The Anchoress
American Papist is unhappy with the tone of this BBC report on the dwindling numbers of monks and nuns.
I’m not that bothered by it. It is the BBC after all. I’m more interested in the breathless pronouncement that:
Newly published statistics showed that the number of men and women belonging to religious orders
fell by 10%to just under a million between 2005 and 2006. [Corrected figures here thanks to GCM – admin]
Well, yes. Common sense says the numbers will continue to very swiftly drop for the next 5-10 years, as the vowed religious from the pre-Vatican II heyday of vocations (more priests, nuns and monks from 1930-1960 than ever before or since in the history of the world) begin to reach their culminations and die.
Articles like this stay focused on that huge mid-twentieth century aberration and neglect the truth that religious vocations are a radical and counter-cultural way of living that have – by necessity and design – always been “minority” lifestyles, lives lived in service to the church and the rest of the world. So, really, things are simply returning back to “normal” in a manner of speaking.
And just in time for the great die-off of consecrated religious we are seeing a new flourishing of vocations – every year the numbers get a little bigger – in both the US and Europe. We will never see a return to the outsized, huge numbers that came (and went) with the baby boomers, but vowed religious lives spent in service to the sick, the young, the poor, the tired and the old will always have their takers, and the monastic life will always have its appeal. Note that here in the United States one great modern monastery has already been built and I know of at least three or four more “big” communities in the works, one of which is meant to house 80 nuns. Smaller houses are also flourishing.
Asia and Africa are hotbeds of vocations and even post-Christian Europe is seeing renewed interest – small scale, but remarkable – in vowed religious lives. Worldwide, there are actually more seminarians studying for the priesthood than at any time since 1960.
Interestingly, even Evangelicals are feeling a tug toward monastic prayer and practice.
Enormous student loans are a big impediment to many young people looking at religious life. Entering an order means divesting oneself of all goods and debts. Thankfully a few organizations are springing up to help in that area.
Meanwhile, Deacon Greg has a moving piece up about the death of a young priest.
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