Posted on 10/30/2013 1:57:06 PM PDT by markomalley
I saw this at CWN:
Curial official: over 3,000 religious leave consecrated life each year [Makes you wonder how many enter religious life. I'll bet not 3k!]
The secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life said in an October 29 address that over 3,000 men and women religious leave the consecrated life each year.
In the address – a portion of which was reprinted in L’Osservatore Romano [HERE] – Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo said that statistics from his Congregation, as well as the Congregation for the Clergy, indicate that over the past five years, 2,624 religious have left the religious life annually. When one takes into account additional cases handled by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the number tops 3,000.
The prelate, who led the Order of Friars Minor from 2003 until his April 2013 curial appointment, said that the majority of cases occur at a “relatively young age.” The causes, he said, include “absence of spiritual life,” “loss of a sense of community,” and a “loss of sense of belonging to the Church” – a loss manifest in dissent from Catholic teaching on “women priests and sexual morality.” [read: LCWR]
Other causes include “affective problems,” including heterosexual relationships that continue into marriage and homosexual relationships, which are “most obvious in men, but also present, more often than you think, between women.” [No more often than I thought!]
The world, the prelate continued, is undergoing profound changes from modernity to postmodernity – from fixed reference points to uncertainty, doubt, and insecurity. In a market-oriented world, “everything is measured and evaluated according to the utility and profitability, even people.” It is “a world where everything is soft,” where “there is no place for sacrifice, nor for renunciation.” [The problem, however, is not just that the "world" has gone that way, but that the world's way as been permitted wholesale into the Church and into these religious institutes with virtually no resistance at all.]
In a culture of neo-individualism and subjectivism, he added, “the individual is the measure of everything,” and people feel “unique in excellence.” “Modern man talks a lot” but “cannot communicate in depth.” [Yes. Yet another reason for me to call for, once again, a deeper theology of communication, beginning with Christ as the true communicator.]
The solution, he said, is a renewed attention to the centrality the Triune God in religious life, which in turn “brings with it the gift of oneself to others.” There must be a clear emphasis on the “radical nature of the Gospel,” rather than the “number of members or the maintenance of works.” [Your Excellency... until we have our LITURGICAL WORSHIP squared away again, no other effort of renewal can be effective.]
I’d assume this is just in America. Worldwide, both Islam and Christianity are growing exponentially. This is in countries with birth rates above replacement level, and religious people have more children. Just look at the ultra-orthodox in Israel.
That is...”They’re TIRED of the law...”
If “leaving religious life” includes the departure of postulants and novices who did not persist until full profession, that’s what is to be expected. People enter a religious foundation, initially, to “test their vocation.”
Not every seminarian becomes a priest, and not everyone who essays religious life is going to stick with it.
“Catholic Caucus.”
Was that not a good post for the Catholic Caucus (not sure what that means)?
The statement is made by a curial official so it means world wide. I’d say most of those who leave are young mena dn wmoen who haven’t taken final vows. That’s what discernment and a noviate period are all about.
Did you see that this was a Catholic Caucus?
St. Paul wrote in Corinthians that not all have received the gift of Celibacy. In a global talent pool, 3000 people who determine it’s not for them is probably not out of the ordinary.
What does “Catholic Caucus” mean?
Life isn’t all about *******. There are certainly people who enter religious life and find that poverty or obedience, as observed in a specific order, is not their vocation. There are seminarians who don’t take to the academic rigor.
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Consider the number of people who “leave married life” each year. Perhaps this has to do with a misunderstanding of vocation. Maybe the view of marriage as “a vocation to ****” is inadequate or even deceptive, given the level of failure.
Every Christian’s vocation is to deny himself, take up the Cross, and follow Jesus to Calvary.
over 3,000 religious leave consecrated life each year
You guys are like “seminar” callers spamming a conservative radio program.
You guys are like “seminar” callers spamming a conservative radio program.
Really? It’s right there in the title in ALL CAPS. You saw something in the title that triggered the spambot response, so why not [CATHOLIC CAUCUS]?
Really? It’s right there in the title in ALL CAPS. You saw something in the title that triggered the spambot response, so why not [CATHOLIC CAUCUS]?
I apologized so now should i do?
At any rate you are now asking for comments.
Nobody’s making “positive” comments - just discussion.
Anyway, I was just curious. You can stop replying now :-).
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