“To be perfectly blunt, the more liberal groups don’t know who they are.” Sister Patricia Wittberg, a sociology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis.
Check out this good story in Naples News about some young nuns living in a Mission at Ave Maria University. These nuns are from the Ann Arbor Dominicans.
This article covers a lot of territory including the discernment process and the life of the young sisters. Be sure to read the whole thing. I do want to just highlight this one section.
There are about 59,000 nuns in the United States, according to data from a Catholic research institute. That’s less than a third of the peak in the 1960s. The median age is in the mid-70s.
The average age of the 75 sisters that make up the Dominican Sisters of Mary is 26, according to Sister Joseph Andrew, the order’s vocation’s director. And the average age of a woman entering the religious order is 21.
So how to they do it? With all the pressure to achieve, to find a great career, to be the most beautiful, to have the perfect marriage and the perfect children, how have the Dominican Sisters of Mary have been able to attract young women?
“That’s a question I get a thousand times a day,” Andrew says.
She counts off a list of reasons, mostly revolving around the order’s clear devotion to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
It’s God’s “coolest order,” joked Sister Thomas Aquinas, 25, another of the Dominicans at Ave Maria.
“The conventional wisdom is that the more traditional or conservative orders seem to be getting younger members,” said Sister Mary Bendyna, executive director of the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate in Washington, D.C. The center, which is affiliated with Georgetown University, plans to release a statistical study on the matter soon.
These more orthodox religious orders are tapping into the same network of homeschooled and retreat-going conservative young Catholics that Ave Maria University attracts, says Sister Patricia Wittberg, a sociology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis. Wittberg, who studies religious communities, says these groups have a strong sense of mission.
“To be perfectly blunt,” Wittberg says, “the more liberal groups don’t know who they are.”
I will need to keep an eye out for that statistical study from Georgetown. Why do I have a suspicion that Georgetown will try to deny the obvious. I should pray not to be so cynical.
August 14, 2008 at 9:23 pm
So those nuns are bitter and angry if they are traditional?
Am I right?
Oh, I’ve been drinking to much Shea Ice Tea.
August 14, 2008 at 9:33 pm
This article is enlightening. I’ve submitted it to PickAFig, the Catholic Social Media site.
Keep up the good work.
August 14, 2008 at 10:40 pm
This order is on my list of ones I would consider if I felt called to become a nun. They seem so happy and so blessed. We get their mailings, and they started by optimistically building a priory that would house 30 sisters– they outgrew it within a few years, and now are trying to expand it again from housing 70 to 100. Way to go, Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist!
~Nzie
August 15, 2008 at 2:52 am
Pat, you suspect that Georgetown will try to deny the obvious because Georgetown will deny the obvious. That is, after all, what progressives do best.
August 15, 2008 at 3:47 am
The Georgetown study if it is intellectually honest, will probably miss the obvious.
When you are near those sisters or the Sisters of Life, or the Nashville Dominicans, or the Franciscans Sisters of the renewal,or the Missionaries of Charity, they are overflowing with the joy of the Lord.
“Joy is the net which catches souls” Blessed Mother Teresa
August 15, 2008 at 6:56 pm
“I will need to keep an eye out for that statistical study from Georgetown. Why do I have a suspicion that Georgetown will try to deny the obvious. I should pray not to be so cynical.”
Please forgive me, what is the obvious that CARA is likely to deny?
I believe that this reporter must have contacted Sr. Bendyna awhile ago and just now posted the article. The report to which the article is referring was commissioned by the USCCB and was presented at the June USCCB meeting. It has been posted on the CARA website for sometime now (with links from the USCCB site). http://cara.georgetown.edu/sacramentsreport.pdf
I think that the statistics regarding nuns and religious sisters starts around page 74. This study was limited by the demands of the USCCB Communication Depatment which commissioned it.
CARA, often used by the USCCB, is a legitimate research center. Do you have reason to doubt otherwise? I think it only fair that if you call into question an organization’s veracity or integrity, that you cite examples, lest you yourself be accused of casting aspersions.