THE CYCLES OF RELIGIOUS LIFE
CATHOLICS of a certain age re- member the “good old days” of religious life between the 1940s and the early 1960s when mon- asteries, convents, motherhouses, and other religious houses overflowed with monks, sisters, nuns, priests, and broth- ers. Parish convents were full of teaching sisters, and rectories had several priests in residence. If you visit many religious com- munities today, there’s a good chance you’re going to see ones that are smaller and older than they once were (though of course that’s not the case across the board). Why the change, and what does it mean? While the causes are several, one factor has to do with the huge numbers of immigrants who came to the United States, especially in the first decades of the 20th century, and the big jump in population during the Baby Boom after World War II, both of which meant lots more American Catholics who needed education, health care, and social ser- vices, and proportionally more vocations to religious life. After this wave of growth crested, however, the average age of community members began to go up because far fewer younger people were there to replace them. In addition, the U.S. population has itself aged. Thus the older faces. Wonderful though they were, the “good old days” were just that: good but past. The drop-off that began in the 1960s was in part a correction rather than
only people voting with their feet against a religious vocation. While interest in reli- gious life is gathering momentum again, the current smaller number of members reflects two basic facts: 1. Communi- ties grow and contract over time; some cease to exist while new ones come on the scene; 2. Only a very small percent- age of Roman Catholics choose to enter eligious life As Holy Cross Brother Paul Bednarczyk, C.S.C., executive director of the National Religious Vocation Confer- ence, has said, “The fact is, there has always been a small number of Catholics who have responded to a religious voca- tion” (
stltoday.com, posted Nov. 26, 2011). RELIGIOUS LIFE in the U.S. today reflects the reality of religious life throughout its history. Notwithstanding the cycles of expansion and contraction, at the core religious communities consist of a small but effective group of people who choose to live out their faith in a way that preserves and passes on the tradition of religious life and serves and shapes the world today for the better. “Religious life has taken different forms in different times in response to different social, historical, and church situations,” says Sr. Mary Charlotte Chan- dler, R.S.C.J., director of the Center for the Study of Religious Life, in the 2007 issue of VISION. “In whatever form, it is lived as a radical gospel response to these situations.” —Joel Schorn, VISION managing editor
Religious life timeline available online at VocationNetwork.org
VISION 2013
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