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April 23,
2007
VOL.
45, NO. 8Oakland,
CA
Fewer members doesn’t mean end of religious life
Even though
the average age of religious-order priests, sisters and brothers serving
in the United States is increasing and their numbers are declining, don’t
conclude religious communities are dying out, a well-known scholar said
during a recent national meeting in Menlo Park.
Instead, think of consecrated life as an “ongoing history”
being written by the Holy Spirit, advised Oblate Father Frank Morrisey,
adding that the divine author’s last chapter is “yet to come.”
A professor of canon law at St. Paul University in Ottawa, the priest
presented an overview of the history of religious life -- with a view
to the future -- in a series of talks to the men and women who serve as
the liaison between their bishops and those in consecrated life in their
dioceses.
Father Morrisey said that declining numbers in religious life mirror a
breakdown of secular society, which “is at a crucial breaking point.”
He cited a widening gulf between the “haves and the have-nots”
as a primary example.
At the same time, progressive and traditional Catholics are becoming more
polarized, he said, and too frequently questioning of authority “is
immediately branded as dissident or immoral.”
“Not surprisingly, then, this has repercussions on vocations to
consecrated life as we have known it,” Father Morrisey said. But,
he added, “we also see many signs of new life.”
He paid tribute to “thousands and thousands of church members who
are seeking for deeper spirituality.”
Father Morrisey advised his listeners to be proactive about the future.
“Proclaim the good news to the world, as it exists today, not as
religious institutes imagined it to be some 50 or so years ago,”
he said.
Religious institutes of tomorrow must be based on the person of Jesus,
not on structures, he said.
