Religious Life: Who is Invited, and To What?

The extent of the commitment it requires means that the religious life "will never be a common choice," said Sister Doris Gottemoeller, president of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, in an address Sept. 5 in New Orleans to the National Religious Vocation Conference. She said that only God knows how many are called to the religious life. "But," she observed, "suppose the number were one in 1,000, 0.1 percent of the population. If so, there would be at least 20,000 Catholic men and women under the age of 30 in the United States today with the grace of a religious vocation. This is the throng waiting to be invited into our tent!" In inviting them, however, Gottemoeller said that those in vocations work "should not minimize the extent of the commitment required." She said, "We should invite persons who are willing to 'abandon all' to follow Christ.... We are looking for ordinary people who are willing to make an extraordinary choice." She said, "We should invite young men and women into a specific way of life inspired by the Gospel, oriented toward mission and lived according to a rule approved by the church." She added that "a way of life consists of a number of depth choices which have an internal congruence -- choices around sexuality, use of possessions, autonomy, mission, etc. They are neither lightly made nor lightly surrendered." Gottemoeller discussed who should be invited to religious life; what they are being invited to; and what the church has to do "with our process of inviting and welcoming." Among her points, Gottemoeller examined what she termed "commitment mechanisms" in religious life -- the clear boundaries between "those within and without." She said that "in the process of renewal we have discarded a whole set of commitment mechanisms that are no longer relevant or appropriate to our culture, but we are still in the process of identifying those which interpret and express our way of life today. This is an urgent task for each congregation." Gottemoeller's text follows.

The words we have just heard proclaimed (Is. 54:2-3) swell with promise: "Enlarge the space of your tent ... for your descendants will be numerous enough to dispossess the nations and people the desolate cities." This certainly sounds like good news for vocation directors! But before you begin adding new wings to your motherhouses, let's probe more deeply into the meaning of this sacred text. Writing near the end of the exile, the prophet Isaiah looks forward to the triumphant return of the Israelites to Jerusalem. Despite the fact that the circumstances are not auspicious -- the people have come through a long period of oppression and the land allotted to them is far from adequate -- he foretells a stunning reversal of fortune. In the lines just preceding the text we heard read, Isaiah uses the image of a barren wife suddenly overwhelmed with children:

"Raise a glad cry, you barren one who did not bear, break forth in jubilant song, you who were not in labor, for more numerous are the children of the deserted wife than the children of her who has a husband, says the Lord."

In the Epistle to the Galatians, Paul applies this ancient prophecy of new life to the church (Gal. 4:21-31). The children of the two wives of Abraham symbolize the difference between the old and new covenants. The children of Hagar the slave are born under the Mosaic covenant into slavery; the children of the freeborn Sarah inherit the Christian promise and are born into freedom. As the inheritors of the promise, Christians are destined to share the miraculous good fortune of the woman in the prophecy.

These are exhilarating words, and they have been amply realized in history. Countless millions through the ages have been reborn through baptism into the freedom of Christ. No tent, no coliseum, no modern-day Superdome or Sugar Bowl could hold a tiny fraction of the throng foretold by the prophet and claimed for Christ by Paul.

But these scriptural texts speak of the Israelite people and of the church. How do they apply to you and to your ministry? Do they mean that we can expect an overwhelming number of new members any time soon? What can we learn about the work of vocation promotion by a meditation on these words? If consecrated life is at the very heart of the church, as affirmed by the recent synod ("Vitae Consecrata", 3), if a religious congregation is in some ways an expression of church, then there should be some insights here even if they are not as obvious as the expectation of an unprecedented growth in numbers.

This is an especially important year to be reflecting on the significance of vocation ministry. The recently published National Strategy for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life¹ signals new interest and commitment on the part of the U.S. church. And the publication of "Vita Consecrata" calls for renewed efforts at vocation promotion throughout the world.

Let me quote some key words of the apostolic exhortation: "The most authentic way to support the Spirit's action [in the development of religious vocations] is for institutes to invest their "best resources" generously in vocational work" (No. 64, italics added). I recognize that your congregations have responded to this challenge, and that I am addressing a group of women and men who have thought long and hard about the issues and who have enormous reservoirs of experience in and commitment to this ministry. There is growing awareness of the significance of vocation ministry within our congregations today and a growing awareness of the significance of consecrated life in the church.

The synod also said that "the task of promoting vocations should increasingly express a joint commitment of the whole church. It calls for the active collaboration of pastors, religious, families and teachers." It should be "an integral part of the overall pastoral plan of every particular church" (No. 64). Let me add, it should be an integral part of the planning of every congregation.

As many of you know, my own institute was founded five years ago through the merger of 17 previously existing congregations. On the second anniversary of our founding, July 20, 1993, the leadership team sent individual copies of a letter to each and every sister and associate, asking them to focus on vocation recruitment. We suggested that our goals should be 100 new members a year. Well, as a strategy, it certainly drew attention to the issue! Sisters were surprised, amazed, pleased, discomfited, annoyed, critical and questioning. I don't want to focus on our Mercy story, but I will be sharing some personal reflections on our experience.

Let me return to the image of the tent which is big enough to shelter the whole people of God and apply it to your religious congregation. I would suggest that we take some time to look at those gathering within the tent, then at the tent itself, and finally at the ropes and stakes supporting it. In other words, I want to address three questions: Whom should we invite? What are we inviting them into? And what does the church have to do with this process of inviting and welcoming? Whom should we invite? Remember Isaiah's image of a tent is coupled with that of the barren wife bearing many children. I'm not suggesting that we invite infants or adolescents, but I am suggesting that the first answer to this question is that:

1. We should invite "young" adults. When my leadership team wrote to our sisters, we suggested that we focus on inviting women between the ages of 22 and 35. As a result some sisters accused us of "ageism," of discriminating against older women. And, indeed, many of the women entering our communities today are significantly older than 35.

   The CARA Formation Directory for Men and Women Religious 1994-1995² indicates that women considering religious life are 10 years older than their male counterparts. In fact, about half of the women in prenovitiate programs are 30 years of age or older. Despite this trend, I still believe that it's important, even crucial, to recruit younger candidates. (It goes without saying that if a desirable age to enter is the early or mid-20s, the recruitment has to begin much earlier.)

   I emphasize the importance of youth for several reasons. From the standpoint of the congregation, the generations who will follow and our future leaders are only in their teens and 20s now. Sometimes we spend so much time telling the stories of our great men and women of the past that we don't allow ourselves to imagine that our greatest leaders may not yet have entered the congregation. Furthermore, the shaping of the community of the future, its ongoing adaptation and renewal require the perspective of young and fresh eyes.

   I have listened to too many discussions of how we should change in order to attract new members. There is a legitimacy to the question, and I will return to it later. But most of our present members have already been agents of significant change in our congregations as we moved out of the pre-Vatican II quasi-monastic lifestyle into our present reality. We have to trust those who come after us to be equally creative based on their own life experience and their Spirit-given insights. Our responsibility to them is to pass on the very best of the tradition and the witness of our own commitment, and to challenge them to carry it into the next millennium, adapting and renewing as they go forward.

   From the standpoint of the newer members themselves, youth is important because they are more open to the transforming power of a religious charism. Desirable candidates are those who are free and open to make a life choice, not those who feel they have not been chosen or who have been disappointed in earlier choices. Furthermore, young people are apt to be somewhat more homogeneous in education, life experience and world view.

   I recognize that vocational discernment and formation is a very individual and personal process. However, the individual is being invited to consider a corporate lifestyle and commitment. Journeying with others introduces them into this element of religious life in a natural way, and a degree of homogeneity makes it easier to structure these processes.

2. Continuing this description of who should be invited, I would suggest that we should invite persons who are willing to "abandon all" to follow Christ. With its echoes of the story of the rich young man in the Gospel, this is a traditional way to express the thought that we are looking for persons who are capable of heroism, of generosity above and beyond the ordinary. In other words, we are looking for ordinary people who are willing to make an extraordinary choice. We are inviting them to undertake a wild adventure of the heart, even if they will never leave the city of their birth.

   We should not minimize the extent of the commitment required if one is to make Jesus Christ the sole and all-encompassing object of one's faith, hope and love within the context of the life and mission of a religious congregation. Unfortunately there is a subtle tendency among some of our members to act as if the requirements of our way of life as spelled out in our constitutions are some kind of pious rhetoric, perhaps devised to secure church approval, but never meant to be literally observed. Therefore the passion required to vow celibacy is diluted to "remaining unmarried"; the generosity of evangelical poverty becomes sending a regular assessment to the motherhouse; the selflessness of religious obedience is reduced to attending a few community meetings; fidelity to congregational mission means keeping a job; and the shared spiritual life of the congregation is ignored in favor of private spiritual journeys.

   The very extent of the commitment required means that this will never be a common choice. How many people does God call? Only God knows! But suppose the number were 1 in 1000, 0.1 percent of the population. If so, there would be at least 20,000 Catholic men and women under the age of 30 in the United States today with the grace of a religious vocation. This is the throng waiting to be invited into our tent!

3. In seeking them out, we should actively encourage persons of diverse backgrounds but without neglecting the prevailing culture in the congregation. This is a point of some anxiety and ambiguity, so let me try to be clear about what I mean. As the face of the U.S. church changes, the face of our religious congregations should also change. There is some evidence that this is happening. For example, the CARA directory notes that while over half the candidates to clerical institutes are still white, the percentages of Hispanics and Asians are increasing. The same trends cannot yet be verified for institutes of brothers or sisters, but most congregations have made an explicit commitment to encourage multiculturalism, whether rooted in race, ethnic origin, class or economic status.

In her recent book "Pathways to Re-Creating Religious Communities", sociologist Patricia Wittberg, SC, discusses some pros and cons of this effort.³ I find her suggestions confirm my own intuitions, and I offer them for your consideration. Wittberg points out that ethnic and socioeconomic homogeneity has been characteristic of congregations in the United States since their beginnings. For example, the needs of various immigrant groups have been served by specific congregations which shared their culture and language. And since teaching communities tended to attract their own alumnae, those congregations which taught the wealthy and privileged had a higher percentage of recruits from that stratum of society.

Some degree of homogeneity persists to this day for several reasons. First, persons of different cultural backgrounds may prefer different customs and expressions of religious life. An example might be congregations which have recently relocated here from Vietnam or the Philippines or India. While inculturation and indigenization are important, there is also a value in maintaining customs which are effective expressions of religious meaning. Second, studies of college students on campus show us that members of a cultural minority may choose self-segregation as a form of cultural affirmation:

"Members of the dominant majority rarely realize how completely the mainstream culture reflects their world view, and how very difficult it is to hold on to an alternate culture in the face of such overwhelming pressure. Sometimes the only way for Latinos or African-Americans to avoid being submerged by the culture of whites -- even well-intentioned whites who are honestly trying to give them space -- is to withdraw and build their own spirituality."⁴

Wittberg suggests that a similar phenomenon may be experienced in religious communities: "If African-Americans or Latinos are to be attracted to Roman Catholic religious life, they may have to devise monoethnic communities that enflesh their own spiritual focus."

A third reason for caution about focusing on multicultural recruitment is that recruitment to any social movement is most effectively done through friendship and kinship networks. You all know that a personal invitation from a friend or relative is far more effective than a media ad or a pamphlet in the back of church. The most obvious recruits are still the younger sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, cousins, friends, co-workers and associates of our present members.

However, recruiting through such networks automatically skews members' backgrounds to the social class or ethnicity in which these networks are located. We should not neglect these traditional sources even if it means that multiculturalism will not be achieved as quickly.

Finally, Wittberg suggests that, paradoxically, multicultural membership might be more readily achieved by not trying specifically to promote it. The important thing is to focus clearly on the meaning and purpose and goals of one's institute and to make sure that every member -- including those who may represent diverse cultures -- has the fullest possible opportunity to realize them.

She concludes that, in time, some communities may find that the particular focus they have chosen for themselves attracts only Latinas or only upper-class whites. But, "as long as the doors are truly open to any who share the vision, there is no shame if only certain socioeconomic or ethnic groups choose to knock at them."⁵ Of course the question of whether the doors are truly open and the members truly welcoming has to be a matter of ongoing discernment.

Let me move on now from a consideration of those "entering the tent" -- young adults of the same and diverse backgrounds as our present membership who are willing to risk all -- to the tent itself and to a consideration of our second question, What are we inviting new members to join?

A tent is a very popular symbol these days. During their convention in San Diego the Republicans frequently referred to their party as a "big tent." By this they meant to tell us that there is room for all kinds of diversity within their ranks -- diversity of gender, of race, of geographic region, of economic status, of physical ability or disability, etc. Both they and the Democrats paraded persons from every condition and walk of life across the stage during their conventions in order to demonstrate their commitment to this type of diversity.

But there is also another kind of diversity. The political parties also used the big tent symbol to emphasize that there is room within their ranks for differing principles and convictions on issues such as immigration, taxes, welfare reform, affirmative action and abortion. We were assured time and again that differing, even fundamentally opposed views, could be reconciled for the sake of inclusivity, which seemingly is more important than any other principle.

Two articles in yesterday's Washington Post used the tent image: One said that the Democrats have a "tiny tent" because they are not open to pro-life speakers; the other used the "big tent" image to highlight Bob Dole's turnaround on tax cuts.

There's obviously something to be said for this type of diversity and inclusivity. Compromise and consensus-building are essential to the democratic process. But even in the political arena most people recognize that there are some principles which are too fundamental to be compromised, some commitments which are too valuable to betray.

What meaning does the symbol of a tent have for us? "Inclusivity" is frequently touted as a value in discussions of religious life, but sometimes our use of the term is ambivalent and confusing. A few minutes ago I spoke of multicultural and ethnic inclusivity and how we might approach it as a value. But some of our members also use "inclusivity" to mean incorporating men and women, married and single, temporarily and permanently committed, full time and part time Catholics and non-Catholics, Christians and non-Christians into membership in the same congregation.

They seem to envision religious life along the lines of a social movement in which people participate in various ways and with varying degrees of intensity, dropping in and dropping out as opportunities present themselves or as their commitment waxes and wanes. Instead of every member making essentially the same commitment through the profession of perpetual vows, there are a variety of ways of belonging which are more or less self-selected, with the possibility of moving from one to another with relative ease. I would suggest that that type of inclusivity erodes clarity about the central meaning and purpose of life within the "tent" of religious life and will ultimately destroy a religious congregation.

1. Therefore, the first answer to the question of what we are inviting young people into is, we should invite young men and women into a specific way of life inspired by the Gospel, oriented toward mission and lived according to a rule approved by the church. A way of life consists of a number of depth choices which have an internal congruence -- choices around sexuality, use of possessions, autonomy, mission, etc. They are neither lightly made nor lightly surrendered.

   The choices mutually reinforce one another to create the integrity of the way of life. Gospel inspiration means that this vocation is radically Christocentric, oriented toward the person and mission of Jesus. Participation in Jesus' mission means that this is not primarily an experience of personal self-development or self-fulfillment, but a commitment to live for others, ministering to them in their many needs and vulnerabilities. And living according to a rule approved by the church means that there is no such thing as generic religious life.

   The church recognizes specific congregations with specific charisms and specific missions. It is a corporate lifestyle, not a collection of individual interpretations of personal call. Further, it is an ecclesial lifestyle, lived within and for the church.

   An implication of this understanding of the tent is that clear boundaries exist between those within and without, between members and nonmembers. Although in some sense boundaries are limiting, they also promote organizational health, creativity and prophetic witness: The integrity of the whole requires that the privileges and requirements of membership be universally recognized; creativity requires the discipline of working within limits; prophecy requires the consistent and publicly identifiable commitment to our way of life in order to communicate a message.

   Sociologists point out that the maintenance of boundaries requires specific commitment mechanisms, i.e., practices, customs, rituals and obligations which reinforce common identity and differentiate members from nonmembers.⁶ In the process of renewal we have discarded a whole set of commitment mechanisms that are no longer relevant or appropriate to our culture, but we are still in the process of identifying those which interpret and express our way of life today. This is an urgent task for each congregation. So the first thing I'm saying about the tent is that the way of life it encloses is so distinctive that clear boundaries and specific behaviors can be identified and maintained.

2. A second characteristic is that those within the tent are living that way of life with integrity and passionate commitment. Your task as vocation promoters is impossible if the present members have so compromised the meaning of their lives that you can't credibly explain and defend it.

   I referred above to the temptation to view the prescriptions in our constitutions as mere rhetoric. Let me draw out that thought a little more. It's commonplace to say that everyone in a congregation has a responsibility for vocational recruitment. What this means, it seems to me, is that every member is living his or her commitment in such a way as to attract admiration and interest, and that every member wants to share it with others because it has been an experience of personal joy and fulfillment.

   This was the reasoning behind the Mercy leadership letter to our members. We said that inviting others is an expression of our own commitment. It has as much or more to do with refreshing our own energies as it does with enlarging our numbers.

   Furthermore, prayer for vocations is a way of giving thanks to God for the goodness of the life we have experienced. An inability to pray for and invite and welcome new members speaks of a fatal malaise in a congregation. As vocation ministers you can't be responsible for the vitality of the whole community. But the community's vitality, its sense of corporate identity and spirituality and mission, has to stand behind your work as vocation ministers.

3. Moving on, since this isn't the only "tent" available to the people of God, we should be clear about the "objective excellence" of membership. Here I'm citing a phrase which is used more than once in "Vita Consecrata" (Nos. 18, 32, 192). It is unfortunate that the English text uses the phrase "objective superiority", because a comparison with the Latin and Italian texts indicates that "objective excellence" is the more accurate translation. To affirm one life choice, it is not necessary to denigrate another choice.

   Some of you may have dual responsibilities for recruiting and screening applicants to membership, to associate status and to volunteer programs. Basically, your role is to invite and accompany and guide each individual to a free and informed discernment. What I'm suggesting is that, to be informed, the individual has to understand the definition, responsibilities and privileges of each choice. Which means that you have to understand and present them clearly, and the congregation also has to share that same understanding.

   There are differences in commitment and potential benefit among the choices. Giving a year of one's life as a volunteer is a great and good thing to do and is precisely what the Spirit is calling some young people to do. But exploring the possibility of a lifetime commitment is far riskier and potentially more beneficial. I would suggest that your time and energy should be biased in favor of the greater commitment.

So far we've described the tent as a place of objective excellence, with clear boundaries and with all of its inhabitants clearly committed to the way of life they have professed. Let's look now at the scaffolding that supports it.

Our last question is, What does the church have to do with our process of inviting and welcoming? Our Scripture text told us to lengthen the ropes and make firm the stakes, recognizing that the wider the tent, the firmer the framework needed to support it. I use the ropes and stakes as a metaphor for the church, the structure which supports and encompasses religious life. Of course the analogy limps: Ropes and stakes are extrinsic to a tent, while the church is intrinsic to religious life. This may seem too obvious to need saying, but in my experience some people are looking to membership in a religious congregation as a substitute for membership in the church rather than as an intensification of ecclesial life, a specific way of living within the church.

Joining a religious community is not a strategy for avoiding mediocre parish liturgies, for challenging doctrinal authority or for withdrawing from the wider ecclesial community. The recent synod reaffirmed that consecrated life is essential to the holiness and mission of the church. It asserted further that we have a prophetic role to play in the church in virtue of the radical nature of our following of Christ ("Vita Consecrata", 84).

"Vita Consecrata" reminds us that prophecy emanates from a burning desire for the holiness of God. It calls us to listen to God's word in prayer, to proclaim that word with our lives, with our lips and with our actions, denouncing evil and exploring new ways to apply the Gospel in history. How do we do that? The apostolic exhortation says, "Prophetic witness requires the constant and passionate search for God's will, for self-giving, "for unfailing communion in the church", for the practice of spiritual discernment and love of the truth" (No. 84, emphasis added)

Therefore, we cannot authentically invite and welcome others to religious life unless we have dealt ourselves with our own convictions and feelings about the church in its divine and human reality. We all need to overcome the temptation toward a minimalistic or truncated view of the church which neglects any of its teaching, pastoral, sacramental, spiritual or communal dimensions. As the National Strategy for Vocations affirms, "Each Christian vocation comes from God and is God's gift. However, it is never bestowed outside of or independently of the church."⁷

I have talked overly long about the grand tent described in the Isaian vision. Perhaps after all a tent isn't the best metaphor for the church or religious life. It's less sturdy than other structures, lacking a firm foundation, prone to collapse in a strong wind, able to be struck and moved from place to place, without architectural distinction or pretensions of beauty.

But there is another tent in the Scripture, one that was used to shelter the ark, the most sacred symbol of the Mosaic covenant (1 Kgs. 8; 2 Sm. 6-7). Entering the tent meant approaching the Holy of Holies, the nearest thing to the presence of God on earth. Isn't it true that our communities, simple, without pretense, lacking worldly security or honor, diminished by lack of members and resources, can still offer a way to union with Jesus Christ, the prize above all prizes, the giver and guarantor of the promise?

Our scriptural text contained two images, the tent and the barren wife suddenly overwhelmed with new offspring. Let me end with a reflection on your role as midwives of the futures of your congregations. The midwife doesn't create life -- she welcomes and assists it. Her chief virtues are patience in awaiting the time, skill in assisting the process and reverence for the form in which the new life emerges. May these virtues grow in you, as you become inheritors of the promise and midwives of the future!

1. National Conference of Catholic Bishops' Committee on Vocations, "Future Full of Hope: A National Strategy for Vocations to the Priesthood and Religious Life in the Dioceses and Archdioceses of the United States" (1996).

2. Sister Eleace King, IHM, ed., Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate, Georgetown University, Washington, D.C.

3. (New York: Paulist Press, 1996), pp. 113-118.

4. Ibid., p. 115.

5. Ibid., p. 118.

6. Albert Dilanni, SM, "Religious Life: Directions for a Future," Review for Religious (July 1996), p. 352-353; and Wittberg (cf. Note 3), p. 100-112.

7. "Future Full of Hope," p. 38.