RELIGIOUS Richard A. Hill, S.J.
1. Why have there been so many changes in religious life? The extensive changes in religious life since about 1968, which everyone recognizes os virtually revolutionary, are the result of an historie reversai of
policy on the part of the Holy See with respect to the religious; and for thot reason it is necessary to set them in their historical context, one which reaches bock at leest a century and a half. ln his important study, Vie et Mort des Ordres Religieux (1972), Raymond Hostie, S.J., has demonstroted for the first ti me how nearly tatar wos the disappeorance of religious in the Church between the suppression of the Society of Jesus in 1773 and about 181 O. ln thot thirty-five year period the number of religious men suddenly declined from more th an 300,000 ta about 30,000, a falf of 90%. Sin ce ali religious women at thot time were cloistered nuns, the wholesale confiscation of their convents certainly had the sorne impact upon their numbers. Only in lreland, England, North America, the Papal States and a few pockets in Europe did organized religious life survive and sorne new communities emerge.
2. How did religious life recover from such devastation? How profound was the trauma for religious institutes of this nearly fatal collapse, coupled with incalculable materiel fosses and the nearly total disoppearance of Catholic schools, orph~nages, hospitals and similar works, has to be apprecioted in arder to understond how dramatic the Catholic Revival of the nineteenth century really was. During the decades following the collapse of Nopoleon's empire and the Congress of Vien na ( 1814-15), the Holy See regoined its independence and regularized its relations with the restored European powers. The result was a climate in which religious institutes, as weil as the ether traditional ecclesiastical structures and ministries, coufd begin the long and painful process of recovery and in which new religious communities ¡could appear. By 1900 the older orders were agoin flourishing and a great many new institutes, most of which are the modern congregations of women, were founded and experienced rapid growth.
3. Did this recovery imply changes in religious communities? A high priee indeed had to be paid for the revivol, occording to Hostie,
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