Education for religious life

America Magazine has published a summary of the recent study of professed religious men and women by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA). It is an important look at the factors that influence decisions to enter a religious order, and corroborates other studies done by CARA about men entering the seminary to prepare for priesthood. I edited a compilation of those CARA studies in a 2014 document entitled College Experience and Priesthood, which emerged from a conference on that theme we hosted at Boston College. (Coverage here, here, and here. My summary here.)

In particular, the subtitle of the America article points to a key takeaway: those who enter religious life (or priesthood, as our earlier study showed) are “very likely to have attended Catholic high school [or] university.”

Religious men and women who professed perpetual vows to the nearly 800 communities of religious life in the United States in 2014 are highly educated and more likely than the average Catholic adult to attend Catholic high schools and universities. 

Later in the same article, they specify the data:

They are more likely than other U.S. Catholics… to have attended a Catholic high school (31 percent of responding religious, compared to 22 percent of U.S. adult Catholics) and much more likely to have attended a Catholic college (34 percent of responding religious, compared to just 7 percent of U.S. adult Catholics. [emphasis mine]

Our findings about priests pointed to the same basic idea about the prevalence of attending Catholic colleges or universities:

The men who entered priestly formation were just as likely as the broader Catholic population to have attended Catholic elementary or high schools, but they are significantly more likely to have attended a Catholic college. Forty-four percent of ordinands attended a Catholic college, in contrast to only about 7 percent of the overall U.S. Catholic population.

There is much to be mined from this new CARA study, but I shall point to one obvious point: an important dimension of the mission of Catholic colleges and universities is formation of men and women who will enter into the various forms of vowed ministry within the Church.

Thankfully, more and more campuses are addressing this particular dimension of ministry seriously. Once upon a time, there was no strategic thinking about how to undertake this dimension; it was assumed that enough sisters or brothers or priests would have the desired effect upon recruitment. But as the numbers of those priests and religious decline, it is not enough to hold that assumption. There must be strategic thinking about how to reach out to encourage young men and women in the discernment of vocations in the church. The subtitle of College Experience and Priesthood is The Encouragers, as the study points to the critical importance of personal encounter with people who encourage vocations:

Respondents who have one person encouraging them are nearly twice as likely to consider a vocation as those who are not encouraged. Each additional person encouraging these respondents increases the likelihood of consideration. The effect is additive. Respondents who had three persons encourage them would be expected to be more than five times more likely to consider a vocation than someone who was not encouraged by anyone.

The new CARA study of men and women religious, cited in the America article, amplifies this point:

•  Nearly half say that a parish priest or a religious sister or brother encouraged their vocation (49 and 47 percent). Men were more likely than women to have been encouraged by a parish priest or religious sister or a brother.

•  Over four in 10 report that they were encouraged to consider a vocation by a friend. Women are more likely than men to have been encouraged by a friend (48 percent compared to 37 percent).

•  Respondents are less likely to report that they received encouragement from their family members than from other religious, friends, or a parish priest. One in four (25 percent) report that their mother encouraged them to consider religious life. Just under a quarter received encouragement from other relatives (23 percent) or their father (15 percent).

Catholic colleges and universities can be what sociologist Peter Berger calls “plausibility structures,” places that engage in dynamic conversations that build up the shared faith of a community. The Encyclopedia of Religion and Society offers a brief but helpful description of what Berger means:

Believers require social support, usually in the form of a religious community or congregation, to authenticate and reaffirm the typically extraordinary truth claims of their faith.

Berger’s thesis is rooted in a foundational theological conviction: God speaks to us. What the story of Elijah at the cave reminds us, though, is that listening to God can be difficult in the midst of the world’s noise. What Catholic colleges and universities can do, in addition to being places of great learning, is help to eliminate the world’s noise.

The way they can do that is simply to do what no non-Catholic college or university can do very well: engage in study of Catholic theology; offer Mass; display art and architecture that reflects our traditions; invite students to spiritual direction, retreats, service projects rooted in Catholic social teaching; and so on. Beyond that, it will be important to emphasize the personal relationships that professors, administrators, and staff have with students, and in particular the ways that they encourage students to discern well where God is calling them to use their talents–whether in direct service to the Church or, no less importantly, in service to the world.