{"id":1572,"date":"2012-08-09T14:23:29","date_gmt":"2012-08-09T18:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/?p=1572"},"modified":"2012-08-12T18:17:28","modified_gmt":"2012-08-12T22:17:28","slug":"more-on-womens-religious-vocations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/08\/09\/more-on-womens-religious-vocations\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Women’s Religious Vocations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apropos of Linda’s recent posts regarding women religious and vocations, the new\u00a0Chair-elect of ASA’s\u00a0Sociology of Religion section- \u00a0Patricia Wittberg- weighed in on this very topic<\/a> in an\u00a0article in America.<\/p>\n

Reporting on data from the 2009 NRVC-CARA study on recent vocations to the religious life<\/a>\u00a0(which Linda mentioned and linked to previously)<\/del>, the article does a nice job of highlighting the contemporary challenge facing religious orders, in general<\/em>, in attracting vocations. \u00a0It is probably worth noting that Patricia and her co-author, Mary Johnson, are both women religious and sociologists. \u00a0As such, they use their empirical data to debunk simplistic popular views, which fail to grasp the complex reality of attracting women’s vocations in our current era. \u00a0 \u00a0Some readers have criticized the piece itself as being misleading for stating too simply\u00a0that almost equal numbers of women\u00a0have been attracted to institutes in both conferences of women religious in the U.S. in recent years–without noting in the same paragraph that\u00a0their are over four times as many LCWR orders as CMSWR orders in the study. \u00a0This is an important qualification, but since the authors pointed out this very distribution in the paragraph prior, I don’t think they were misleading anyone. \u00a0Perhaps a larger danger is that other commentators may fail to provide that same context. <\/p>\n

For instance, the title of\u00a0Fr. James Martin, S.J.<\/a>\u00a0 discussion of the piece \u00a0“LCWR orders received almost equal numbers of vocations as CMSWR orders” was\u00a0potentially problematic, as he failed to clarify and contextualize the title until the sixth paragraph of an eight paragraph article. \u00a0Still, once he got around to it, he did a \u00a0good job of clarifying things by stating:<\/p>\n

“And to be a little\u00a0more precise, it should also be noted\u00a0that\u00a0the LCWR represents a greater number of orders (80%\u00a0versus the 20%\u00a0represented by\u00a0the CMSWR) so the CMSWR\u00a0orders are attracting proportionally larger numbers.\u00a0 But not in absolute numbers, which is the usual\u00a0comment that one\u00a0hears from\u00a0pundits, church officials and even sisters.\u00a0 Overall,\u00a0of all the women entering religious orders these days,\u00a0roughly half\u00a0choose progressive groups, and roughly half\u00a0choose\u00a0traditional groups.”<\/p>\n

David Cruz-Uribe’s \u00a0reflection on the article<\/a>\u00a0at Vox Nova suggests that Wittberg and Johnson were not mistaken in perceiving some myths in need of debunking. \u00a0For more myth-busting, you can go to this mythbusters page<\/a> on the National Religious Vocation Conference website.<\/p>\n

Finally, since this post seems focused on clarifying (and hopefully not just ‘nitpicking’), I believe that Fr. Martin was in error when he said:<\/p>\n

“No<\/em>\u00a0women\u2019s religious orders\u2014of any stripe\u2014are receiving more than a handful of vocations, as the new study shows.”<\/p>\n

As Wittberg and Johnson note,<\/p>\n

“The key finding here is that only a very small number of institutes <\/em>are attracting more than a handful of entrants.” (emphasis mine)<\/p>\n

This very small group of institutes (who are<\/span> attracting more than a handful of recruits) are also attracting the most media attention and are not necessarily\u00a0typical<\/span>\u00a0of CMSWR (or LCWR) orders.\u00a0Consequently, “Few are paying attention to the fine work of N.R.V.C. and the religious institutes from both leadership conferences that have initiated new vocation programs, which have galvanized the energy of the institutes and hold the promise of further growth in the near future.”<\/p>\n

Perhaps, this last point is the most important and what truly galvanized them to write this article. \u00a0In looking to the future, Wittberg and Johnson highlight several key questions that need to be answered in facing the challenge of recruiting young women religious today:<\/p>\n

“What will religious institutes have to do in order to build and sustain more multicultural communities and institutes that look like the youth and young adults of the church in this country? What structural and cultural changes will have to take place to ensure a future for new generations of religious whose cultural mix will look very different from the dominant generations in religious life today? And what is the responsibility of the wider church to the vocation efforts of religious institutes?”<\/p>\n

These are important questions.<\/p>\n

Perhaps Linda will weigh in with her own thoughts. \u00a0And please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apropos of Linda’s recent posts regarding women religious and vocations, the new\u00a0Chair-elect of ASA’s\u00a0Sociology of Religion section- \u00a0Patricia Wittberg- weighed in on this very topic in an\u00a0article in America. Reporting on data from the 2009 NRVC-CARA study on recent vocations … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":411,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/411"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1572"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1572\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}