Apostolic Religious Life in America Today: A Response to the Crisis

Introduction: The Challenge of Religious Life in the United States Today

Introduction The Challenge of Religious Life in the United States Today Richard Gribble, C.S.C. Since Antony in the third century and the Cenobites a few generations later went to the desert to seek solitude with God, men and women have practiced religious life. Over the two millennia of Christianity new religious communities have arisen to meet the needs of the contemporary Church and society. The evolution of religious life allowed for greater diversity in practice. The monastic orders of the late patristic and medieval periods continued to serve a special function even as the mendicant orders of the thirteenth century met a new need. Similarly, the rise of apostolic orders during the Counter-Reformation met greater and more varied needs, while never abandoning the ideas of earlier generations. This evolutionary pattern of religious life continued through the restoration period after the French Revolution. Today, as well, men and women of faith continue to hear the call to serve God and his people in the consecrated life. While the style and methods of living the religious life have changed with the centuries, the ability of religious com3 4 Richard Gribble munities to stay focused on the charism of their founders and to maintain an abiding loyalty to the institutional Church have been anchors of stability in a constantly changing world. Clearly, religious life has been and will continue to be a significant contributor to the life and vitality of Roman Catholicism. Contemporary Religious Life: A House Divided, A Changing Culture While religious life had always evolved and sprouted new branches in response to the needs of the day, prior to Vatican II a general sense of unity and even uniformity was normative. Priests, brothers, and sisters, for the most part, closely followed the tradition of past generations, with the charism of the founders of their communities and the evangelical counsels as guiding principles. It is also true, however, that some religious communities experienced splits in their own ranks. The split in the early sixteenth century of the Franciscans into three separate communities, the Order of Friars Minor, the Conventuals, and the Capuchins, is one illustrative example. More recently the Sisters of Divine Providence in Peru experienced a similar split with the emergence of the Daughters of Divine Providence . Religious in individual communities certainly had various opinions on issues, both general to the Church and specific to the congregation, but the basic structure, especially for apostolic orders, of conducting their ministry under the umbrella of the institutional Church was not a significant issue. Religious men and women and their congregations were generally satisfied to meet the needs of God’s people within the structures that had been defined for them. The Church in general and religious congregations in particular evinced unity and cohesion before Vatican II. After the Council, however, differing visions of how to implement its teachings quickly emerged. The four sessions of the Council produced sixteen documents of three types in descending order of significance. Four constitutions —including documents on liturgy, revelation, the Church, and the Church in the modern world—were the Council’s crowning Introduction 5 achievement. Nine decrees—including important treatises on ecumenism and the lay apostolate—and three declarations—including the one document with a distinctively American tone, the Declaration on Religious Liberty—were also published. The net effect of these important documents was the emergence in the minds of most Roman Catholics of a new self-understanding for the Church, exemplified most significantly in the rise of collegiality, the increased role of the laity, ecumenical dialogue, and a complete updating of the liturgy, including the use of the vernacular language. Now close to fifty years after Vatican II opened, debates continue to rage on what the Council accomplished. The theologian Timothy McCarthy posits the question: “What process did the council set in motion—was it a renewal, a reform, a reformation or a retrieval and reinterpretation of the Catholic tradition?”1 McCarthy concedes that renewal and reform were central to the council, but the best description for him is that of theologian Robert Imbelli, who views Vatican II as retrieval and recovery of the true Catholic tradition. McCarthy goes one step further to suggest that the bishops built upon the tradition through renewal and reform of the Church. John O’Malley, S.J., one of the ranking experts on Vatican II, has synthesized the debate in recent publications. He contrasts the...