8 minute read
Religious sightings
FORMER MILWAUKEE ARCHBISHOP Timothy Dolan, who was installed as archbishop of New York City in April of 2008, said that increasing vocations was his “first mandate.” Asked his strategy, Dolan replied, “Happiness attracts.”
JUMP IN VOCATION INQUIRIES
NEARLY 70 PERCENT of Catholic religious communities saw a jump in vocation inquiries in 2008, according to a survey conducted by VocationMatch.com. Sixty-nine percent of the communities responding to the website’s third annual “Survey on Trends in Religious Vocations” reported increased inquiries into religious life. Discerners—those interested in religious life—were primarily under 40 years old and said they were looking at religious life because of a desire for deeper spirituality. Most were quite serious about exploring religious life, and nearly 20 percent planned to enter religious formation within the year. In addition to their desire for a deeper spirituality and a life of faithfulness to the church, discerners said they were most drawn to a particular religious community by its prayer life and community living. A signifi cant 35 percent ranked justice and peace outreach as essential. Celibacy, a life of service, and living simply were all perceived as more challenging to the 2009 discerners than the previous year’s. Prayer and spiritual direction continued to rank as the most essential element in making a decision about religious life, and the discipline of prayer remained the greatest perceived challenge in living as a religious priest, sister, or brother. Ninety percent of discerners said their inquiries into religious life were made easier because of access to information about
***PT to create chart to illustrate piece***
religious life on the Internet. Not surprisingly, those discerning a call to religious life still considered personal contact with someone in religious life as the most essential resource for gathering information about vocations (53 percent). However, “Come and See” weekends and working with a counselor or spiritual director ranked high as well. A religious community’s website ranked next, and 58 percent rated vocationrelated websites as either very important or essential to their information-gathering The complete survey results are posted online at www.vocation-network.org/ articles/show/186.
Connect online with other discerners
UNSURE if religious life is for you? Now you can meet others who are praying, laughing, and talking about the ins and outs of joining a religious community. Log on to anunslife.org/vocation-forum. The forum is easy to join, participants are not obligated to use their real names, and the discussions are friendly and honest. Sister Julie Vieira, I.H.M. has been writing the acclaimed blog, A nun’s life, for several years. The blog has evolved into a website, and in 2008 the site launched its discussion forum. It’s billed as “a place to explore how God is calling you and to connect with others who are discerning God’s call.” It has treated topics ranging from “are your parents supportive?” to “living into your vocation.”
BECCA GAY
SISTER JULIE Vieira, I.H.M.
raCINe DOmINICaN SISter ann Pratt serves a customer at the HOPeS Center.
Dominicans bring new kind of hope to urban community
NO matter which of its three doorways you enter, a visit to downtown racine, Wisconsin’s HOPeS Center is meant to encourage healing, wholeness, peace, justice, and spiritual well-being. the center is a multipurpose facility where the public is invited to come in and have their morning coffee and bakery items, shop for globally produced fair trade products, and access counseling and mentoring services. Visitors can also learn about issues ranging from poverty to ecology as well as explore their spirituality.
Created out of the vision of five racine Dominicans, the center is designed to be a “vibrant hub where a diverse and inclusive community will collaborate to shape the future.”
pEACE tAKES tEAM EFFORt
Saint FranciS of assisi encourages us to pray that we might understand rather than be understood, says Sister Paulette Schroeder, O.S.F. as a Franciscan sister she’s putting those words into practice through her work with christian Peacemaker teams (cPt), an ecumenical organization that promotes nonviolence in crisis situations and militarized areas of the world.
“Basically our hope is to prevent violence, or de-escalate it, [and] advocate for the ones who are being oppressed,” says Schroeder, who has made a three-year commitment to cPt after being part of a cPt-led delegation to the West Bank and later serving as a cPt reservist. cPt members go to areas at the invitation of local peace and human rights groups.
Peacemaking fits well with the work of her community, the Sisters of St. Francis of tiffin, Ohio. “Even when i was teaching, when i was working in pastoral work in the parishes,” says Schroeder, “i felt like there was always a drive within me to reconcile
people who were enemies to each other, who couldn’t understand each other.” Schroeder’s activities with cPt include monitoring the treatment of Palestinians at military checkpoints and roadblocks, walking the streets to protect Palestinian residents from harassment by israeli settlers, and standing with those who have been detained. cPt members also lead nonviolence training and join Palestinians and israeli peace activists in protests against israel’s construction of a security “tHere WaS alWayS a drive wall that cuts through Palestinwithin me to reconcile people who were enemies,” says Sister ian territory.
Paulette Schroeder, O.S.F. “We are all sons and daughters of God—one loved as much as the next,” Schroeder says. “all the violence and injustice in the world alienates, creates rage, revenge, and suicide bombers. . . . We must envision a world without weapons . . . and then work from there.” Based on stories by Laurie Stevens Bertke and Sister Carol Pothast of the catholic chronicle, the newspaper of the Catholic Diocese of Toledo.
“As A priest you have to be more of a listener—compassionate and understanding. that’s the hard part. . . . When you go into the priesthood, don’t look to be served; you’re there to work with people, to serve them. ” –Father Patrick
Buckley, a New York diocesan priest featured on nypriest.com
YeAr OF tHe priest “precisely to encourage priests in this striving for spiritual perfection on which, above all, the effectiveness of their ministry depends, i have decided to establish a special “Year for priests” that will begin on 19 June 2009 and last until 19 June 2010.” –Pope Benedict XVI
Religious life at the movies
The 2008 movie Doubt, starring meryl Streep, Philip Seymour hoffman, and Amy Adams and written and directed by Pulitzer prize-winning author John Patrick Shanley, received five Academy Award nominations. Shanley, who received his elementary education from the Sisters of Charity of New York at St. Anthony School in the Bronx, dedicated his play “to the many orders of Catholic nuns who devoted their lives to serving others in hospitals, schools, and retirement homes. Though they have been much maligned and ridiculed, who among us has been so generous?” Set in 1964, the movie, based on Shanley’s play, explores enduring themes such as truth, trust, and judgment as it follows the story of a sister, who, as a school principal, becomes suspicious of the link between a priest and a boy in her Catholic school.
The 2009 documentary The Calling, directed by David A. Ranghelli, follows a young hispanic man on the brink of joining a newer religious community and an older-vocation sister who belongs to the same community (the community is mixed, with women and men residing separately but ministering together). While portraying their questions, joys, and struggles to understand their callings and to live them with integrity, the film also closely explores the impact of their choices on their families.
For additional updates on religious in the news, follow viSioN vocation guide’s SpiritCitings and CultureCitings blogs online.
–Sister Molly Weyrens, a Benedictine sister of St. Joseph, Minnesota, who along with other energetic Benedictine sisters and priests participated in the “Dancing with the Monastics” competition with members of the College of St. Benedict and St. John’s University Ballroom Dance Club
[Must see video of the event posted on youtube.]
share your sightings If you spot a member of a religious community in the news, please e-mail the details to us at mail@vocationguide.org.
Beauty salon ministry
We’re bleSSING a beauty salon—the first Holy Cross beauty salon. It sounds a little crazy, but it’s really not,” said brother Francis boylan, C.S.C., the executive director of Holy Cross Children’s Services, a statewide antipoverty organization in Michigan.
“We started Holy Cross Children’s Services to help the kids that others don’t serve. but to help poor kids in Michigan, you need to provide services that will help their mom get a job. So we’ve set up these incubator businesses where we provide the proper wardrobe for job interviews, 24-hour dialysis centers—so parents on dialysis can get to work—dental clinics, health clinics, and, yes, Christina’s beauty Salon, where our moms can get their hair and makeup done to go on an interview. ”I’ve been at this for 45 years now. We help about 2,000 people a day,” said boylan. “What sustains me? It probably goes back to no matter where I go, some kid says, ‘Thank you.’ One of the most gratifying aspects of this work is actually being with people who are marginalized. There are all these stereotypes out there, but we have the privilege of meeting the person.” —www.holycrossbrothers.org
CHrISTINa’S beauTy SalON, located in the Holy Cross brothers’ Samaritan Center in Detroit, helps unemployed women obtain a professional look before going to job interviews. Pictured here are brother Francis boylan, C.S.C. with a beautician and customers at the salon.
