I was just as interested in the comments of people who haven't the least freakin' clue what the Church is about. The longer I'm a Catholic, the truer the old Bishop Sheen saying gets, eh?
I did like this sentence at the end of one of the comments there, though. If you ran a corporation where there used to be 180K members, and now there are 60K, wouldn't you expect headquarters to ask 'whassup?'
Exactly. That's what the investigation is (hopefully) going to discover.
For some reason, a lot of orders of nuns have been affected by all of the nonsense in the 60's and 70's.
Very few of those orders have come back - and they have lost many members who subconsciously realized that they really weren't any different than other single women. The vocation crisis which probably affects even some good orders has been particularly acute in these now very secular and liberal orders of nuns.
Yes, they need to be investigated and the reason they don't welcome it is because they know that many of their member's beliefs are not really in line with Church teaching.
I believe that technically "nuns" are cloistered while "religious sisters" are not. Even though, in practice, we usually use "nuns" to collectively cover both.
If I remember rightly, "sisters" take simple vows and are usually, but not always, in apostolic work. Some sisters who are part of enclosed communities take simple vows, work on the outside and are more active, and not bound to the obligations of the enclosed nuns.
"Nuns" focus on prayer and work within some type of enclosure, take solemn vows, and are obligated to say the Divine Office as representatives of the Church.
All take vows comparable to the evangelical counsels - poverty, chastity, obedience. Some enclosed nuns add "enclosure" as a vow. Some add other vows unique to their charism. Benedictines, active or enclosed, vow Stability, Conversion of Life (including poverty and chastity) and obedience, to a monastic way of life.
That's interesting, AuntieD...somehow I thought all women religious were obligated to pray the Divine Office.
Commenting by HaloScan
