Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Whither religious life?

In recent years I have been on a number of teams at retreat houses directing individual persons on silent retreats of eight days. The number of retreats on which I've worked is not huge but I have guided my fair share of persons seeking closer relationships with God. Many, if not the majority of these individuals, are women religious. I am more and more puzzled by this work.

The women religious have begun to all sound very similar. The more elderly sisters speak completely sincerely and faithfully about their relationship with God. They have developed disciplines of prayer and reflection through years of struggle with the many changes of religious life. They are resilient women and want to be active in their religious lives as long as they can. In other words, they want to remain faithful to the lives of prayer they have nurtured and to be of service to whomever they can. They still see themselves as women on mission. Sometimes this service may be directed only toward others like themselves who are growing older and advancing in physical helplessness. These women still see and know God.

But there are also many religious women who come to retreat from another direction. These women seem to have given up on religious life altogether. Many of them have created an environment of religious life that suits their needs. They do not intend to make any adjustments or adaptations for anyone or for any perceived ideal of religious life. They are close to spitefulness if one even hints of assuming degrees of authority or proclaim obedience a virtue. They have carried renewal to a point of engagement within professional lives emphasizing the identity and power of women within their own ranks. Often they appear to have uncritically adopted ideas and positions that disregard thinking with the Church. There is often negative reaction to patriarchies real or imagined.

The most worrisome issue for me is the impression I get from some women religious that their orders are dying out and yet they have no problem with this. It is an historical fact that religious orders come and go. But some of these women seem unwilling and uninterested in reinventing themselves as members of the Church. The desire seems to be redefining theselves according to their identities as women and not their identities as women in Christ. Thus, some live a sort of religious life that is really something quite different.

One newly professed woman religious came from a highly responsible and highly well paid position in business and she has returned to that position now that she is professed. What does that have to do with religious life? How is she centered in community life? I thought of Philippa Talbot in Rumer Godden's novel "In This House of Brede." Philippa gave up a successful business career to become a contemplative nun. At the end of the novel she becomes novice mistress to the crop of Japanese novices in the order's mission to that country. Thoroughly grounded in contemplative life, Philippa uses her leadership skills from the business world and offers her service to younger members of her community. Her mission is to renew the best of religious life in a new generation of women religious.

Another woman religious I knew was bothered most by a decision she made to move out of the apartment she shared with another woman religious and move back into the larger motherhouse. She was tortured by the lack of freedom she expected there. She worried about the view she would have from any particular room she might be assigned. Are these the prescient issues in community life? Scores of religious women I know either live alone or in groups of two or perhaps three. What is this witness? Whether the religious be female or male, which comes first - religious life or the professional occupation?

Religious life often seems a life of professionalism and a kind of witness of women proving they can work in the larger world much as men. But where is the religious life here? What is mission? Who are they serving? There was and still is somewhat a period in which many religious women were forced from their convents in order to find good paying jobs in order to support their convents. What has that done to religious life? 

I grew up in an elementary school, high school, and even a college education led by religious women. I recently visited my high school journalism teacher, a 101 year-old very alert, very brilliant woman who still maintains her religious life faithfully. There are many, many women religious still struggling to redefine their lives for this century. But I have also met women religious, aging ones, who tell me they cannot have Eucharistic adoration in their motherhouses because middle-aged sisters will not allow it. What is that all about? Or that they will not allow priests to concelebrate in their chapels. A contemporary antipathy toward men is understandable given historic actions and attitudes on the part of many in the hierarchy. Perhaps religious life has to die somewhat. But what will replace it? Can an authentic witness of religious life ever grow out of a sense of individualistic pursuit of one's own interests?

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