Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context, and: Selling All: Commitment, Consecrated Celibacy, and Community in Catholic Religious Life (review)

Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context. Religious Life in a New Millennium, vol. 1. By Sandra Schneiders, IHM. New York: Paulist Press, 2000. 416 pp. $22.95.

Selling All: Commitment, Consecrated Celibacy, and Community in Catholic Religious Life. Religious Life in a New Millennium, vol. 2. By Sandra Schneiders, IHM. New York: Paulist Press, 2001. 512 pp. $24.95.

These two volumes about religious life are almost certain to become classics. I know of no other books that examine the institution of religious life with such a combination of scholarly analysis and penetrating insight, accompanied with both a deep faith and a willingness to examine all issues objectively. In many ways these volumes could not have been written earlier. They grew out of the massive disruptions American nuns experienced during the last quarter century that caused many of those living religious life, as well as those viewing it from outside, to become disoriented and confused about its raison d'etre. Religious life had always seemed stable and predictable. Women came together to do common works of mercy (teaching, nursing, social work), followed a common schedule, wore the same clothing, had a clear understanding of authority, and a clear and unambiguous relationship with the Church. One by one, following the cultural upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s, these stable characteristics began to disappear and religious life, which Sandra Schneiders describes as having "a distinctly premodern character" as late as the 1960s, was forced within a short 30 years to cope with all the disorienting qualities of postmodernity. This unprecedented challenge precipitated a deep crisis.

Sandra Schneiders is one of the first scholars I know to try to sort out the causes and effects of this crisis, and to suggest a possible scenario about what has happened to religious life and, even more important, what might happen to it in the future. Whether we agree with Schneiders' explanation or not, these books compel us to reconsider how we think about the current crisis in ways that facilitate both a useful critique as well as a much deeper understanding of religious life.

The volumes are carefully orchestrated to walk around religious life, examining it from all angles and exploring its strengths and weaknesses. The first volume, Finding the Treasure, takes a macroscopic perspective, situating religious life in its broadest human context--around the world and in all cultures. Schneiders examines in surprising detail the similarities and dissimilarities among its characteristics in other world religions, contending that religious life as a life-form and the vocation to live religious life are phenomena deeply rooted in all of humanity. She locates the particular phenomenon of religious life at the intersection of the monastic archetype of anthropology (which moves a person toward the exclusive quest for the transcendent); the virgin archetype of psychology (which produces in a person a certain relational autonomy and capacity for self-determination); and the religious virtuoso archetype of sociology (which combines in a person a giftedness for and specialization in the quest for God.) She argues that all three archetypes, wherever they are found in religious life around the world, have in common some integrating dynamic, which in Catholic religious life is the relationship with Christ.

Having situated Catholic religious life in this broad context, Schneiders then argues that "it is a life, not an organization or a workforce or a platonic essence of some kind," (40 FTT) and that its most consistent characteristic is a lifelong commitment to consecrated celibacy. Her contention that the vow of celibacy is most central to this life, and...