We've given birth to a new form of religious life

Amen to that! This sister is one of the gray haired 60's nuns who is a member of a dying order. Due to their disobedience and dissent they have become just what they said they would, "one of the People", "More a part of the World." And look where it has landed them. Dying and frustrated, because they turned their backs on their first love; being "Brides of Christ." Who wants to be like them when they are just like everyone else? Young women are looking for something special, set apart from the world, while living in it. It takes courage to put on the habit and take responsibility for what that habit signifies. Dressing like everyone else says nothing to someone who wants something more than the world is offering. I grew up in the 60's and 70's and watched the Holy Name Sisters fall apart, hike up their skirts and become part of the world. Now this once great religious teaching order is almost non-existant. Unfortunately, their pride won't let them admit that they were misled and wrong. It will be the Dominican Sisters of Nashville, the Sisters of Life, the Carmelites, The Sisters of Mercy and other faithful religious who will grow to be a part of the new Springtime in the Church, mentioned by Pope John Paul II.
I can only hope that this Sister sees the light before she dies.

You are so right in your comments, this Sister may be very inteligent but so spirtually blind! God give her the grace to see the error of her mind and the dangers surrounding her soul!

SQ is totally wrong. The nuns disappeared from the schools because people did not push the vocations in their homes. In other words, parents did not encourage their daughters to become nuns, and thus all of the teaching orders shut down. Also, before the 1960s, most women could only get an education if they were nuns. Most traditional Catholic families weren't about to let their daughters run off to college alone. But, of course, that changed.

Also, the idea that all nuns should be Catholic school teachers is a little silly. The idea that they have one mission is ahistorical.

And surely you know that even if we put every single living nun in a Catholic school today, they wouldn't even cover a fraction of the teachers need.

Plus, why do we need the nuns so badly now in Catholic schools? They served a great function during the past when most Catholics were uneducated, but now laity are more than qualified to teach the faith.

Plus, let's not exagerate the size of these new vocations. They are growing, but their presence is not that big. I live near Nashville, and even though the Nashville Dominicans are good women and devoted to their vocation, their presence is not felt by the majority of Catholics here.

My dear SQ,
Yes, after 50 years in Catholic Elementary Schools, I did leave these children and their parents. While in some of these schools, the parish stipend, the convent and the food from the gardens allowed us to send our stipends to our motherhouse for those who had stopped teaching. It is over a decade now since I left elementary school. I would not say I left to be more free, I would say because I was blest to find a job where the skills I learned in these schools could contribute to advancing the Catholic Social Teaching and nonviolence.

Some parishes could afford to continue these schools by paying lay teachers and staff some 70% of what they could make in public schools. It does not help the conversation to hear that these women and men are less dedicated or capable. Many sadly could not.

My thoughts on the apostolic communities who recreate the experience of religious life that I knew in my thirties and forties begin with "God bless them." May each of these young women have the same encouragement and grace I have known in my decades of religious life.
Blessings,
Sister Zelda

SQ,
I am sorry, but I was a school kid during those 'heady' days of Catholic schools populated mostly by nuns. Let's be honest - it was possible because the nuns were near-slave labor, paid a pittance, treated like dirt, and expected to be grateful for it. The hierarchy abused them by making them teach 50-70 kids at a time, or teach when they really weren't qualified to do so.

While I got a great education, that was the result of my own internal abilities and desire to learn. Knowing what I know now, I can understand that many many kids did not get what they needed for learning, simply because learning differences could not be addressed in that environment. I know now that the nun I had in both 3rd and 6th grades, whom everyone despised, was most likely a woman forced to teach, when her TRUE talent was creating music for congregations. Other women religious at my school were so old they were mid-level dementia, but still forced to teach.

It is shameful that the church allowed that, and I bear that guilt burden as well, as part of our church.

The LAST thing we want to do is go back to those days. Ergo, you will have to PAY a lot for your children's Catholic education. And you shouldn't complain about it. Doesn't the gospel message include fair wages for all?

As a side note, Teresa of Avila was a savvy politician. You might read "Teresa of Avila: The Progress of a Soul" by Cathleen Medwick for a good portrait of her, epileptic seizures and all.

This IHM community is the community of women who taught me in high school in Westchester, Illinois. Fabulous, faith filled, and forward thinking. Smart, really smart women. Don't dismiss what they say so easily.

SQ writes that "We see the fruits of this rebellion [of sisters] in the decline of our Catholic schools" where "there are no more sisters to teach the faith." The unspoken premise is that without sisters, the faith simply cannot be transmitted, at least not authentically. I spent thirty years of my life teaching the faith to junior high students in a Catholic school, supporting a wife and children on a Catholic school salary, which is a pretty good trick. What about the 3,300 kids who passed through my religion classes? Did they get miserably shortchanged in our "declining" Catholic school because I'm the wrong gender and don't wear a habit?

I have taught with the Dominicans of Nashville as well as associated with the Sisters of Loretto, probably the direct opposite of the nuns in Nashville. Given a choice between the two, I think the Lorettines are more humane and rational, but they are dying. The Dominicans are crazy and impossible to work with. I can understand the importance of symbols in religion; the Dominican habit is full of symbols, but the woman beneath it is immature, unthinking, and irresponsible as a human being. The demand for the "real" Catholic Church (of the 1950s) by people too young to know scares me because those who want to go back have no interest in knowing the truth about that time. They, of course, think that they are "saving" the Church and are going forward, and maybe they are since the history of Catholic Christianity is full of reaction and intolerance, but in a generation or two there will be people dissenting from the Dominicans and other "traditional" groups and their methods of control, again.
For me, the contradictions in Catholicism demonstrated by the existence of the Lorettines and the Dominicans are too confusing. A church that produces an attitude like SQ's is not one that I wish to be associated with. I have resolved these conflicts by opting out of religion altogether. I simply do not understand Catholicism, much less the idea of a revealed God who has allowed this mess.

Oh, AMEN to that. Yes, these so-called enlightened sisters and their liberal intellectual "aura" feels empowered and they LOOK AT THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HIERARCHY AS POWER AND DOMINATION. This is the same mentality and outlook of the fundamentalist protestants who sees Vatican or Catholic church as power and domination and therefore, they believe that Vatican is Satan. What difference do these religious women with the Seventhday Adventist and the likes in looking at Rome and Vatican? Nothing! Both are evil.

Really! Aren't you a tradegy! The "Orders" to which you refer will not be gone in 15 years. Where's your real proof that this will happen, and, please, spare me your very uneducated opinion!

JSTAP,

Yes, call me homophobic--what ever that made up term means. Again, like the sister, you're just one of the lackeys for Kirk and Madsen's cookbook reply.
Yes, tell me I am lacking in compassion when the liberals tolerate the homosexual lifestyle and they are dying out because of AIDS. So, who is lacking in compassion here. Yours is a false compassion based on your liberal self rightousnes and your so-called "following your conscience." What a bunch of nonsense! You must have a properly formed conscience and obviously you don't have one. How elitist to make such accusations about me. You're a fraud.
The facts speak for themselves-and that data was supplied by homosexuals and their supporters themselves. I won't answer your questions, because frankly, you don't make any sense. Again liberal double speak so as to avoid the truth.
John F

You will need to show us the proof that more females were molested than boys. The info I reviewed stated just the opposite. Nearly 70% of the reported molestaions were on boys between the age of 13 and eighteen.

Please do not add that the female cases would swell if all the cases were reported. We need to speak facts.

This is primarily a homosexual issue. The Vatican has stated as much in the last few weeks.

Vox populi, vox dei. Thank you Sr. Schneiders. I am convinced that the People Church is with you, and so is the Holy Spirit.

You read too much into that passage and forsake everything else that Jesus said previously. Can't wait till Jesus changes the locks!!!

It sounds as if they are operating outside the Catholic Church already if they don't accept something as basic as the doctrine of the Church, which is the vehicle for transmission of the faith through time.