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Religious Institutes Coming to Completion and Their Legacy

RCRI, October 3, 2019, Dallas Texas

by Amy Hereford, CSJ, JD, JCD

Scope of the Issue

  • 90% of women religious over the age of 70
  • 60% of men religious over the age of 70
  • 75-90% of institutes will cease in the coming decades - 300-350 institutes

One solution

  • Perfectae caritatis ('65) #21 - recommended merger and affiliation for declining institutes
  • Under this model, remaining institutes could have 5-10 institutes merging or affiliating
  • Does this model allow for the flourishing of these remaining institutes? or the flourishing of religious life?

Indicia

  • Motu Proprio Ecclesiae sanctae ('66) gave indicia of decline
  • the small number of religious in proportion to the age of the institute or the monastery,
  • the lack of candidates over a period of several years,
  • the advanced age of the majority of its members.

Particular Challenges

  • Providing ongoing leadership for the institute.
  • Providing care for aging members, in addition to health-care, this includes pastoral care and support of the members, those facing the challenges of aging and those moving out of full-time ministry, as well as those still in active ministry.
  • Providing leadership in the sponsored ministries.

Cost of Eldercare

  • 1986 NRRO formed by USCCB, CMSM, and LCWR to help address the funding shortfall
  • Collect and analyze data
  • Consulting with individual communities and developing best practices

Completion of Life Journey

  • Older and Grayer
  • Two centuries of steady growth, sometimes outpacing population growth
1776 1900 1965 2020
US Population 2.5M 76M 191M 330M
US Catholic Population 50,000 7M 46M 76M
Religious Women 200 25,000 185,000 40,000
  • Dramatic decline - outside our national experience

Theology of Completion

  • JB Metz / Karl Rahner
  • Ars moriendi Unlike the wider Church, religious institutes are not intended to live forever.
  • The “gates of Hell will not prevail against [the church].”
  • Religious institutes are gifts of the Spirit that blows where it will
  • They have a life-span
  • Death is an ending of the life-cycle, not failure or defeat
  • We have a paschal theology.
  • Only if we “cling desperately” to what is passing away, will the end be a defeat. (Metz)
  • Our most important role as Christians is to say “yes” to God, and the final, most complete yes we are called to say is the yes to death. (Rahner)
  • Our call is to come, to follow, to lay down our lives, and to surrender even in death to the call of God who is never absent in our journey.

Journey to Completion

  • Orderly transition of ministries
  • Ensure the suitable care of its last members,
  • Passing on of the spiritual patrimony of the institute
  • Settling its legacy, and disposition of any remaining temporal goods.

Sponsorship

  • Traditional Sponsorship
    • Ensuring the Mission and Catholic Identity
    • Ensuring Communion with the Church
  • Transfering Sponsorship
  • Ministerial Public Juridic Person
  • Acknowledged as Catholic

Eldercare

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