January 10, 2009
Orders of women religious using creative ways to reach inquirers
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
Sister Karol Joseph, third from left, and Sister Catherine Thomas, at right, Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, share a meal with the young women at a discernment retreat in November. The retreat was held at the order’s motherhouse in Ann Arbor, Mich. Photo courtesy Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist
“Vocations to religious life often begin with women feeling a strong call, in the life where they are, to follow Jesus as authentically as they can,” according to Mercy Sister Katherine Doyle, vocations director for the Auburn regional community of the Sisters of Mercy, who are now part of the Sisters of Mercy West Midwest Community.
That call to follow authenticity can lead women to inquire into the religious communities they know, to find the community and the life where they can fully live their vocations.
But one of the challenges currently facing religious communities is “accessibility,” Sister Doyle said.
“We want to be available to women as other sisters were available to us, but it’s a challenge to know how to do that in an effective mode,” she said.
Other vocation directors for religious communities of women in the Diocese of Sacramento and Northern California face the same challenge. Because of the sharp drop-off in religious vocations since the 1970s, the number of sisters worldwide has dwindled, leaving fewer sisters available to the community at large.
Catholic schools in the United States, once a reliable source of contact with religious sisters, are now staffed almost exclusively by lay teachers, so that Catholic school children no longer grow up with nuns.
Loretto Sister Claire Vandborg, vocations director of the United States Province of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said that “high school students have kind of heard of us, but the younger ones barely know we exist.”
Sister Vandborg, whose office is located in the Diocese of Joliet, Ill., travels across the country to support vocations in Loretto communities. In the Joliet Diocese, she has joined with vocations directors of other communities to increase the visibility of religious women in general. She and members of neighboring communities visit area schools together and host a twice-yearly “nun run.”
The nun run is a weekend event, sponsored by six communities, Sister Vandborg explained. Women who are interested in religious life start at one convent on Friday evening, meet the community, then move on to another convent, where they spend the night. In the morning they breakfast with the community before traveling to another convent and meeting the sisters there.
This good-humored version of “speed-dating” continues until Sunday evening, when all of the communities gather for a meal with the inquiring women.
“We had four young women at the last nun run between 20 and 24 years old,” Sister Vandborg said. “At supper on Sunday the young women were spread out among the sisters, talking with sisters they now knew rather than hanging back. It was a great success.”
The Diocese of Joliet’s nun run may be unusual in pulling together religious communities to co-sponsor vocation events, but many communities sponsor some kind of “come and see” experience. With so few young people growing up among vowed religious, inviting inquirers in is one way to for them to become acquainted with the community.
Dominican Sister Pat Farrell, vocations director for the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael, said that after the initial contact, which is usually by e-mail, she’ll talk with the inquirer by phone, and then invite her to join the community in a discernment weekend.
“What they’re looking for, and what we’re looking for, is fit,” Sister Farrel said. “They want to live with sisters who share their values, share their hopes, share their ministries. When they fit, our spirit draws them. And we feel it, too.”
Inquirers at all communities learn the history of the order and its founding charism, or spirit. Dominican sisters are teachers primarily —the Dominicans are the Order of Preachers.
Sisters of Mercy are active contemplatives, committed to service: their prayer life makes their service more alive, Sister Doyle said, and their service brings life to their contemplation. They invite inquirers to pray and serve the poor with them.
Part of the Loretto charism is freedom, Sister Vandborg explained. Their order was founded in the 1609 as a self-governing order of women, not cloistered, patterned on the Society of Jesus and active in the world.
Whether a community is right for a woman depends on the order’s charism and on the woman’s sense of the living community before her. When it feels like home, several vocation directors said, then it is home.
Of the four women’s communities featured in this story, three — the Sisters of Mercy, the Loretto Sisters, and the Dominican Sisters of San Rafael — report just a few women each year entering the community. The women entering range in age from early 20s to mid-40s, most with college degrees. But one community in the diocese has a different experience.
The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, is a new order, founded only a decade ago in Michigan. The new order has grown to 84 members, including a community of four sisters in Loomis.
The sisters are young — the average age in the community is 26 — and when they arrange “come and see” weekends, they have had to cap attendance at 100.
“One time we had 230 young women for the weekend, and it was just too much,” said Sister Maximilian Marie Garretson, superior of the Loomis community of the Dominican Sisters of Mary.
The inquirers range in age from juniors in high school at 16 or 17 to women in their mid-30s, but the average age is 24. The inquirers’ first contacts are usually through the Internet, and eventually they are invited to spend a retreat over a Saturday night with the community.
But the pattern of the “come and see” weekend with these younger Dominican Sisters is distinctly similar to the pattern of a World Youth Day celebration. The young women arrive at the airport in Michigan and are transported to a school run by the order, adjacent to the order’s convent. The travelers spread out their sleeping bags and camp out on the floor.
The young women hear from a panel of sisters in the order, pray with the sisters, prepare meals, and meet with the vocations director. Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is available all night, as is the sacrament of reconciliation. The culmination of the weekend is Mass on Sunday.
Sister Garretson, who has attended several World Youth Day celebrations, said that “the same type of young people that World Youth Day attracts end up at our retreat.”
Of the more than 600 inquirers each year, about 10 enter the order, Sister Garretson said. The order isn’t old enough to answer the question, “Why do people stay?” she observed, but she hoped to answer the question herself in a few decades.
In the longer established religious communities, the answers to that question were similar.
Sister Farrell said that living her vocation in her community “gives me life.” Sister Vandborg said, “I want to spend the rest of my life with this peaceful joy.”
Sister Doyle said, “It’s a life full of meaning, and God is present in that life. It’s a love of the life.”
“Joy is the fruit of the spirit,” she added. “If the life is right for you, you become holier, healthier and happier.”
