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Young nuns find strength in numbers
By ROBERT McCLORY
Chicago
At 31, Sr. Meg Coursey is by far the youngest member of her
religious order, the St. Joseph Sisters of Springfield, Mass. No one had
entered the order for more than a decade before her arrival five years ago and
no one has entered since.
Sr. Heidi King, 28, is the youngest member of her order, the St.
Joseph Sisters of Nazareth, Mich. A convert to Catholicism nine years ago, she
will profess her temporary vows in July. There have been no other candidates
since she entered in 1998.
One might wonder how young women like these cope in what many
consider a dying way of life. Yet Coursey and King show no signs of anxiety.
Nor was there evidence of alarm among the other 390 sisters, all under the age
of 50, who met June 14-16 at Loyola University in Chicago for a
multi-congregational conference titled Gathering Voices for the
Future. Indeed, the mood was so upbeat, it contrasted vividly with
pictures of grim-faced U.S. bishops on the front pages of every newspaper in
the country during the same days the sisters were meeting.
Said Coursey, I know what Im doing doesnt make
any sense on paper, and as permanent vows get closer, it gets kind of scary.
But I do not believe Ill be the last member of this order. If youre
doing what you should be about, if youre faithful, it will work
out. What Coursey is currently about is teaching English as a
second language at a job-training site in Holyoke, Mass.
King, who was not raised in any religion, read news accounts of
Catholic sisters working in inner cities when she was in high school and felt
drawn to that life. After graduation, she went through the program for adults
wishing to join the Catholic church, was baptized and earned a degree in
elementary education at the University of Michigan. Since entering the order,
my commitment to serve has deepened, she said. Its for
real, and professing the vows will make it public.
Both Coursey and King consider themselves modern, liberal
Catholics and both favor the ordination of women. I want women to be
ordained before the church makes priestly celibacy optional, said King.
If its the other way around, theyll have enough male priests
and women will never get in. Similar support for womens ordination
and calls for greater openness in church decision-making were voiced by many
during conversation at the conference.
The nearly 400 young sisters (along with another 150 older sisters
in attendance) represented some 115 religious communities. The idea of
promoting intergenerational and intercommunity discussion originated with three
sisters who met over the Internet in the mid-1990s. Two previous, smaller
conferences, held in 1995 in Wisconsin and 1999 in Pennsylvania, led to the
creation of a newsletter, Giving Voice, aimed at younger sisters from
many congregations. Notre Dame de Namur Sr. Kristin Matthes, one of the
original organizers, said young sisters, numbering two or three in
congregations of 300 or more, can easily become marginalized. We needed
to get together to share ideas, she said.
Matthes, 36, has been in religious life since she was 17. After
seven years in one congregation, she transferred to her present order because,
she said, I needed more involvement, more space to dream dreams and the
choice to live among the poor. She teaches courses in social justice and
the sacraments at a high school in the Cincinnati area. Younger sisters
tend to be more passionate about social justice, said Matthes.
Were going back to what our founders were -- liminal people on the
margins reminding the church what it ought to be.
Another conference organizer, Mercy Sr. Judy Eby, 38, said she
resists the death and diminishment mode that can affect any rapidly
aging sisterhood. Still, its only natural, she said, for young sisters to
wonder, How will we carry on 20 years from now? So we need peer groups to
formulate ideas and plans. After 17 years, Eby is still high on religious
life. Some of her high school students in Cincinnati recently commented to her,
You make being a nun seem like fun. Eby, who has a doctorate in
historical theology, will begin teaching at a Catholic college in Omaha, Neb.,
in the fall.
The major speakers, Notre Dame de Namur Srs. Barbara Fiand and
Mary Johnson and Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Sandra Schneiders, challenged the
gathering to think outside the box in developing ideas and plans for the
future. The fundamental concern of modern religious women today, said Fiand,
should not be simple accord with their founders wishes or maintaining
survival of their order or conforming to canon law. Our work must be the
transformation of all things of Christ, bringing about the reign of God,
she said, and whatever is not conducive to that goal needs to be jettisoned,
even if that should include the traditional notion of perpetual vows.
Fiand contended that the dualistic worldview that held sway for
some 5,000 years is yielding to a new, emerging, unitive view through the
discoveries of quantum physics. Once stable concepts of permanence, order,
measurability and certainty are imploding before our eyes, she
said, as we begin to understand the flow and connectedness of all
things.
Because of this shift, Fiand said, religious women must revisit
all their preconceptions. Should membership in religious communities be
absolutely tied to permanent vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, she
asked, or should membership be tied to a call to serve and a commitment to do
what is just? Fiand said she was not talking about limited volunteer corps
service or temporary memberships or third orders but full memberships based on
a not-yet-clear reincarnation of religious commitment in keeping
with modern insights. Young people are no more selfish today than they
ever were, she said. But their way of serving is
different.
It became clear during a lively question period that not everyone
was comfortable with Fiands radical insights. Later, she and Schneiders
dialogued before the whole group and expressed contrasting views of the
centrality of perpetual vows in religious life. Matthes said she appreciated
Fiands willingness to ask the big questions -- but for me the
perpetuity of the vows is a very important thing. Several young sisters
like Coursey concurred, saying the requirement of permanent commitment was a
major factor that attracted them to religious life in the first place.
Robert McClory is an NCR special report writer.
Related Web site
Giving
Voice www.giving-voice.org
National Catholic Reporter, July 5,
2002
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