A panel of religious sisters from the United States joined Vatican officials in Rome this morning in announcing the release of a report on the state of women religious in the United States.
The media has fairly consistently referred to this ongoing process as a “Vatican investigation” of “nuns.” In truth, this Apostolic Visitation had as its most hands-on facilitator a sister from Connecticut. As she told me in an interview in 2010, the process has been (and continues to be) an opportunity for self-reflection and dialogue. There’s a wide range in religious life (340 different varieties comprised of 50,000 women) and by assessing the scene, women can learn from one another. It’s an opportunity for communication, too — this Visitation and its final report helps shine a spotlight on the good work of women now and in our recent history.
(A word about “nuns”: Properly understood, they are cloistered. They were not a part of the Apostolic Visitation. I talked a little about the distinction with Sr. Prudence Allen a while back.)
The final report reads more like an assessment than an investigation – exactly what it has been. It’s honest and frank — the median age of sisters in the United States (seventies) is probably the most glaring fact. It’s even penitential inasmuch as it recognizes that it was not always well-received by all and calls out its own imperfections and challenges. But the overriding theme is gratitude for what has been — the tremendous service of religious sisters in the history of the United States — and a focus on hope and renewal.
I’ll add this, which does come through in the report, too, though the language here is entirely mine: Women religious in the U.S. in a particular way have been through a kind of purgatory. As the report points out, there was a bit of a spike in women entering orders in the U.S. in the 1940s, 50s, and 60s (contributing to the median-age factor right now); the tumult of the times and misunderstandings and manipulations of the Second Vatican Council impacted lives within convent walls in intimate ways. Women left, women stayed. Missions became unclear and even changed in practicality. Not to mix my metaphors, but many found themselves in a bit of a limbo. They would come to find themselves unappreciated. (The report explicitly makes this point.) There are lots of factors and every situation is different, but all I want to say here is: If you know a religious sister, if you were taught by a religious sister and she is still alive, drop her a note of thanks this Christmas. That under-appreciated factor is wrong. These are women of sacrifice and service, whatever they look like. And if you’ve looked at them and wondered what they’re about today, maybe they have too. And maybe that’s been quite the cross.
The report is clear that the Apostolic Visitation set out to be about renewal. And whatever misunderstandings have happened along the way, that’s the goal. These women have and are facing “challenging times.” The Apostolic Visitation is a help.
In Rome this morning, Mother Clare was joined by Mother Agnes Donovan, who heads the Sisters of Life, an order founded in New York. I always like to point out she is a former Columbia University professor. I also like to point to all the young vocations they get. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the main one is joy.
As Mother Agnes put it in a prepared statement this morning:
Our culture can be quite antagonistic towards the faith, and skeptical at best towards religious life, and yet from this milieu the Lord is surprising women with His love, His mercy, and the possibility of a new and beautiful life consecrated by public vows.
Those who enter our communities have benefitted from the avenues opened to women over the last 50 years. They are educated, and have been formed in family, school and work environments that have encouraged and developed their native capacities and gifts as women. They fully expect that the Church will, likewise, receive their “feminine genius,” their voice on behalf of the poor and vulnerable Jesus in our midst, and their thoughtful contributions to the concerns of the Church at large. These women know the power of vowed religious to spark new life in weary hearts, and anticipate giving themselves in the apostolate to bear this life to those most in need.
Women enter religious life out of a world they know well in order to follow and give themselves totally to that which the world cannot give. They are responding to an invitation from the Lord that holds a Divine promise confirming the goodness of their identity as women and their purpose in life, their essential mission of spiritual, maternal love. These women are looking to live – concretely and definitively – in a manner which confirms what they have first experienced in their hearts.
That maternal love and joy is something Pope Francis has emphasized. As I recently noted here on NRO, he has established a Year of Consecrated Life in the Church. It’s an opportunity to highlight and bolster the faith and the hope and the love of people who have felt the call of God to live this kind of self-sacrifice, radically conformed to the cross in ways not everyone is. Their prayers, their lives are essential to the health of not only the community of believers, but I daresay even the health of our democratic republic. I think of the sisters who ran schools and hospitals. I think of the sisters who are helping us rebuild some of the same. (The Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, which I gave a small glimpse of with my recent interview with Sr. Marie Bernadette Thompson come to mind, as do the Sisters of Life who make sure women in challenging pregnancies have the help they need, but others, too).
Just before his resignation, in another exercise in renewal, Pope Benedict handed me a document that talked about the need humanity — civilization itself — has for women impregnated by the Gospel. What exactly that looks like is so evident in the lives of so many women religious. Looking at the women in Rome today, you see it in its most radical form. Let this love flourish. That’s what the Apostolic Visitation has in no small way been about. That’s what the Year of Consecrated Life is about. And thanks be to God. These women, when living lives transformed and conformed to Christ, make the world less selfish and make us better.