The Deacon's Bench
From The Houston Chronicle:
The decline in the numbers is a bit of a paradox. It well could be the defining problem facing the institution in coming decades, yet the sisterhood publicly faces it without blanching.
“The numbers affect the general public and the media more than they do us personally,” said Sister Heloise Cruzat, the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese’s liaison with area religious orders.
And, observed Sister Mary Patricia Driscoll, a congregational leader of Houston’s Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, “Over the years, the ministries we began have grown, changed and evolved, but they are not dependent on our numbers alone.”
By almost any standard, pursuit of a religious life characterized by poverty, chastity and obedience is a daunting commitment.
Aside from religious devotion and a yearning to serve, said Sister Carol Mayes, prioress for the Houston Dominicans, mid-20th century women may have been drawn to consecrated life because of the educational and career options it provided.
“There weren’t a lot of options for women,” she said. “You could be a teacher or a nurse until you got married. If you felt some call to do more, you would have joined a convent.”
By the mid-’60s, said Mary Gautier, a senior research associate with Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, membership in women’s religious orders had reached a “bubble.”
“There was a tremendous amount of growth that occurred in the early 20th century,” she said, “and by the ’60s there was sort of a peak. All things Catholic were taking off in the U.S.” John Kennedy was president, she said, and Catholocism was in vogue.
“But even in 1960 it was common for women to get married after high school,” she added. ” All of that was changing in the late ’60s and 1970s. That’s not to say that women were not still attracted to religious life, it was just in much, much smaller numbers.”
…Enlisting new members in religious orders is an ongoing concern of the church, which claims about 76 million members in the U.S. and more than a 1 billion worldwide.
In Houston, Sister Anita Brenek, the archdiocese’s associate director of vocational promotion, said strategies range from presentations at schools and church groups to periodic retreats at which potential candidates can talk with sisters and priests.
“We have several different retreats, depending on the age levels,” she said. “With those who are more mature, we have discussion, prayers, one-on-one talks with sisters and priests. For the younger ones, those in junior high school, there’s a little more sports.
“It is my very deep belief that all of us were called by God,” she said. “The deepest call, the church call, is the universal call to holiness, whatever faith we are. … God keeps drawing us to himself
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