Catholics discuss future of religious life

By Meghan Wood

FIVE HUNDRED and fifty Catholic nuns, monks and priests gathered from across Canada last weekend for a forum on the future of religious life at College Jean-de-Brebeuf in Montreal.

"Religious life should move away from a centered position and risk situating itself between two frontiers or boundaries -- that of the people satisfied with the Church and that of the people not satisfied with the Church," said Sr. Louise Stafford of Canadian Religious Conference (CRC), the association of leaders of Catholic religious communities in Canada. "We are called to promote and defend the sacredness of life in our world, in the environment, in relationships and within the Church."

According to Stafford, this sentiment was echoed throughout the weekend in Montreal, where generations of religious men and women dialogued on the relevance of religion in the 21st century and their role in today's society, especially because of the rapid decline in people entering into vows of poverty, chastity and obedience.

Since 1999, the CRC has published three booklets to serve as a guide for the process: Religious Life in a Changing World, Religious Life in a Changing Church and The Changing Face of Religious Life.

"We cannot talk about religious life and the future of religious community without looking at a society in transformation," said Fr. Michael Brehl, who was on the CRC's theological reflection committee. "It's even bigger than society: there's a consciousness of the intimate connections between all created beings. We can't creatively discern the future for religious life in a vacuum, so that was a talking point among people."

Brehl told CC.com that although the number of men and women in Catholic religious service has waned in recent generations, the young people who have dedicated their lives are a creative group who form nuclei to present spirituality in a new and relevant way.

Coordinator of the theology committee Michele Cote called the forum "a risk," saying that people reacted in different ways not because they were from throughout the country, but even because of different theologies and spiritualities.

"Some people who had a Creation-centred spirituality, while others had a justice-centred spirituality," he told CC.com. "There was a major sense of wanting to do something to create a greater awareness of religious life, being God's hands, feet and ears in this universe of ours."

Cote said that in 1970, there were 65,000 religious Catholic in Canada, but in 2020, there will be only 6,500, with an average age of 78.5.

"We can't control all the schools and hospitals that we used to," he admitted. "So we have to be present in para-academic, para-medical ways, being present in the church and society. Now we just live out our lives hoping it'll catch."

Cote pointed out that the religious community has always been known as the provider of social responsibility, asking the question, "Who is hurting and why?" and trying to find a solution for it.

"We may not fight at the macro-economic level," said Cote. "But this is how we see us as prophetic; when we see the dignity of a human being trampled upon, we ask why."

As for concrete plans, all three of these participants agreed it was primarily a time of networking and challenging one another in the ability to take home the principles they learned there and beginning to apply them regionally.

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'Free-thinking' Roman Catholics to meet to discuss canon law
More than 500 self-described "free-thinking" Roman Catholic priests and nuns from across Canada are in Montreal this weekend to talk about ways of attracting new recruits to religious life. The forum has been organized by the Canadian Religious Conference, which represents 230 Catholic communities across Canada.
CanWest News Service, June 3