PHOTO: Mary van Balen No need to remember past events, no need to think about what was done before.
Look, I am doing something new, now it emerges; can you not see it? Yes, I am making a road in the desert and rivers in wastelands. Isaiah 43,18-19
As the representatives of 80% of American Roman Catholic sisters met in St. Louis, one would do well to remember this passage from Isaiah. Sister Pat Ferrell did as she addressed the opening assembly: “We are united in the desire to surrender that which no longer serves so that something new can be born in and through us.”
Actually, this statement is just the response needed to George Weigel’s article in First Things, The Sisters: Two Views Pitting the two major organization of Catholic sisters in the United States against one another, he questions the vitality and relevance of the more liberal orders, siting their new vocation numbers as evidence. (An article published in the Aug. 13 issue of America Magazine challenges this position.)
What Mr. Weigel does not include in his article is the movement of lay associates that is growing across the country. Lay associates, men and women, married and single, make commitments to existing religious orders and promise to carry out the work and charism of that order. (Associates of The Dominican Sisters of Peace are an example.) During times of change and uncertainty, some people move toward what is familiar, what resounds with reminders of a past that looks safe and desirable from the present vantage point. Others are moved to create something new, rooted in rich soil of the past, but responding to new climates, new questions, new challenges.
To pit one group against the other is not productive. Neither is judging one group by its “success” in duplicating the past. Many religious orders represented by LCRW are experiencing growth in new forms, forms Mr. Weigel did not mention in his article.
The Associate movement is one such form. Monastic communities have long had oblates, (See Benedictine Oblates for an example.)lay people who connect themselves with a particular monastery, assuming a life of prayer and service in keeping with their position and training as well as with the rule of the monastery.
The future of the Catholic Church does not lie in the numbers of vowed religious, no matter how liberal or conservative. The future of the Church relies on the Holy Spirit, and the lives of those faithful who work with the Divine Presence and participate in the continuing transformation of the world. In the RCC, the work of Jesus does not rely primarily on ordained or vowed members of the, but on the vitality of faith and work of lay people as well.
As Sr. Pat Farrell suggested in her remarks, God is busy making something new. One cannot judge the efficacy or vitality of religious orders by how many young women become vowed sisters, but by how the communities, including lay members who are an integral part of them, reach out and continue the work of Jesus, transforming the world as their gifts and talents allow. Prayer, worship, and service, enthusiasm for them all, abound in Associate as well as vowed members.
Today’s world offers new challenges and new opportunities. The Church as a whole would do well to look to the orders of women religious that have responded to the great thirst for prayer and spirituality in the world by opening their hearts and doors in new ways to those called to deep prayer and community connection but also to live their lives as lay women and men in the world.
I hope Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain and the rest of the hierarchy are listening.
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