During the time from about 1865 to 1975, women religious built the institutional Church in the United States. We staffed schools, hospitals, clinics and orphanages. In the second half of the 20th century, hospital sisters began to earn a salary equivalent to their non-vowed colleagues. In most other ministries, the sisters generally received pitiful stipends, their labor thus making an enormous financial contribution to the Church, without which those institutions never could have been built or survived.
After Vatican II, the laity assumed many of the more “stable” ministries. We began to attend to other needs, and the image of a sister changed from the mysterious woman in even more mysterious dress to a normal woman who lived in a community with whom she shared prayer, resources and spirituality. Our ministries were not as obvious, even as our influence on society took on a broader base—from advocacy and social services to the arts and prayer and presence.
Today, one of the greatest needs of the world and in the United States is for community and spirituality. Those who would choose religious life today are choosing those two values more than apostolic works, which are no longer the special domain of women religious.
These changes have made the choice for religious life more focused and more radical. The women who come today generally have already been involved in ministry and realize that they want something more—a lifestyle that will help them grow continually and more deeply in their spirituality, an apostolic life that is shared such that each member knows she is acting in the name of the whole and with their support and in which communal life makes many kinds of unremunerated service possible.
That radicality is the choice for a vowed life in community: shared resources (poverty), discernment of the greatest needs to which we can respond (obedience) and radical freedom to go where the need is and to love freely (chastity).
Those who choose this lifestyle today will be fewer and more focused as they build toward an unpredictable future.
Who could ask for anything more?!