(RNS) — In an America where institutional religious practice itself is on the wane, a good Catholic sister — or priest, or brother — is sometimes hard to find.
But not, as it turns out, impossible.
Though the number of men and women drawn to religious orders has dropped dramatically over the past 50 years, a small but steady stream of millennial and Generation Z men and women still choose this strikingly countercultural life, often finding religious life in surprising ways.
Sister Jenny Wilson, who until recently taught theology to high schoolers in Buffalo, New York, said some of her students initially learned about nuns by viewing horror movies.
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“I never even knew that was a thing,” said Wilson, 46, who is now a vocation director for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, a 200-year-old order of about 6,000 nuns worldwide who are engaged in varied ministries, including health care, education and spiritual direction.
In 1965, there were almost 179,000 Catholic sisters in the U.S. and about 35,000 religious priests and brothers, according to statistics compiled by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. In 2021, there were approximately 33,000 women and 14,000 men.
Juniorate members of the Marianites of the Holy Cross turn to bicycling and roller-skating for recreation during a break from spiritual and academic training in New Orleans in 1965. (RNS archive photo by Frank Methe. Photo courtesy of Presbyterian Historical Society)
As those who have given their lives to God become more scarce, their rarity feeds the decline in vocations. So too is a trend that began in the 1970s for some orders to discard their once distinctive habits.
“Sisters just aren’t visible now,” said Sister Maria Angeline Weiss, vocation director for the Sisters of Christian Charity in Mendham, New Jersey. She recalled startling a store checkout clerk with her garb. “I said, ‘Didn’t you ever see “Sister Act”?’ And they just looked at me.”
When young people find their way to Weiss and other vocation directors today, they often need to be acquainted with the concept at a very basic level. Yes, Weiss tells them, we do have beds to sleep in, and three meals a day. Yes, she assures potential members, sisters even have fun together. And yes, you do have to be Catholic.
Sister Maria Angeline Weiss, second from right, with fellow Sisters of Christian Charity during a Marian pilgrimage in Pennsylvania. (Submitted photo)
Most Catholic nuns today fall under the aegis of two umbrella organizations, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, the result of a post-Vatican II split. Some communities belong to both. Others, particularly contemplative orders, to neither.
