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The future for brothers, nuns and religious priests?

Older Catholics will remember the sisters and brothers who taught them at school and the religious priests who led the retreats of their youth. However the majority of Catholics today will not personally know a religious sister, brother or priest, and many will never have met one. Something has changed.

The fact is that over recent decades in the Western world the whole way of being Catholic, and seeing ourselves as Catholic has changed. Religious orders and congregations, as part of the catholic community, have experienced transition too.

Most people fear change. At least they fear too much of it, and especially if it is to do with the important things in their lives.

• Some get frightened by change and retreat to what they have known and what has worked for them before.
• Some get bewildered by change and cannot move forward or back
• Some see change as an opportunity and go charging over the horizon to new things
• A few approach change by consciously adapting the way they live and then thinking about their adaptations. Or maybe they do it the other way around - thinking about what’s happening in the changes and letting that lead them to some action.

All of these are very human responses and we ought to expect them to be part of any group, including religious orders and congregations. In an age of transition and change in religious life, and in the Church and world at large, good people will be found responding to change in each of these four ways.

All this is of interest to Redemptorists. Our missionary call entices us on to explore the tradition that spawned us and the future that beckons us. There is no other place for us to be found by God except in the present moment and in the transition it bears.

The present moment calls all Christians to be prophetic - that is, to be integral in word and deed in a way that witnesses to the reign of God here and now.  Religious congregations are especially called to be prophetic – seeing the world as God sees it and responding to what has been seen.

In this month’s feature Redemptorist Kevin Dowling, bishop of Rustenburg, South Africa, reflects on the prophetic lives of Christians and religious congregations in particular.

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