The charism of religious life writ large

Sister Rejane  
This Random Nun Clip is brought to you by A Nun's Life Ministry.

Sister Maxine  
I'm Sister Maxine of A Nun's Life Ministry. And my guest today is Sister Michele Morek, an Ursuline Sister of Mount St. Joseph, Kentucky. Sister Michelle is with Global Sisters Report, a leading source of news and information about Catholic Sisters and the critical issues facing the people they serve worldwide. If you were to say, what in all of these that I have read, if I were to say, "This is what religious life is about"--what kind of themes do you see emerging across the board? If any.

Sister Michele  
The thing that has impressed me the most is that sisters are sisters, and religious life is the charism. I have become so convinced that it is not this little charism, or that little charism, or that little charism, although all of them are wonderful and rich, it's like a Thanksgiving dinner. But those are not as important as the charism of religious life itself. Religious life is the Big Gift to the church. And then all of the individual charisms are the little gifts wrapped up inside the big gift.

Sister Maxine  
And for folks who may not be familiar with the word charism, how would you describe that in a different way? And when you talk about the charism of religious life, and then the charism of different congregations.

Sister Michele  
I really hesitate to do this because I know our community, when we were writing our constitution, spent about two summers wrangling over the word "charism" and exactly what it meant. And our staff at Global Sisters Report periodically goes through hand wringing decisions about "Well now, wait a minute, let's talk about charism." But I think we all have a generalized understanding of charism as "gift." And if you think of the unique community personality of Franciscans, whose charism is wrapped around the concept of poverty, or Dominicans, whose charism was wrapped around the concept of preaching, all of the communities have some particular gift that they bring to the church and to the world.

Sister Maxine  
So in the responses that the sisters write for The Life, do you hear that charism? Like for readers, if they're reading closely, will they see the charism of that spirit of the congregation there as well as the overall spirit of religious life?

Sister Michele  
Oh, I think so, too. Let me give you just one example. When I first came, Donald Trump had just won the presidency. And sisters were anguishing over the fact that he didn't always tell the truth. And they were really sort of wringing their hands about this, and I was getting columns written about it. And I said, "Hey, Dominicans, why don't you all get together and have a series on the truth? Who can do it better than you can?" And so one Dominican sister organized a group of other ones, and they wrote a wonderful series on truth. And a couple of people have used that in parish work and so forth.

Sister Maxine  
The different types of religious orders have those gifts to bring to create that one voice among sisters.

Sister Michele  
Yes, and yet, as I said, all of these little individual charisms are wrapped up in the whole bigger package of religious life. And I think we will see that as smaller congregations maybe disappear. The charism of religious life is being carried along. And as some of us get smaller and maybe even disappear, there are other little congregations springing up all over. Like I love it when I get columns from the indigenous communities in Africa that have just started, say within the last 50 years or so, and to see what they focus on and what their charism is.

Sister Maxine  
And so you see the spirit of religious life taking root in new ways through your work here Global Sisters.

Sister Michele  
Exactly. And that has been so exciting.

Sister Rejane  
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