Nun Surveillance

The Vatican has taken this year to conduct an Apostolic Visitation of Women's Religious Communities. One part of the visitation will visit sisters in active communities (i.e. sisters in non-cloistered communities), and another investigation aims to investigate the LCWR, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. On the one hand, I can see the benefit in this because it might help the sisters' orders find ways to better attract young women to religious life in the face of such low numbers, and/or re-consider what their mission means according to each order's founder/foundress and charism (charism is usually translated to mean the spirit or nature of the type of work an order does and their spirituality).

On the other hand some people feel the Vatican is using it as a way to gauge which orders/communities are being disobedient to the way they represent the teachings of the Church and/or whether these teachings are emphasized enough or just presented vaguely (some examples often cited are the issues of homosexuality and women's ordination). This view arises from the notion that apostolic visitations aren't just routine "check ups", but visits done under special circumstances (such as the recent one conducted at seminaries in the wake of the abuse crisis).

The New York Times recently had an article on this issue and NPR's "On Point" show invites several people with different viewpoints to discuss it. Among them are Laura Goodstein (national religion correspondent for the New York Times), Sister Sandra Schneider (professor at Berkley and member of the IHM sisters), Sister Mary Traupman (practicing attorney and member of the Sisters of Divine Providence), and Mother Mary Quentin Sheridan (Superior General the Religious Sisters of Mercy).

Listen to the show

(Thanks to America for the link. Another note: One of the Sisters interviewed above, Sister Sandra, belongs to the community A Nun's Life blogger Sister Julie belongs to, where she has some coverage of her own.)

The Changing Face of Nunhood: After the Second Vatican Council, religious orders and congregations (including those of women religious) were asked to reflect on preserving the mission of their founders and foundresses while connecting with the modern world. For many sisters, this took the form of modifying the habit or getting rid of it altogether to better be able to work among those they minister and modifying the concept of living in community. At the same time, the dwindling numbers of women religious (as well as priests and men religious such as brothers) has many asking a lot of the questions met at Vatican II concerning the Church's connection to its own truth and to the world outside, and how older traditions and new understandings have value in helping to strengthen this connection.

Photo Credit: Benprks via Flickr