Over the last several years, I’ve come into contact with a number of dying religious orders: groups of men or women religious, dwindling in number, who haven’t had a new vocation in over thirty years. Some of these religious live in what is now the somewhat embarrassing palatial splendor of a convent or priory financed and built during headier days when vocations were many and the assumption was they would always remain that way.
Needless to say, they didn’t. Not only did the number of novices drop, in some cases, the better vocations these orders did get were often turned away, as being psychologically “unhealthy.” It reminds me of the old joke about the man who refused on principle to be part of a club that would take someone like himself as a member, only in this case the situation is reversed: the religious order won’t accept members foolish enough to want to belong to a club like theirs.
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