After I left Vietnam to review in america, I used to be in a position to stick with the Dominican Sisters of Mary Immaculate Province in Houston before heading to Spring Hill College, a Jesuit school in Mobile, Ala. The province, which has grown to about 100 professed members, was founded in 1975 by sisters who had fled war-torn Vietnam.
Later, I learned that the Congregation of Dominican Sisters is just certainly one of nearly 400 international religious institutes founded elsewhere which have prolonged their mission to america in recent many years. They’ve helped to alter the demographics of non secular life in america significantly.
Latest Faces, Latest Possibilities, a book of which I’m a co-editor, discusses these increasingly common experiences at women’s religious institutes in america. Changing demographics call for a church that feels more relevant to an increasingly diverse Catholic population, and our religious institutes are responding with changes of their formation and governance structures.
Changing demographics call for a church that feels more relevant to an increasingly diverse Catholic population.
While previous generations of girls religious got here from largely white families whose European ancestors got here to america within the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, recent members of non secular orders are increasingly the kids or grandchildren of immigrants from Catholic countries outside of Europe, including Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines and Vietnam. They arrive from families during which devotional practices and spiritual engagement are sometimes more visible than in families who’ve long been in america, and these practices are winfluential of their vocational discernment.
The increased diversity in U.S. religious life could be seen in a comparison of fully professed members of non secular institutes with those still in formation. During the last decade, about seven in 10 members in formation have been white, compared with nearly nine in 10 members who’ve professed perpetual vows. Women religious of color make up 13 percent of the total members, but they make up three in 10 amongst members in formation, which suggests that girls of color will make up an increasing share of sisters at religious institutes. Lots of these recent members will not be native English speakers; there are dozens of various languages spoken amongst them, mostly Spanish and Vietnamese.
Latest members of non secular orders are increasingly the kids or grandchildren of immigrants from Catholic countries outside of Europe, including Mexico, Nigeria, the Philippines and Vietnam.
As well as, there are sisters ministering and studying at international institutes that, starting within the mid-Sixties, have established missions in america. Some institutes come here to flee persecution of their home country, just like the Dominican Sisters from Vietnam. Others come to minister to immigrants from their homeland, as did many sisters who got here from Europe within the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Still others arrive with a desire to evangelize American culture, which they see as worldly, materialistic and lacking in spirituality. All have contributed to the changes within the demographics of non secular life in america.
In light of those changes, religious institutes are generating a wide range of creative responses—from restructuring governance by merging with other provinces or institutes to collaborating with other religious institutes and lay colleagues in educational and health care ministries. Demographic changes are also leading religious institutes to reassess where their motherhouses must be situated and the way they’ll include younger, foreign-born, and culturally and ethnically diverse sisters of their leadership.
Some international religious institutes come to evangelize American culture, which they see as worldly, materialistic and lacking in spirituality.
In some ways, this cultural shift in religious institutes’ membership and leadership resembles the period when Irish and Italian institutes established missions in america. But today it’s increasingly likely that the vast majority of an institute’s membership will hail as a substitute from India or Kenya.
The Catholic community in america has seen many changes recently and can soon see more, but as someone who has lived with and studied about women religious of all ages and backgrounds in america, I feel certain that the enrichment and leavening of girls religious will proceed because it has in past centuries.
This sense was affirmed on one occasion during my doctoral studies, after I attended a Mass celebrating vows at a women’s religious institute within the Midwest and was surprised to see that a sister from Vietnam was the provincial superior receiving the vows of their recent members. Wearing petite-size clothing and speaking English with an accent, she was leading a province of relatively young and mostly white members. I believed, “What a day of festivity!”
