Stripping of the Altar

Some congregations are partnering with others so they set aside worrying about administrative concerns and focus on whatever they can do for the mission in their remaining days.  Some monastic groups have taken up residence with apostolic groups.  Some younger congregations have taken over residences from older congregations.  Franciscans are living with Carmelites and Poor Clares are living with Precious Blood Sisters.  Sisters of Christian Doctrine are partnering with the Sparkill Dominicans, Tacoma Dominicans are partnering with the Sisters of Providence.  (Sr. Barbara Hagel and I are partnering with the Sisters of the Holy Family who are completing their mission and conserving the Gardens at Palmdale for a contemplative public park. The dedication is May 10.  You may know of more examples of this kind of inter-congregational partnering.)

In the old days there was competition between congregations.  At NCEA we would eye one another and ask, “How many Sisters do you have?” “How many schools do you have?”  “How many Novices?”  We would comment on habits and lack of habits.  This competition is not what religious life was meant to be.  The partnering that is happening now is a good sign of what is to come.  Yes, it is not easy. It is a Good Friday stripping away.  There is pain in the process.  As some say, “This is not what we entered religious life for.”  But others say, let’s get on with it!  There is freedom and peace ahead. There is a new and fresh identity once the housing questions are settled.  

Some Motherhouses have been turned over to new congregations.  Some have been leased or sold to provide housing for others.   Some have entered into “covenant” or sacred agreements to support one another through these transitions.  Relationship is at the heart of our covenant with God, and at the heart of our sacred agreements with one another.  We used to think these agreements would arise naturally out of a shared charism, but it seems that geographic location is more important.  Our charisms are similar enough that we can relate to one another, but we don’t want to pick up and move far away from the people we love, and those who have known and supported our congregation through the years.

  
March 31, 2019 a presentation by Sr. Mary Hughes, OP at Diocese of San Jose Chancery Office. 

Stretch of the Imagination

For the first time now LCWR leadership has no one with a lived experience of the time when CMSW became the LCWR.  (This change came about out of the desire of some congregations to include more than Major Superiors in leadership decisions. Not every congregation joined this movement and later those who refused to join LCWR formed the group called CMSWR).  The LCWR is going through an emerging learning process, interviewing women within and outside of religious life.  An interesting comment from one of these groups, Giving Voice, a group of religious women younger than 40, is that religious life today is in a “Crisis of Imagination.”  Why is that?  Sr. Mary proposed it is because of a need for privacy, for independence and false perceptions of what it would cost us to work side by side with others.  What will it take to initiate a stretch of the imagination.

She named some of the false perceptions that stand in our way: 

1.      Women are from Venus; men are from Mars. We believe we can’t really understand one another and work together.

2.      LCWR is a radical liberal group that is disrespectful of the Church. They are not authentic religious.  They live religious vows too loosely.

3.      Sisters who wear habits are too conservative.

4.      CMSWR are ultra conservative and not open to new ways. They want to return to pre-Vatican II days.

Sisters in congregations that belong to neither LCWR nor CMSWR say that they left LCWR because they wear the habit and Sisters who don’t wear the habit made them feel unwelcome; they tried joining the CMSWR but found that their members were too self-righteous and were always bad mouthing the LCWR. (Is it time to form a new group that combines the strengths of both of the others with some better guidelines for how to cooperate with one another??)

Sisters ministering in the U.S. from other countries suffer the perception that they only want to work with people from their ethnic group and that they don’t speak English.  Most of them do speak English and want to learn it better and work with English-speaking people. 

March 31, 2019 a presentation by Sr. Mary Hughes, OP at Diocese of San Jose Chancery Office.