New Generations of Catholic Sisters: The Challenge of Diversity

Book Review

by Baya Clare CSJ

New Generations of Catholic Sisters: The Challenge of Diversity

by Mary Johnson SNDdeN

Patricia Wittberg SC

Mary L. Gautier

Oxford University Press, 2014

ISBN 978-0-19-931684-7

A lot of conflicting and confusing information swirls around about religious life, including purported statistics about where the vocations are and are not going these days. What’s missing from these assertions are actual numbers and reliable research. Happily, solid sociological investigation and analysis about younger generations of women considering and entering religious life in the United States can now be found in a new book, New Generations of Catholic Sisters: The Challenge of Diversity.  Written by three academics, two of whom are Catholic sisters, almost half of the book consists of statistical analysis of two surveys of women religious, but don’t let that put you off. The results are explained in well-written, accessible language that raises many issues and questions. This book is intended to jumpstart some urgently-needed conversations.  “The ecology of religious life in the United States…deserves a scholarly and sustained analysis devoid of both ideology and fatalism,” say the authors in their opening chapter.

In that spirit, the reader then learns that there are a good many assumptions that do not hold up under scrutiny, such as the oft-repeated but inaccurate “fact” that traditional communities are getting more vocations than those that tend to be less traditional. It turns out that the majority of communities of all types are experiencing the same serious drought – except for a significant few communities that are getting a lot of vocations.  That’s good information, because it allows an analysis of what those groups are doing differently than the ones that aren’t attracting anyone.  So what are some of those things?  Well, for starters, they are proceeding with vocation work that is refreshingly “devoid of both ideology and fatalism.”  The communities, both LCWR and CMSWR-affliated, that are attracting new members, have found ways to accommodate the desires and preferences of younger generations without falling into the trap of labeling them “conservative” or “liberal”. As the authors point out things like a desire to live communally or pray in a certain way might be interpreted differently by an older cohort than they are by a younger. Such interpretations left unexamined can lead to misunderstandings that become barriers to vocations. “It is necessary for the members of each generation – and of religious institutes disproportionately dominated by one generational mindset – to make a conscious effort to see religious life through the eyes of the other. Without this willingness to search for mutual understanding and to hear each other’s truth, the prophetic witness of religious life, so necessary to the Church, will be weakened.”

Generations have their own social locations, characteristics, interests and priorities that derive from their historical location, and these differences are explained and examined at length in this book. The mistakes and excesses of one generation are balanced and corrected by the next, and then those of that generation are shifted back by the one after. This is also true in religious life.  This need not be a serious problem, according to the authors, if an institute has a clear enough identity and an effective way to communicate it to those whom it wishes to attract.

The importance of a clear identity in sustaining the life of a religious community cannot be overstated, because if different generations are interested in emphasizing different aspects of that identity, it needs to be robust enough to encompass the shifts. Again, the researchers touch on questions of communication when they write, “ If religious institutes do not do the hard work of defining themselves, they will be defined by others, and the definitions of others may not adequately capture their distinctive identities. Further, the institutes’ own expressions of their identities may have become overly diffuse and vague, making definitions on websites and in periodicals difficult to articulate and harder to understand.” That the question of misunderstood identity and purpose is a central and enduring theme of both the LCWR investigation and the Apostolic Visitation also lends credence to this assertion.

The concluding chapter of the book makes specific recommendations and suggests actions for institutes that desire to attract younger members to vowed membership, because otherwise, they write, “ the future of religious life in the United States would appear to be in peril – unless concerted efforts are made to reach out to those who, surveys tell us, have considered religious life but did not choose to enter it.” Reading this well-written and informative book is an important step in answering that summons to act.

Highly recommended for anyone in a religious community, and especially those working in leadership and vocations.

A different path....

BOOK REVIEW:
Flying in the Face of Tradition: Listening to the Lived Experience of the Faithful
by Louis deThomasis FSC
ACTA Publications, 2012
ISBN 978-0-87946-485-1

In a time when nearly every conversation about differing viewpoints that could lead to greater understanding and unity instead degenerates into polarizing acrimony, it is refreshing to run across a pithy little book that takes a different path. Brother Louis deThomasis is a Christian Brother whose background and experience - as a educator and president of St. Mary's University in Winona, Minnesota, and now as an investment manager for his international community - place him squarely within the boundaries of whatever establishment one might delineate, be it eccesial, academic or financial. He's hardly out on the fringes of anything, in other words, and his sensible, sober assessment of the current situation within the Catholic Church is hard to dismiss on those grounds, not that people won't try, of course!

Flying in the Face of Tradition, which was just published in the spring of 2012, is a 102-page example of the true definition of humility – meaning that it is written without hyperbole, exaggeration or distortion, but from within a clear-eyed foundation of personal experience and expertise. Brother Louis asks questions that cut right to the heart of the problems plaguing the institutional church today, and does so in a quiet, respectful manner that never strays from his aim of reconciliation and unity. He never belittles, attacks, or assumes evil intent, nor does he gloss over, excuse or sidestep into highflown abstraction. Instead, he proposes a set of questions designed “to appeal to common sense and the core values and beliefs within Catholicism” to arrive at “first, an understanding of the present reality of what is going on in the world today; and second, an analysis of how that present reality affects what is going on within the church today.”

His first question is: Is the institutional church dying? His simple answer to that is: Yes. But he views that as a hopeful thing, “the last opportunity for it to transform itself into something that once again is able to carry out its original purpose.” He defines the “institutional church” narrowly as the formal structural hierarchy within the Vatican,” along with the local churches that are within the purview of each Roman Catholic bishop. It is not to be conflated with the communion of the People of God with all the followers of Jesus before and after us, nor the kingdom of God. Those are the Church in the larger sense, the vibrant sense of mystical tradition, sacrament, herald and servant, the greater sense that we may forget in our focus on the “super-structure of the church, the one that makes the institutional rules and has made the institutional mistakes that have gotten us into our present situation.” He takes pains to make this distinction abundantly clear, because he says, “It is the institutional church that is dying, not the church that we Catholics belong to.”

He calls the institutional church to repentance and transformation bygiving a list of incidents that serve as examples of what precisely is wrong. It includes many examples of egregious denial and coverup of sexual crimes, financial misdeeds, and silencing of theologians, prophets and questions, to name only a few. Had this book been published just a month later, it might also have included the Doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR; he does mention the Apostolic Visitation and the recent hospital case involving Sister Margaret McBride RSM and the Bishop of Phoenix. He names as sin a recent spirit of restorationism within the church structure that seeks to undo or squelch the spirit of Vatican II, and the hubris and fear that underlie the increasing attempts to control and marginalize those who favor transparency and dare to ask questions.

But he doesn't stop with the laundry list. He also proposes good, realistic solutions that are grounded in his own institutional experience and expertise. He sprinkles the text with encouragement to the faithful who struggle with the losses that any kind of change inevitably represents. And he finishes the book with a poignant little tale entitled “A Voice of Tradition” about the founder of his order, St. John Baptiste de LaSalle. De LaSalle had no end of difficulty and conflict with the institutional hierarchs and even with his own congregation as he sought to make education available to the poor and working-class people of his day. But in his prayerful persistence, he became, deThomasis writes, “an institutional church transformational agent.”

I read this book in one afternoon, and came away from it with a renewed sense of hope and possibility, even in the midst of these messy times. I highly recommend it to anyone – Catholic or not – who is looking for some sign of sanity in our flailing church. This book is one such sign.

--Baya Clare