NUNS REACHING OUT TO LAITY TO FULFILL MISSION, TO SURVIVE
Religious sisterhood is in a state of transition.
Fewer women take religious vows, leaving some orders of nuns struggling to push forward their missions of education, health and social justice. But as society continues its trend toward secularism, another group of religious people is drawn closer to faith, and these laypeople, known as co-members, may carry the missions into the future.
“Certainly, it’s changing,” said Mary Kay Brannan, a member of the Sisters of Loretto. “Religious life has changed from the time that they were earnest to the monastery to the time they were more active, and now we’re in another change.”
That change for the Lorettos — and many other orders — is the rise of co-membership. Known as associates or third orders in other congregations, they participate in an order’s mission without taking vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience. They include married men and women, widows and singles.
They’re nothing new. But as the number of women taking formal vows has dropped, the Sisters of Loretto and other orders have intensified efforts around associates and similar programs to push forward their charism, or driving mission.
“We’re total groupies,” joked Lisa Reynolds, who became a co-member in 2009. “I’m just a total Loretto groupie.”
In December, the handful of Sisters of Loretto remaining in Colorado gathered at the Loretto Center in Lakewood to renew their vows and say goodbye before handing over their building to the Havern School for students with learning disabilities.
But before the ceremony wrapped up, the priest asked co-members to stand with the vowed sisters to renew their promises to the order. The group of people standing practically doubled in size.
In the Sisters of Loretto in the U.S. are 145 members and 201 co-members. In Colorado, there are 18 members and 48 co-members.
The Lorettos started co-membership in 1970, Brannan said. The first to join up were former sisters. But these days, many haven’t been in formal religious life before.
“There are less people in many congregations going into vowed life, but there’s an increasing desire, actually from my perspective, of people looking for meaningful community to be a part of that is really based in spiritual values, that is in line with peace and justice values,” Reynolds said.
Sisters of Loretto organized in Kentucky in the early 1800s and later spread, coming to Colorado in 1864. Their charism was founded on education, but the order now has a reputation for strong stands on social justice issues.
The number of women in religious orders saw an anomalous high in the U.S. from the 1940s to the 1960s, reaching a peak of about 175,000, according to the Apostolic Visitation, a three-year investigation into nuns in the U.S. by the Vatican.
But numbers have been in steep decline, dropping to 50,000 in 2014 as those who entered during the
peak years left religious life, the remaining sisters aged and considerably fewer women took formal vows, the Apostolic Visitation report said.
There are about 30 communities of nuns in Colorado with a total of about 200 sisters, according to the Archdiocese of Denver. In the past three years, three new communities have come to Denver.
Sharon Bramante, an associate university minister at Regis University, said the broader cultural shift away from religion makes people want to seek out religious life. Bramante used to be an associate with a Jesuit order in Wisconsin.
“It’s harder to be a Catholic Christian in a society where many people are moving to have no religious connection to anybody or anything,” she said. “In order to live a vibrant faith, you need companions on the journey, you need a deep community.”
A fifth of Americans still identify as Catholic, but numbers have been slipping, according to a 2015 Pew Research Center study. There were about 51 million adult Catholics in 2014, which was 3 million fewer than in 2007.
The Archdiocese of Denver said there has been a long tradition of laypeople participating in religious institutions reaching back nearly 1,000 years.
“In the last 40 years, new spiritual families have arisen around a variety of charisms that are composed of primarily, if not entirely, by laypeople,” said Karna Lozoya, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Denver. “While there is nothing new about laypeople living out a Christian life within the context of a spiritual family, it is heartening to see the recent multiplication and growth of spiritual families in the Church.
“That said, the growing numbers of laymembers of spiritual families is not a replacement for vocations to the religious life. Both the lay and religious vocations are essential to the life of the Catholic Church.”
The rise in co-membership and associates have been met with some backlash. Some didn’t like the experimentation. Some worried that it could threaten the vow of chastity or cause financial issues. Within the Loretto community, some people didn’t want men or non-catholics to participate.
The Loretto sisters were summoned to Rome in 2016 after the Apostolic Visitation, among the Vatican’s concerns were the organization’s structure for comembership. Many communities view their associates as a distinct group but the Loretto Community prides itself on deep involvement with co-members, involving them in everything except finances and canon law.
But the Lorettos pushed forward.
Kevin Burke, Regis University’s vice president of mission, said there’s no way to know what will happen with religious life in the future. He doesn’t believe nuns will disappear. And although the number of vowed sisters is low in America, that’s not the case around the world.
And the number of vowed religious people has waxed and waned throughout history for a variety of reasons, he said.
“Look, the way traditional religious life was shaped in the past might not be the way it’s shaped in the future,” he said. “If in the future there are fewer vowed members and primarily lay people, hey, who are we to tell God how it’s supposed to be run.”