The investigation of women religious (aka Catholic sisters or Catholic nuns) in the United States has raised many questions and concerns since it was first announced earlier this year. Here at A Nun’s Life Ministry, we’ve received a number of questions about the Apostolic Visitation and the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Council of Women Religious (LCWR), an organization representing 95% of women religious in the United States. Because of the concern that so many people have shared, we’d like to open the door to your questions so that we can begin to address them with the help of experts in the field of religious life and the Catholic Church.

We would like to begin gathering your questions about the investigations. Some of the questions we’ve already received touch on the following concerns:

• why are sisters being investigated? And why only in the United States?
• is this Apostolic Visitation like the Visitation of the Legionaries of Christ?
• why are sisters upset if they have nothing to hide?
• who are Cardinal Rodé and Mother Mary Clare Millea?
• is this a friendly visit?
• why aren’t contemplative nuns and religious brothers and priests being investigated?
• should this be of concern to me as a lay person? as someone who is ordained? as a religious who is not being investigated?

In the next few weeks, A Nun’s Life Ministry will be collecting your questions as well as creating a resource page with information on the Apostolic Visitation and the doctrinal assessment. We welcome all respectful questions. Please use the comment box below or email us at sister@anunslife.org with your questions. We’ll keep you updated as we go along.

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Here’s today’s Praying with the Sisters podcast on a passage from today’s liturgy. Click on the “play” button.

Happy Feast of the Archangels! Michael, Gabriel, Raphael be blessed! I must confess I’m not one for run-of-the-mill angels (especially the little baby-faced ones which kind of scare me) but archangels? That’s my kind of angel! So who are these three that we celebrate today?

Well first, by way of information, an archangel is a chief angel. There are typically 3 archangels that we honor by name in the Christian tradition — Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. There may be up to 7 archangels in total (including Uriel who is honored in the Eastern Christian tradition) but this area seems to be a bit fuzzy in our tradition. The 3 archangels are honored in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

19th century Russian Orthodox icon of the Archangels. Michael is in the center, behind the circular mandorla of Christ. Gabriel and Raphael stand in front to the left and right respectively. Tempera and gold leaf on wood

Michael is considered the leader of the heavenly host, “one of the chief princes”. He is a patron of soldiers. His name in Hebrew means “Who is like God?” He is mentioned by name in three books of the Bible: Daniel, Jude, and Revelations. He is patron saint of many including soldiers, Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs), and sailors.

Gabriel appears in the book of Daniel where he helped by explaining the prophet’s visions. Gabriel is probably best know as the angel of the Annunciation who appeared to Mary announcing that she would give birth to the Savior. He also announced John the Baptist’s birth to Zachariah. His name means “God is my strength”. Gabriel is patron saint of broadcasters (radio, TV, etc.) among others.

Raphael appears in the Book of Tobit where he heals Tobit of his blindness and helps Tobiah and Sarah. His name means “God heals”. Raphael is the patron of people who are blind, of healers, and of happy meetings.

We honor the archangels along with saints and other angels by remembering them and praying with them. Just like we might ask a friend to pray for us, or turn to someone who has “been there, done that” in some particular situation we are facing, we look to the archangels for support and for their presence. In early Jewish literature archangels are called “angels of the presence” which I think well describes how they are in our life.

How have you encountered these “angels of presence” in your life?

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Join us for prayer at 12:00 p.m. noon Central Time (UTC-5)
at anunslife.org/live for a live podcast.

Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, has made public an important paper on Ministerial Religious Life. In the paper God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009 Sister Sandra describes what Apostolic Religious Life is and how it is evolving (or has evolved) into what she has called Ministerial Religious Life.

Here’s my very brief outline of the paper — any inaccuracies here are mine and not Sister Sandra’s. It’s meant only to give you a sense of the topics in the paper and to encourage you to read the full paper. You really don’t want to miss it if you are at all interested in Religious Life.

Sister Sandra looks at the origins of Apostolic Religious Life (which “has had official canonical recognition since 1900 and existed for centuries before that”) and situates it both canonically (what does Canon Law say about this form of consecrated life) and ecclesiastically (how does Apostolic Religious Life as a lifeform fit within the structure of the Church).

She shows how the Apostolic Religious Life that is being lived today is still authentically religious life and at the same time “involves some very significant discontinuities with earlier understandings of enough of the constitutive dimensions of that life that it is really a new form in relation to traditional apostolic Congregations.” Two important aspects of this evolution are what Sister Sandra calls “the end of Religious Life as Total Institution” and the simultaneous “ministerial turn”. She looks at how both of these have affected our understanding and living out of the vows, community life, ministry, and public witness.

Once Sister Sandra has set the context she goes on to asks, “What has brought about this development and how do we interpret, evaluate, and appropriate it?” What follows is an excellent piece on the impact of the Second Vatican Council on Religious Life. She notes how “most Religious Congregations of women, especially in the developed world, did not read Perfectae Caritatis in isolation, as a kind of self-sufficient magna carta for renewal. They read it through the lenses of Lumen Gentium and Gaudium et Spes.” Note: Perfectae Caritatis is the document on the renewal of Religious Life; Lumen Gentium is the document on the Church affirming the universal call to holiness of all the baptized; and Guadium et Spes is the document on the Church in the modern world.

Sister Sandra then looks at the development of a new theology of world and the development of a new spirituality of world as a result of the shifts and the ongoing urgings of the Holy Spirit. Finally, she articulates some of the implications of these developments for vowed Religious Life.

Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, IHM, is one of my nuns and a leader in the study of religious life and of biblical spirituality. This talk was originally presented at our IHM Motherhouse for the Sisters and Associates of my community.

Read God So Loved the World … Ministerial Religious Life in 2009 and let’s get a discussion going about this. It’s an excellent paper, a good read, and definitely worth reflecting on.

Happy Nunday! We are well into the summer now here in the midwest. It’s been hot and humid with the occasionally cool breeze wafting through. I thought this would be a perfect summer’s day nun photo — Niagara Falls! Courtesy of Patricia, this photo shows Sisters from the congregation The Servants of the Sacred Cross. The photo of the Sisters’ visit to Niagara Falls is from September 2007.

I am delighted to have this photo because it gave me an opportunity to learn more about these Sisters. And I realized that I had already bumped into one of the Sisters earlier on the A Nun’s Life page “Nun or Sister?” — Mother Wendy James, SSC, the foundress of the community.

The Sisters are “an international, ecumenical religious sisterhood of laywomen, married and single, living and working in their own homes and communities” who serve “within a traditional, conservative, Religious Community, committed to the historic Catholic Faith.”

On their website they describe their life further:

The Servants of the Sacred Cross are called to take up their cross and follow Christ in a life of prayer and service. Sisters are both married and single, living and working in their own homes and communities under Vows of Simplicity, Purity, and Obedience.

Some Sisters carry out a variety of active ministries in their parishes and local communities. Other Sisters are called to a more contemplative expression of service in a life of solitude and prayerful intercession. The prayer of each Sister must be, “Lord Jesus, as it would please you, bring me someone today whom I can serve.”

I don’t know any more about the community other than their website, but I am impressed with and curious about their exploration of and actual living of a new AND historic form of consecrated life. By new I mean that it is recently founded and has multiple forms of consecrated life (married, lay, contemplative, active) under the same roof (so to speak). It is also an ecumenical community — Anglican, Catholicm and Eastern Orthodox. By historic I mean that they profess a commitment to the “historic Catholic Faith”. Now to be honest, I’m not sure exactly what that phrase means, and hopefully someone with a better understanding of this will offer comments below. I think that it has to do more with the common tradition shared by Anglican, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox Christians but again, I’m not really sure.

Would love to hear your impressions and welcome the Sisters to offer their comments to help us get to know this community.

Question from Shelly …

Dear Sister Julie, I would like to know if it is possible or allowed to become a friend of a semi-cloistered nun? The spiritual guidance and witness of this nun has brought me closer to God. God has blessed me with such a beautiful gift of fellowship.

Dear Shelly, Thanks so much for writing. How wonderful to hear of your relationship with Sister. I am not sure how to answer your question because my religious community is not cloistered. However, there are a number of such sisters that visit and/or have blogs. I’ll get in touch with them and invite them to respond to your question today.

Stay tuned!