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Updated: Questionnaire for women religious
Sep. 21, 2009
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Printer-friendly versionSend to friendPDF versionWASHINGTON -- Questions about membership, living arrangements, the ministries in which members participate and spiritual life, including the practice of prayer and the frequency of Mass, are included in a questionnaire sent Sept. 18 to 341 congregations of women religious in the U.S.
Distribution of the questionnaire opens the second phase of a comprehensive study of U.S. institutes of women religious ordered by Cardinal Franc Rode as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
Divided into three parts, the questionnaire reveals more about the depth of the study, known as an apostolic visitation.
One part of the questionnaire, designated "Part A" and encompassing eight pages, seeks data about membership, living arrangements, governance and ministries of the members of the religious orders.
A second section, designated "Part B" and encompassing six pages, seeks information related to the operation of a religious order including its origins, identity and charism; governance; vocation promotion, admission and formation policies; spiritual life and common life; mission and ministry; and finances.
The third part, designated "Part C" and one page in length, asks for contact information for the major superior responsible for completing the questionnaire.
"The questionnaire is an extremely important part of the process of the visitation requested by the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life," Mother Mary Clare Millea, the apostolic visitator charged by the Vatican with directing the study, wrote in a letter accompanying the survey.
Mother Mary Clare Millea Mother Clare, superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, said in the letter that the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University is assisting in the "effort to gain a clear picture of women religious in our country today."
She said CARA assisted her office in developing the wording of questions in Part A and will collect and compile the information gathered in that portion of the survey.
Responses to Parts B and C are to be sent to the apostolic visitation office for compilation.
Sister Eva-Maria Ackerman, a member of the American province of the Franciscan Sisters of the Martyr St. George who is coordinating efforts in the visitation office in Hamden, Conn., told CNS in an e-mail message Sept. 21 that Mother Clare would not comment on the questionnaire.
In Part A, the orders are asked to indicate the number of professed sisters, temporary professed sisters, novices and candidates or postulants and their birth dates, by decade. It also seeks information about the number of women who entered religious life in two periods: between 1999 and 2004 and between 2004 and 2009.
In addition, one question seeks demographic data regarding race and ethnicity of sisters.
An extensive series of questions asks about living arrangements for current members of orders. Specifically, the questionnaire asks how many sisters live outside of a religious house and whether they live alone, with other members of their order, with members of other orders, with associates of an order, with family members or with laity who are not members of an order.
Several questions also revolve around members who have left an order. It asks for information about the years of departure in the periods between 1999 and 2004 and 2004 and 2009 and the age of each sister who left.
Part B requests information related to the operation of religious orders.
Under each area a series of questions seeks to gain information about how the religious institutes are evolving today.
Some of the areas explored in the questions include: who is involved in governance, including associates and lay people, and to what extent; decision-making procedures; how individuals sisters can speak up when they disagree with a corporate decision made by the order's members; practices regarding the formation of novices; continuing education within the order; the frequency of celebrating the Eucharist as a community; whether eucharistic celebrations follow liturgical norms; how major superiors ensure that members maintain a vow of poverty; the relationship between bishops and the order by members; accountability of income, such as salaries, stipends, gifts and donations; the transfer of ownership of buildings and property to other entities as well as the acquisition of buildings and property; and the sharing of goods with the poor.
Major superiors have until Nov. 20 to complete the questionnaire. The deadline was adjusted by three weeks because the document was delayed from a planned early-September distribution.
Congregational leaders have the option of completing the questionnaire online or on paper.
In announcing the working instrument, or "instrumentum laboris," upon which the questionnaire was based, Mother Clare said July 28 that answers on the questionnaire will help determine which congregations will receive a visit by an apostolic visitation team. The visits are expected to begin in the spring and continue throughout 2010, Mother Clare said in the letter accompanying the questionnaire.
The study covers about 59,000 American nuns, all but those living in cloisters.
Mother Clare's final report, expected in mid-2011 and based on what will be learned from the questionnaires and the apostolic visits, will be sent to the Vatican congregation. Her letter reiterated that the report will remain confidential.
- - -
Editor's Note: The full questionnaire guiding the apostolic visitation process can be viewed online at www.apostolicvisitation.org.
END
Following the compilation of
Following the compilation of "information from the questionnaires", will the absurdly inflated "59,000" be adjusted to reveal the true number of nuns in American convents? (Probably fewer than 36,000.)
Gerelyn Hollingsworth
http://GerelynHollingsworth.com/
Since "it will not be made
Since "it will not be made public" won't anyone in the chain of transmission be able with impunity to allege anything (s)he chooses?
It wouldn't be the first time.
Please ,when available, post
Please ,when available, post the questionnaire and the Mother Millea letter.
Why is nothing made public, it says the final report will not be made public, more rotten secrecy from Rome. Rotten secrecy like all about this still unresolved and still ongoing priests and bishops pedophile and abuses of the seminarians sex abuse scandals.
Is this all for the bishops to get finances and properties that were donated to the nuns? (Declare nuns """undoctrinal"" and appropriate their property?)
"Sister Eva-Maria told CNS
"Sister Eva-Maria told CNS that Mother Clare would not comment on the questionnaire"
WHICH SHE DID NOT WRITE, SO HOW COULD SHE COMMENT ON IT?
"Mother Clare's final report, expected in mid-2011 and based on what will be learned from the questionnaires and the apostolic visits, will be sent to the Vatican congregation. It will not be made public."
SO WHO KNOWS WHAT WILL GO INTO IT?
I do hope the religious communities being investigated will openly DISCUSS and PUBLISH their responses to this questionnaire, at least on their own websites if not in their local newspapers BEFORE they submit them to Millea and Rode. After all ladies, WHAT HAVE YOU GOT TO LOSE?
Reading a few histories of
Reading a few histories of convents would make clear to you what nuns whose conduct displeases ecclesiastical superiors have to lose:
1) The sacraments. Many congregations who displeased priests or bishops were denied the sacraments. (In some cases even Extreme Unction.)
2) Their communities. Many communities who displeased priests or bishops were disbanded.
3) Their elected religious superiors. Many elected superiors (including founders) who displeased priests or bishops were removed from office. In some cases they were sent to other orders and denied contact with their communities.
4) Their real estate and their patrimonies.
5) Etc. (Many great histories of women's communities are available. Catholic university libraries are full of them. New ones are named and reviewed in publications such as "History of Women Religious News and Notes".)
http://GerelynHollingsworth.com/
I think the sisters should
I think the sisters should refuse to answer the questionnaire until there is more transparency in the entire process.
Also, why has only one women religious, of a conservative bent, been appointed rather that 3-5 sisters who would be more repreentative of sisters today?
Dottie, Sisters take a vow of
Dottie, Sisters take a vow of obedience---do you understand what that means? The reason this survey is being done is to find out why certain religious orders are dying out. This survey is not about opinions it is about being obedient to our Catholic Faith, Pope Benedict XVI and The Magisterium. Dottie, if you want to know which religious orders are growing, they are of the "conservative bent". God Bless, Susanna
"It will not be made public."
"It will not be made public." So, as with the clergy abuse, secrecy is the "sine qua non" of all of the dealings of our church. With secrecy comes non-accountability. Who knows what Mother Millea will come up with. These intelligent, accomplished, modern women are being treated as the inquisitors treated their victims. Their faith must be as strong as the martyrs to withstand this treatment at the hands of men. And what about Mother Millea? What does on in her mind as she acts as the agent of hidden men. Of course it is a secret why she was chosen. But as with the abuse the more secrecy, the worse it gets.
Nuns, and sisters please
Nuns, and sisters please publish in public forum your responses to the questionnaires so the world will see you are doctrinally correct and that there is no reason to disband your congregations, your orders. Secrecy is not appropriate for the Visitors. They refuse to publish their report and will have no accountability and no credibility for conclusions they will draw about sisters and nuns. The consequences of their secretive conclusions should not be carried out as the Visitors and Millea, Rode and Levada, Blair and others of the Visitors will not be credible at all. There is no validity to what they are doing. Shame on the pope for commissioning this Visitation and the secretive unaccountable insincere way it is being done.
"Shame on the pope for
"Shame on the pope for commissioning this Visitation and the secretive unaccountable insincere way it is being done."
You left out AND SENDING THE BILL to the sisters themselves for the pleasure of purchasing the wood and the wagon for their own auto-da-fe!
Dear Craig B. McKee, You seem
Dear Craig B. McKee, You seem to have no respect for POPE BEXNEDICT XVI or the Magisterium. This survey is to find out why some religious orders are growing and so many are dying out... The religious orders that are growing seem to be the ones in HABITS and are following the Apostolic succession in their vows.. If the sisters do not want to be CATHOLIC and keep true to their vows they can start their own religion. GOD Bless, Susanna M.
I hope the Sisters do NOT
I hope the Sisters do NOT publish their answers to the survey. There is much that is asked that IS private and the Sisters do not need to reveal to the community. Not for any other reason than privacy and boundaries based on need-to-know.
The question re: transparency is for the Visitators and THEIR (summary) report.
If the Visitators planned to publish their summary report, it would likely never have occurred to anyone (whether supporter or antagonist of the Sisters) to start this call for the Sisters to publish their answers.
And, that said, I also trust that the Sisters will not be bullied or cornered into publishing what they have no obligation to publish and the community has no need or right to demand AND that the Sisters will continue to ask the Visitators for "right relationship" through transparency.
Jean
When the questionnaire seeks
When the questionnaire seeks a comparision about the periods of 1999-2004 vs 2005-2009, about entering and leaving ages of the Sisters, I hope it also asks about the age of entry & length of religious profession of each person.
Doesn't it make a big difference if the entrant was 18yrs or 48yrs, and if she was there for 2 or 20 years, when considering their answers in terms of maturity & ability to handle the religious life???
Part D: New members. This
Part D: New members. This part is a total of 1/2 inch and is to include all new members of LCWR congregations in the last twenty years.
Over the past 20 years or so,
Over the past 20 years or so, I've either corresponded with or visited different religious orders, because I was searching for some kind of lay association/commitment. Never, ever, have I run into Sisters who are not participating in the Eucharist, usually daily, except sometimes there was not a priest for daily Mass, nor are they not praying some form of the Liturgy of the Hours. In fact, I learned how to use the Liturgy of the Hours from Sisters!! My first Catholic Mass before I was Catholic was with Sisters!!!
Some were more liberal than I, some more conservative. But always there was their dedication to their calling, and a warm openness and hospitality.
I STILL don't know what the Vatican thinks it is looking for.........I also visited a few cloistered orders, sometimes only in their public areas, and I don't understand why there is being a distinction made.
Even if a person tries very hard to make this look like it's "ok"......it simply makes no sense.
That part about poverty. Pooh! Like priests and Bishops live in such great poverty??? (There ARE good priests and Bishops, I'm just saying, aren't they supposed to be under some kind of spiritual poverty as well as the Sisters? Or, do secular priests/Bishops not take a vow of poverty?)
If I didn't know better, I'd think the Vatican wants to go back to all Sisters having to live in the cloister. Which is ridiculous for many reasons, just one being that a Doctor of the Church, St. Catherine of Siena, about as traditional as a person can get did NOT live in a cloister!
That's all my rant for now. I'd better settle down and pray that Jesus becomes the center of all this, not religion, not politics, not whatever-the-heck-they-think.
Ritagail: No, secular (e.g.,
Ritagail: No, secular (e.g., diocesan) priests do not take vows at all, including no vow of poverty. Only members of religious orders, including priests in those orders, take the three vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. If a bishop was originally a secular priest, then he is not bound by the vows. If he was a member of a religious order, he remains so and is still bound by the evangelical counsels (vows). Those who are not bound by the vows can own property, make investments, buy homes, etc. - whatever they wish to do. But all of us are bound by the admonition to share with the poor.
Reading the comments to this
Reading the comments to this article saddens me. I guess 9/11 'truthers' and the right-wing 'birthers' don't have the market cornered on conspiracy theories.
But, since conspiracy theory seems to be the primary interest here, I'll add one:
"how major superiors ensure that members maintain a vow of poverty; ... accountability of income, such as salaries, stipends, gifts and donations;"
- i wonder how much of the blustry consternation in some orders is being caused by that little section, hmmmm...
There, i've contributed to the unending string of conspiracy on this topic. you all can thank me later.
The more liberal orders are
The more liberal orders are dying out anyway, so why make a fuss? What is the median age for these orders, 67 or so? Soon the Vatican II experiment will be gone with the wind along with the unfortunate council itself. I think the Spirit fell asleep at that council!
There are some hopeful signs in terms of conservative orders but I'd say that orthodox Catholics are only about 10% of the institutional church now. There is a vocations crisis today because God is hardly likely to reward mortally sinful contraceptive "Catholic" marriages with vocations. The potential vocations for the most part have been contracepted out!
With all due respect "paulte"
With all due respect "paulte" and to others here knowing this is off topic:
I am a convert of 15 years this coming April. As I still find myself an outsider in this war that is being waged inside the Church. What I want to know is, what are we all going to do, I mean all sides, to bring ourselves back to Jesus and being at peace with each other?
How much are we willing to compromise to come together for the sake of the One Jesus, Whom we claim to be in Communion with during the Holy Eucharist?
Is there no possible way to be one with each other, as our Saviour prayed for us, and taught us to be?
As usual, paulte, your
As usual, paulte, your comments are bordering on the bizarre at times and your facts are blatantly incorrect. The religious orders of women - progressive or traditional - that are "doing well" in terms of new vocations, see almost all of them leave by the time of final vows. Check the facts from Georgetown University to verify it, and stop spreading misinformation. And I would challenge you on the notion that the "Vatican II experiment will be gone." Remember that those from Vatican II have taught several generations now of what the true spirit of the Council was, including recent priests, religious, and laity. But, my major point is this. Why is it that you and those of similar thinking, dismiss Vatican II as being "without the Spirit," and sometimes branding it as a heretical Council, while you declare and insist on complete and total unquestioning loyalty to the Catholic Church and it's heirarchy? Was not John XXIII validly elected as Pope? Was not the Council called within the precise specifications of the Church? Did not the Council fathers ratify every document produced? And your idea that God is "punishing" the Church with few vocations because of Catholics who use contraception is right out of the middle ages, and a complete betrayal of the Father that Jesus taught us about and expressed repeatedly in the Gospels. Stop and pray about what you are saying and doing, instead of reacting based on sheer emotion (negative ones at that)and impulse. Then, perhaps, you could join in the discussion productively.
Like we are really are about
Like we are really are about to see a rush of candidates for the priesthood from
from conservative Catholics who are more worried about holding on to power and orthodoxcy than encouraging men to
be priests that accept all people regardless of their
persuasion. So nice to be so sure of your beliefs that include no one but those just like yourself.
I commend Mother Clare and
I commend Mother Clare and Sr. Eva-Maria, especially given the nastiness openly displayed here in many of your comments. It smacks of the typical liberal intolerance of anyone who dares to disagree with the liberal stance or liberal ideologues themselves. Of course, this is the NCR...
If openness is what is demanded, then offer it! If there is nothing to hide--throw open the drapes so that the world may peer in! I doubt there's any comfort with or interest in that suggestion given the fact that many convents in the U.S. have simply become bastions of liberalism, lesbianism, and liberation theology.
Until there is certainty--without a doubt--that the ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS ORDERS in the U.S. are, in fact, adhering to--at the very least--the Catechism of the Catholic Church, then I, for one, applaud the Apostolic Visitation and Mother Clare.
paulte wrote: "There is a
paulte wrote:
"There is a vocations crisis today because God is hardly likely to reward mortally sinful contraceptive "Catholic" marriages with vocations. The potential vocations for the most part have been contracepted out!"
paulte, this made me laugh out loud.
My mom gave the Catholic Church eight babies before nearly bleeding to death on her ninth childbirth at age 46. Her doctor put her on the pill to keep her alive to continue as a good mother and wife and raise all the babies who were already there and who needed her love. Due to the shame, guilt and judgment heaped upon such as herself by such as you (mortally sinful rhetoric and all), she kept it a secret from all but a few until her death. You will never know what it's like to nearly bleed to death during childbirth, or to have to change three sets of diapers at once, will you? But you sit on Internet boards judging who and what is mortally sinful.
And yes, one of these eight my mother so generously birthed and raised did indeed become a priest of the most "orthodox" variety. Mortally sinful? NOT! A holy saint, yes, my mother was!
I doubt the pill can be
I doubt the pill can be considered mortally sinful for a woman at age 46 since she is not likely to get pregnant! Although my granny got pregnant at age 46 and had her last child at 47! She only had six and her mother on seeing the spacing of the children called her a disgrace! Personally, I think your mother should have told your father to give it a rest or she would crack a dish over his head. That's what my granny used to do to my grandpa when he stepped out of line with the woman down the block! Since we're telling family tales here!
Why don't these sisters
Why don't these sisters refuse to answer the questions or say why they object to them?
Wouldn't the Vatican have to either give up or disband the whole lot of them who would then be able to regroup in total independence from the abusive ecclesiastic institution?
Yvon Thivierge, IF the
Yvon Thivierge, IF the sisters want total independence from the ecclesiastic institution, that would make them disobedient of their vows....this is the reason for the survey---to find out who is truly following the Apostolic successor.... God Bless, Susanna Matrisciano
Tick, tick, tick......for
Tick, tick, tick......for once Rome will know the truth instead of insiders telling them something different.
Lack of vocations is due to
Lack of vocations is due to rejection of what Jesus okayed for priests: the married and the women!
We have a super troubled church on account of not obeying Jesus, that is refusing to ordain married people, and women. The sex scandal is not a result of Vatican II , it is a result of ""celibate "" priests acting out with vulnerable people, with no-one to oversee them . We need the balance of all the community, the women too.
There were no women priests around to monitor what was happening. The sisters and nuns have no access to what the priests have, and are often relegated away from what the priests are doing or being in the church and parish. Sins of the exclusion of married and of women have brought on great trouble in the church. Use the talents of the married and both men and women.
Can you read latin? On the
Can you read latin? On the bishops website that has the translated mass, is that what the preVatican II latin mass wording actually is? Is that how people spoke it back in the 1940's and 1950's? Does anyone know?
I think the nuns should
I think the nuns should compose their own questionnaire for the bishops and priests. Give each one their own 15 pages and have them discuss their living arrangements and finances. Let's see how much the priests and bishops own. Guys, please include summer houses and BMW's along with the cost of your cooks and housekeepers.
I've worked in both rectories and convents ----- as always the guys have the plush!
I really think that the
I really think that the sisters won't want the results to be public. If they were, then the public would see just how far many (not all) of these orders have drifted from the charism, from the Church, and even from Christ.
It's incredible that we as
It's incredible that we as Catholics put up with the nonense
from the Vatican. Maybe they'll be happy when no one shows
up in the pews and seminaries and formation programs except
people who think only in narrow conservative venues. If that is so say so, so the rest of us can leave knowing what we
are getting from Rome. May faith is not shaken, but my love
for the institutional church is definitely gone, wake up bishops and cardinals. You can't run a church with no one in
the pews. It's definitely a Man's world but in the Church
it a Man's universe and no one else need apply
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