A Vatican investigation into the state of women’s religious communities in the United States appeared to start innocently enough.Rome this year called for an “apostolic visitation,” to see how it could correct a potentially dire situation for the country’s 59,000 nuns and the orders they belong to.
In the United States, the number of nuns has dropped dramatically, and those who remain are largely seniors.
But no sooner was the investigation announced than the accusations began to fly that the Vatican had an ulterior motive: it was using the apostolic visitation to bring to heel those nuns who had broken with tradition — those who no longer wear the habit and eschew the semi-cloistered community to live alone.
“This is a subtle wrestling match over will,” said Francine Cardman, a professor of Church history at Boston College. “It’s about independence running up against authority and how much diversity can Catholicism tolerate.”
Writing this week in the National Catholic Reporter, Sister Sandra Schneiders, a professor at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California, attacked the apostolic visitation as a sham.
“The current Apostolic Visitation is not a normal dialogue between religious and Church authorities,” she wrote. “It is [similar to] a grand jury indictment, set in motion when there is reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or a prima facie case of serious abuse or wrong-doing of some kind.”
Earlier this year she wrote: “I do not put any credence at all in the claim that this is friendly, transparent [and] aimed to be helpful. We cannot, of course, keep them from investigating. But we can receive them, politely and kindly, for what they are: uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house.”
But Sister Catherine Marie Hopkins, executive director of the Dominicans of St. Cecilia in Nashville, a conservative and traditional order, said she was thrilled the Church was taking action.
“As women religious, we don’t work apart from the Church, we work in the heart of the Church,” she said. “Having the interest of the universal Church to us is a positive thing.”
The stated goal of the investigation, which is meant to wrap up in 2011, was to assess the “quality of life” of religious sisters, assess their contribution to the Church and society and find ways to attract young people to religious life.
Earlier this month, a separate study by the U.S. National Religious Vocation Conference found the number of nuns in the United States had fallen a stunning 66% over the past four decades from 180,000 to 59,000, and 90% women living a religious vocation are now over the age of 60 — a trend that could see many of the existing 400 religious communities vanish if new recruits are not found. (In Canada, there are 19,000 nuns, down 54% from 42,000 in 1975.)
The U.S. study also found that the majority of young people today are joining the more traditional orders, where wearing the habit is the norm and living and praying in community is considered paramount.
“In order to know what we can do to help them, we have to understand the present reality,” said Mother Mary Clare Millea, the American nun charged by the Vatican to carry out the apostolic visitation.
“People wanted to know if there’s a motive: [It is] the overall concern for the diminishment of vocation and what will happen to the American Church and what will happen without women in religious life. It’s a dramatic diminishment and we do want religious life to continue so let’s see what will promote it among young people so that kind of presence and witness will continue in the future.”
Sister Kathleen Cannon, a Dominican nun and associate dean at the University of Notre Dame, said a major problem was that there was no consultation before the investigation was launched, which raised suspicions among many religious sisters that they were being ambushed.
“I think some of the things that make people suspicion is that there seemed to be no reason that occasioned this now,” said Sister Kathleen. “There are suspicions about what provoked the Vatican to move in this direction. I’ve been in religious life 50 years and this is the first time I’ve heard of anything like this.”
Over the past 40 years, since the reforms of Vatican II, many women have left their semi-cloistered communities, where much of their day was spent in prayer together, and now live out on their own or in small groups and lead more secular lives where the focus is on individual good works.
And more visibly, many have stopped wearing the habit, the most traditional outward sign of leading a life of chastity, poverty and obedience.
“The habit is an issue, absolutely, and it goes toward the issue of conformity,” said Sister Kathleen, who no longer wears the habit and lives alone.
Amy Leonard, a professor of Church history at Georgetown University in Washington, said there is a very good reason why the Church used to insist on the habit for all its sisters.
“It gives the sisters a sense of authority, it sets them apart and gives them a certain amount of respect and it empowers the position as well. It says: ‘I have embraced this life so fully that it defines all of me.’ ”
She said much of tension that has come out over the apostolic visitation is the continuing fight between conservatives and liberals in the Church over the meaning of Vatican II.
Pope Benedict XVI in particular has been known as someone who wants to retrieve much of the tradition, like the Latin Mass, that went out the window after Vatican II.
“My reading of this is there are a lot of nuns supporting what the Vatican is doing and they’re coming from the more traditional, more conservative orders, those still wearing habits. They see these liberal orders as outliers. And the majority of new nuns are choosing the more traditional, conservative, habit-wearing orders. And that says something about this whole conflict: the Vatican perhaps is seizing this moment to bring the liberal orders into line or purge them.”
Sister Catherine Marie Hopkins of the Dominicans of St. Cecilia said living a traditional life is exactly the reason why her order has been so successful. Many of the 225 sisters do teach in area Catholic schools but otherwise live as a community, including communal prayer that begins at 5:30 each morning and ends each day.
The order, known informally as the Nashville Dominicans, has an average age of just 36. And whereas most orders get two or three postulants a year, five if they are doing really well, her order just welcomed 23, many of whom are young professional women.
A big selling point, she said, is the habit.
“The habit is no so much to set us apart but as witness to a commitment that is whole-hearted,” said Sister Catherine Marie.
“There’s nowhere we go that we don’t attract attention in a positive way and people understand we represent a life of service. It’s a visual reminder to us and the people we serve of what we’re called to.
“The generation that came through in the ’60s and ’70s were in a pattern of rebellion. A lot of children were raised in more permissive homes. Today a lot of young people see the value in structure. It’s radical to take on tradition whereas before it was the other way around.”
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