women and recognize the true complexity of gender identity. As a missiologist, I have sat with many male and female theologians, church leaders, and ministers who know this is the case.

But for clarity, I think the question of not ordaining women needs to be kept distinct from the question of whether women want to be members of congregations officially recognized by the hierarchy. The problem is that it is not, either in the Vatican or places like Butte, Montana. Still, there is nothing to prohibit a group from joining together and living as sisters according to whatever rule they wish to adopt. It is simply a matter of a basic religious human right.

My suspicion, though, is that a very large percentage of women in congregations that were recognized by either bishops or the Vatican in generations past have grown beyond canon law, and many of their members are more comfortable with venerating a Spirit that may or may not be the Spirit of the crucified and risen one. Personally, I am a traditionalist in the area of core doctrines, although I cannot see how core trinitarian and soteriological doctrines are remotely impugned by someone who believes a woman is a fit candidate for the sacrament of order — as I do. But another level of theological orthodoxy is still a question. I was told by a religious sister whom I trust deeply that at an assembly of her congregation some years ago, the question was asked, “Does one need to be a disciple of Jesus to be a member of the congregation?” A large percentage answered, “No.”

The psycho-social reasons for that “No” are many, including, I suspect, frustration at the hierarchy for using specious analogies from the maleness of Jesus and the patriarchal culture of intertestamental, medieval, and early modern European societies. It is easy to draw tenuous conclusions from shallow biblical and historical studies. What seems certain to me is that there are many thousands of women religious who believed in the 1960′s thru early 1980s that a different kind of church was going to eventuate from the Second Vatican Council. When it didn’t evolve that way, a complex set of inner and public responses resulted.

A deep and honest analysis is needed to untangle all the strands that are joined together in the knot that the Vatican wants to cut with the knife of the current investigation. I’m confident that the investigation will not succeed because it will be unable to deal with the many layers of the problem. It may make the alienation of many American women, including religious, from the official church, worse. It can hardly result in reconciliation or deeper renewal. The results of the investigation will become one more ecclesial football to be kicked back and forth between the ever shifting goal lines of “liberals” and “conservatives” in the post-Vatican II environment.

The recent CARA / National Religious Vocation Conference study, though, points to a different sort of reality. Younger Catholics really are not interested in kicking that ball back and forth. The world has moved on, including the world that is forming young Catholics making up their minds whether to become religious or serious laity or nominal laity or former Catholics. Alas, an ever more grey-headed group seems intent on trying to keep the old game going.