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"We should not trust the judgment of anyone for whom the habit issue is more important than the issue of ministry."
That sentence captures the tension at the heart of Catholicism throughout my lifetime.

A much needed summary of the development of women's religious orders and congregations at a time when there is so much debate and stating of opinions as facts. This article should help us all in more carefully examining the issue of the Vatican Visitation of the US sisters, since it smacks of a veiled attempt (pun intended) to pull women religious back four centuries.

THANK YOU

A very poingant reflection Fr. McBrien, as always on the selfless and unceasing devotion of women religious which has contributed in boundless ways to the life of the People of God throughout the world! Let us all reflect on these contributions and understand that these beautiful women are not ones we can afford to lose but treasures of the Church that the Lord numbers among His most valued, in the same way He does the poor and the marginalized.

We should not trust the judgment of anyone for whom the dissent issue is more important than fidelity to the Magisterium.

What a beautiful tribute to women religious who have meant so much to me in my education, health care and social service.

Yes, we often mention those negative incidental events that in reality are so insignificant in the broader landscape of Catholic life. Yes, these were good and beautiful women who have contributed so much to the Church and society.

During this advent season let us give thanks for women religious who over the years have done so much to help millions prepare for the coming of Christ.

You can talk about Vatican II renewal all you want but the modern nun for all practical purposes is a just living as a single person in the modern world. The single vocation is a valid vocation but it is not the same thing as the vocation of a consecrated religious person. In particular the vow of obedience has become meaningless. Remember the "Nun's Story" with Audrey Hepburn? There was a scene in it where the father says to his daughter (the future nun), "I can see you poor and chaste but I can't see you obedient." It takes three vows to make a nun.

Cogent arguments by both authors.

But again, it becomes a case of "Wagner's music is better than it sounds." (Mark Twain)

That is, the elephant in the Chapter House is that with the watering down of the observance of "The Rule of St [take your choice]" the vocational response by young American Catholics is a tenth, a twentieth, or an even smaller fraction than it was in 1960.

The retention rate, post "reforms" has been similarly attenuated.

Anybody who knows me know that I'm no advocate of orthodoxy. Far from it.

But I can't argue with the numbers, especially when those numbers are so low that to allow a sister or lay brother to "do their own thing" means that any notion of day-in-day-out community life is done for.

For voices on both sides and through the middle of the question, the "habit" is a symbol of a larger set of changes, and perhaps the least of these changes.

So I'll ask the question again... is the lifestyle which Sr. Sandra and her sisters, and her larger community in the LCWR, and in similar religious communities of men viable and sustainable beyond the next decade or two?

I'm sorry, but I'm not seeing it. And I'm really sorry that I'm not seeing it because I recognize the contributions that have been made by sisters and lay brothers who've been freed from prior constraints to focus on "work."

The nuns have been doing for years the kind of work the priests should be encouraging the laity to do, though not full time. There should be no liturgy unless it produces people who are willing to go out of their way to help others. Sitting in front of the Blessed Sacrament at Eucharistic Adoration should provide the impetus to go forth and help. Otherwise it is just an empty vessel.

The Reverend Father Richard P. McBrien writes: "We should not trust the judgment of anyone for whom the habit issue is more important than the issue of ministry."

Amen atque Deo gratias!

Appearance not substance may appeal to the dilettante canonical couturier but not to us struggling substantially and truly to fulfill in full the Missioning of Jesus Christ.

Shucks almighty they should see the way I dress! Got good buys at GoodWill yesterday, including a long sleeved cotton sports/uniform T-shirt marked St. Pius X in El Paso of all things, of all places.

Trusting always the judgment of the Reverend Father Richard P. McBrien, I humbly remain,

frère charles du désert OSB OBLAT (Congrégation de Subiaco)

Fr. McBrien, thank you so much for saying what the sisters have known in their hearts and souls and minds for as long as they can remember. As many cradle Catholics, I had the nuns (rightly called "sisters") in school and had no idea what they did outside of the classroom. After all, they were barely human in our tender grade school eyes.
Now, all these years later, I am privileged to be living in a retirement home for over 100 religious sisters. No, I am not a sister, I am a grad student (and a single grandmother) and they welcomed me to rent a room here while I'm in school. The sisters here are in their 80s and 90s, and they all have stories about their "life in the habit." But interestingly, almost none complain about it or rail against it. It was a life they chose. But they do not want to go back to that. It's not about the clothing, it's about everything you and Sandra Schneiders acknowledged.
Most people, even Catholics, do not know much about the life of the pre-Vatican II religious community. I'm happy that we are finally beginning to find out.

Says McBrien:

We should not trust the judgment of anyone for whom the habit issue is more important than the issue of ministry.

Amen!

Perfectae Caritatis 17: "The religious habit, an outward mark of consecration to God, should be simple and modest, poor and at the same becoming. In addition it must meet the requirements of health and be suited to the circumstances of time and place and to the needs of the ministry involved."

"We should not trust the judgment of anyone for whom the habit issue is more important"

I certainly wouldn’t want to be judged on my bad habits.

As usual I learn from your dialogue but do take issue with the habit controversy. The modified habit is consistent with the role of a nun in the modern world.

1. it shows her as a women standing apart from the trappings of the secular world. A nun does not worry about how pretty her garments are, she is proud that her dedication to God is shown to all as a beacon whether she is in church, in a store, nursing, or at leisure. Unfortunately many nuns today have wardrobes that reflect the secular of this world.
2. Much of the problem faced by nuns in earlier times, in addition to the impossible demands made on her, was the feudal approach of the rule of the elderly nuns over the young accepted by Bishops as the norm. Serving these older nuns was paramount even over the spiritual development of the younger nun. This lack of discipline over the established members of a convent drove many young women from their vocation or to live outside the convent life entirely, doing good work but not really as a nun.
3.

what a great final sentence! right on, Father!

Having been a Maryknoll Sister for 31 years, I fully appreciate Fr. McBrien's assessment of the Religious life of the 50s and 60s. Living in the Philippines, in full Habit, was not easy but it was a way of life! His description of our daily routine is so apt that he could well have been there. We never gave it a second thought. The Sisters were the Administrators and Nursing Supervisors of an entire Mission Hospital. It ran like clock work.
In retrospect I wish the Second Vatican Council had happened about 20 years earlier... it would have made our Ministry so much more effective!
Mary Ellen Sullivan

"On the same day, the nuns prepared classes and carried a full day's professional schedule in school, hospital, or other Catholic institutions.

"In short," Sandra Schneiders points out, "they carried all the burdens of monastic life with none of the leisure for personal prayer, lectio divina [meditative reading of Sacred Scripture], genuine community life, or ordinary recreation of monastics, and all the burdens of the apostolate without the professional preparation or privileges enjoyed by the clergy."

And it took an ACT OF CONGRESS to qualify and extend to these women the most basic of Social Security benefits at the end of their careers, after they were used by the institutional church's empire building for decades of indentured servitude.

http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/rulings/oasi/29/SSR74-18-oasi-29.html

I don't see priests wearing the collar and cassocks 24 7. This is 2009 not 1899. Hear the message not the clothes.

Anyone catch the Eucharistic Congress last September?
Stop looking at grievances pre-Vatican II à la Ms. Magazine/NARAL. It's 2009 and the religious orders that are growing are wearing habits. They are saving the unborn, serving the poor, etc. They are obedient to the Magisterium. Heck, I'd like to play baseball with them - no arguing that we play with a different shaped ball or change the rules. Calls by the ump wouldn't be argued with for years after the game!
Sr. Sandra Schneiders believed that the gift of her same-sex attraction shouldn't remain unopened - or so she told Mary Jo Anderson at a Call to Action conference in 1995. Asked if she thought that applied to pedophile priests she didn't have an answer. You think Catholic mothers are going to send their daughters to women like Sr. Schneiders? Right - just before we send our sons to seminaries run by lavender mafia!
I believe, Lord, increase my faith. Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me a poor sinner!

Although I truly wish the thought had been original with me, has it occured to Cardinal Rode and his cohorts that now women do not need to be in a religious order to obtain an education and be a professional? Perhaps this new-found freedom to serve God in occupations outside of a religious order is the reason there are fewer nuns these days. This is not a lack of dedication to God, but merely a new direction for that dedication.

The final sentence above is priceless. And righ on.

While the Pope and the Curia can literally spend hours of their day in prayer, as well as putting in a full day's administrative work, they don't have to fix their own meals, clean their residences, do their own laundry, buy their own groceries and sundries, etc, do they???
The Sisters, like most women in the world, did double duty for decades. They finally had to prioritize their missions with the dwindling number of members and now they are being blamed for that too!!!

At all times, during this vocation crisis, which extends to both men and women, the rules of conduct put in place by the Pope and the Curia and the Hierarchy WERE followed, with few exceptions. Opinions were freer, but can't religious people use the brains that God gave them to think for themselves???

Has the conduct and behavior of the Hierarchy followed all the rules and the laws as closely??? Look at the track record of the last 24 years of failing to discipline those who did the terrible supervision of the pedophilic priest abusers. At least 2/3 of the US Catholic diocesan leaders were co-enablers of criminal behavior! How many of these are serving time in prison???

Maybe our Church leaders can't accept the fact that THEIR LEADERSHIP helped to drive away people and discourage religious vocations!!!

Uniforms are an important part of life, be it in the military, at work, at sports events. They represent a visible sign of committment and order. Consider Fr. McBrien's commercial attire - except when on television. There is clearly a message in that.

Yes, the work is more important than what one wears. However, in a casual dress world, the habit does send an important signal about the organization. And as the NYT noted, orders with habits are thriving. Can't say the same for all orders.

It seems preposterous to me that so many responses to this article are focused on clothing, as though that were the primary reason for the Vatican's decision to "visit" the American sisters. It is so easy to get caught up on external symbols that we forget the inner reality at work.

That having been said, Father McBrien's last sentence cuts both ways. There are those who believe firmly that there would be more religious vocations if all nuns wore habits, and some who believe just as firmly that the abolition of habits in many orders gave somehow gave nuns more freedom. Both positions are terribly misguided.

I suppose that one could become a Dominican rather than a Franciscan because of a particular aversion to brown, but we must hope that such people are weeded out at some point in the novitiate, unless they become more serious about the order's mission. Similarly, clothing might seem important for some sentimental reasons; some people have nightmares about nuns, wearing habits, who terrified them in second grade, while others remembers habits rather fondly. At the end of the day, however, it isn't the clothing in particular that is important, it is what the clothing symbolizes. The most important sentence of Father McBrien's article is, in my mind, the following: "After a period of experimentation, most renewed congregations successfully made the transition to simple contemporary dress appropriate to the now quite varied situations in their ministerial lives." The question the sentence begs is, what does "successful" mean?

If by "successful" Father McBrien means that the nuns have begun to work in more areas than they had hitherto, that nuns were able to focus more on their own interests and abilities rather than working as directed by a superior, that they weren't constrained by community life but able to work their own hours, etc. then certainly the reforms symbolized by the lack of a uniform habit are successful. If by "successful," Father McBrien means that nuns have been able to attract others to their way of life, experienced closer community life than they had hitherto, remain faithful to their vows and the teachings of the Church, etc. then certainly the reforms symbolized by the lack of a uniform habit are not terribly successful.

There is, I think, a trade off that people on both sides of this issue forget. For example, in the type of community life practiced before the conciliar changes to the lives of female religious, there were far less freedoms for the nuns. They were often sent places they did not want to go, to do jobs for which they might not have been particularly qualified. This was true not only of women religious, but of all religious. I know Jesuits who were sent to teach German in high school because they had German last names, even though they spoke not a word of the language. Poverty was held a bit more strictly, obedience a bit more strictly, and often to the detriment of those who had taken vows willingly. Members of religious congregations are still human, and while they should follow their vows strictly, it seems to make sense for the Church to use its personnel in ways that augment their abilities; if someone is good with children, make them a teacher, if someone likes warm climates, there doesn't seem to be a reason to send them to Alaska, if someone doesn't speak German, don't force them to teach it. Similarly, I think that its okay, now and then, for a nun to be able to buy herself an ice cream cone if she wants one, and so giving religious small stipends for such personal expenses makes more sense to me than not. If you have five men in a community who love pizza, and two who don't, on a "party" night when the community eats pizza, perhaps it makes sense allow the other two alternate arrangements for dinner. I know someone who was ordered, by their superior, to eat soft boiled eggs for breakfast, on pain of obedience, because that was what the community ate, even though he hated eggs. It seems indicative of some of the excesses of religious life before the Council.

The flip side of this is that there is, nonetheless, a value to community life, uniformity of prayer life and mission, and, frankly, a regard for the very vows that had been, perhaps, a bit too harshly inflicted before the Council, which has been lost by the changes symbolized by the loss of the habit. Is a religious community successful when it no longer lives in a community? When sisters live on their own, having little or no daily contact with members of their own order? Freedom to do what you want when you want may be a secular value, but it is not, really, a spiritual one, and one which, for anyone considering a vow of chastity, seems to be a rather lonely existence. In a community, you might not be able to have exactly what you want for dinner, or have a community Mass at the time that best suits your own work schedule, but you live and share with others, having relationships and friendships within the community itself that replace, on some level, the family which has been given up in order to become a religious. Having a habit means that one does not have to worry about what one wears, about wearing jewelry, about spending too much money on one's attire. When one does work similar to the work of one's fellow community members, it allows for sharing, understanding, cooperation. The fact that so many congregations of female religious, not only in America but elsewhere, live away from community, and out of communal habits (both those made of cloth and those made of community life) may account for at least some of lack of vocations to religious life since the Council. People shouldn't, and mostly don't, join religious life to wear a habit, or a collar. Some do, of course, which gives everyone a bad name. But, on the whole, you join religious life because it calls to you, because it appeals to you, and because you want to serve. Some of the changes that religious life has undergone, symbolized by the habit, may make that service and that life less appealing.

It seems to me that there needs to be a balance between going too far in either direction. Community life is important, as is personal freedom, but so is obedience and poverty, since those are the vows by which nuns are supposed to live. What disturbs me most about this Vatican visitation is not, so much, that the Vatican wants to investigate the lives of women religious, but that so many nuns have been so openly defiant about it, resisting something that they really, by virtue of their vows, should accept, even if they don't have to like it. I'm not so ridiculous as to say that such defiance is bred from failure to wear a wimple, but at the same time, perhaps a uniformity of dress lends itself as a daily reminded that these women have chosen, freely, to give themselves and their wills, up for Christ and His Church, which is, after all, their ministry, whatever they might do day in and day out.

Greg,
Will we have hospitals, schools, prisons, social work, missions, food banks, half way houses, etc.in the next few decades? As long as these institutions exist the work of the Sister will be viable and necessary. I also knew one religious whose work was with NASA as she was a scientist. Wherever there are people the work of these Sisters will go on.

Back in the 50s one of my aunts had a very good friend who went into the Josephites. She didn't last long and dropped out. Different members of the family uncharitably offered different reasons as to why she dropped out.

Many years later my aunt was talking to me about her friend the nun dropout as the family used to call her. She said one thing that I found very interesting. She said that after this woman dropped out of the convent, she found it very difficult to go to Sunday Mass anymore. This was because she found the Mass to be such a beautiful experience with the Josephites. You could hear a pin drop, at the time of the elevation of the host, all of the nuns were prostrate. They had a choir with nuns playing violins and of course they all had beautiful habits. This was contrasted with the noise & lack of reverence in the parish church.

This is just one small example of what the Catholic Church threw away in the name of "reform" of the religious orders. A sad commentary on Conciliarism!

Robert:

You are stating, perhaps better than I, some of the very points which I have tried to make. The pendulum has swung in many cases from living as children in Mother or Father Superior's house to living as singles as mostly independent individuals outside of any day-to-day communion with their community. In my view, at least, that is no longer "religious life." It's "lay ministry" in an unmarried state. The "habit" that is shed is not clothing so much as it is the "habits" of daily life where one routinely meets with one's living companions for meals, prayer, and conviviality.

One quite gets the impression that young people considering vowed religious life are looking for those things.

In my anecdotal experience, several religious whom I've known who've "run off the rails" and fallen into patterns of self-indulgence, alcoholism, or inappropriate sexuality have also for either reason or excuse, made their living arrangements outside of a community of their fellows...in some cases in spite of the near proximity of such a community. Chicken or egg? Did their demons lead them to a place where they could work their will or did their communities gladly send them elsewhere rather than dealing with an emerging disruptive influence?

For myself, even at the tender age of 18 when discerning my own vocation I recognized that if I attempted the life of the diocesean priests with whom I was acquainted I would probably find myself in dire emotional straits in a short while. Oh, it was likely more comfortable. But for me, the then-fashionable 'bachelor pad' rectories, i.e., living room, personal study, and bedroom, all with a private entrance just looked like they would be my "occasion of sin." The only consecrated life which held appeal to me was to be in a community of Brothers who would serve as my "family" (though I may have been naive as to all the implications, in retrospect).

Sal:

All of those roles which you identify can be and are being fulfilled by dedicated unvowed single and married people. What makes a "Sister" or "Brother" a "Sister or Brother" is not the job they do but rather the context in which they live the totality of their lives--- in community.

The old religious habits were bad:
1. They restricted the amount of sun exposure. Lack of vitamin D caused rickets in young nuns, and osteomalacia in adults. Other maladies are alleviated by sun and fresh air: St Therese joined the Carmelites at 15, and died of tuberulosis at 24.
2. They were extravagant in the amount of material used.
3. The starched white wimples used vast amounts of soap, detergent, or elbow grease to clean, and got dirty very quickly. If the pope did his own laundry by hand he would change the colour of his attire.
ON THE OTHER HAND: they pleased the Iranian Muftis.

"But for me, the then-fashionable 'bachelor pad' rectories, i.e., living room, personal study, and bedroom, all with a private entrance just looked like they would be my "occasion of sin."

Greg Bullough pins his critique of contemporary religious on their independent dedication to religious life rather than the sequestered security of habit, convent, rites, routines and rituals on a personal confession. He acknowledges that access to the world is, for him, "an occassion of sin" which led him to a religious order.

I commend his recognition of his own frailty and inability to live a moral life in the real world. My questions: a) why are not secular priests also included in his condemnation; b)why does their faith and willingness to risk not constitute a source of admiration and respect for women religious rather than condemnation?

The habit is an important issue because it is the outward sign of obedience to the Magisterium. Rome has always been clear, since Vatican II they have asked nuns to wear a habit as a sign of their consecration, and as a visible sign for those who meet the sisters to know who they are. The nuns decided that the habit is a sign of subservience to Rome. Their decision not to wear the habit was a public sign of disobedience and dishonor. It’s like saying that genuflecting or making a solemn bow is an outward sign of reverence to the Blessed Sacrament. So when one seen one walking haphazardly past the tabernacle without any sign of reverence, it speaks loudly about that person. This is not an issue about clothes; it is an issue about love and respect for Jesus Christ and His Church.

According to Teresa of Avila, humility is required to grow in love and faith with Our Lord. There is no other route to holiness. The more one attaches to issues of pride with the attitude of “I know better than the Church, I am enlighten and they are not”, the less one can grow in personal holiness. A pride-filled holiness is a fake holiness, like the Pharisees. God calls us all to be saints. “My Soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord. My Spirit rejoices to God my Savior. For He has looked with favor on his lowly servant”. Are we lowly servants? Or are we pride-filled know it alls?