A Nashville/Atlanta connection related to vocations
Since I am from Nashville, TN, originally, and now live in the Atlanta diocese, I figured this story from the Georgia Bulletin was appropo. The Serra International convention was held in Atlanta recently, and there was representation from the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia, aka the Nashville Dominicans, who teach school all over the place (including here in my hometown of Rome some years ago.)
Dominican Sister Catherine Marie Hopkins flashed a quick smile and told the group of Serrans something they hadn’t heard a lot of during a weekend focused on the drop in vocations.
“I bring a message of hope,” said Sister Catherine Marie. “God has not stopped calling.”
In a twist, she said a way to encourage men and women to embrace a celibate life is for wives and husbands to live lovingly.
The commitment of parents in marriage strengthens vocations, she said. “When the family is healthy, the church is healthy. It is the first school of love.”
She is a member of the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia. The congregation was founded in 1860 in Nashville, Tenn., “the buckle of the Bible Belt,” as she put it.
Sister Catherine Marie was one of the featured speakers at the Serra International Convention in Atlanta, Aug. 9-12. The group’s mission is to support those in religious vocations and to pray for future vocations to the priesthood and religious life.
The Nashville congregation is seeing an upswing of vocations that reverses a trend in many other congregations of sisters. Sister Catherine Marie, who was the vocations director from 1990 to 2005 and serves on the congregation’s General Council, said the increase is fueled by young people influenced by Pope John Paul II and people “rediscovering Catholic culture.”
The Nashville Dominicans are seeing new candidates by the dozens, in contrast to the dramatic decrease in the sisterhood nationwide.
So, take that all you womynpriest wannabes and sour-faced progressives. In the solid, conservative Catholic orders, there’s growth.
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4 Comments »
August 29th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Good for the Sisters. And, despite your comment about sour-facedd progressives, this progresive has been around long enough to look at these good sisters and find that however you describe them, they are the heirs of much of the work we progressives worked for and yearned for. The good sisters have Mass and Office in the vernacular at a free standing altar said by a priest in gothic vestments, in part thanks to the liturgical reformers. The good sisters do not have a distinction between “choir nuns” and “lay sisters” in part thanks to the work of the progressive Catholics in ACTU. The good sisters do not minister in race segregated schools thanks to the progressive Catholics in NCCIJ.
The all look lovely in their modified, reformed habits and I wish them the best in their ministry, which I am sure in enabled by the reforms of canon law making the automony of religious orders of women the same as orders of men.
On behalf of liberal catholics everywhere, I will accept the ‘thank you’ from the good sisters.
August 29th, 2007 at 5:32 pm
So the Dominican Sisters can thank the “progressives” for the growth in their numbers…while the “progressive” orders’ numbers dwindle and they are taken less and less seriously by rank and file Catholics?
August 29th, 2007 at 10:02 pm
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September 7th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
They where doing just fine before the second vatican council, I think they’re success is more rooted in their faith than thanks to ‘progressives’ And not all of their mass and office is in the vernacular. Some parts are in *gasp* Latin