The number of women entering religious life has risen to its highest level in 25 years while the number of men entering the priestly formation has dropped.
Figures released this week by the National Office for Vocation showed that 45 women entered religious communities in 2014, compared to 30 in 2013. Of these 18 entered enclosed orders and 27 apostolic ones.
The figures have been on a trajectory of increase from the low point of seven women in 2004.
Meanwhile, the number of men entering formation for the priesthood, including the pre-seminary formation year or starting at the seminary, dropped again this year from 44 in 2013 to 35 in 2014 and there were no new seminarians for any of the three Welsh dioceses. The number of men entering religious life also dropped, from 22 to 18 in 2014.
Sr Cathy Jones, Religious Life Promoter at the National Office of Vocation, said she was encouraged by the number of women entering apostolic orders, which she said almost died out in this country.
The number dwindled to just three in 2004 and has fluctuated since; but in 2014 reached the highest point for 23 years.
“If we were to go back 10 years many people would have said that active religious life in this country is not an option,” she said.
Sr Cathy, an Assumption sister, attributed the rise to an increase in discernment groups, citing in particular Compass, that started at Worth Abbey in West Sussex, as well as taster weekends at convents and outreach on the internet.
But she also pointed to increased self-confidence among apostolic orders linked to positive publicity around their work with vulnerable people such as trafficked women.
“The Church is trying to help people neutrally to discover God’s call – and it’s about God, not about this order surviving, not about our agenda,” she said.
She said that the number of women entering religious life would never reach the level of 40 years ago, but predicted steady growth as the Church increased opportunities for discernment, either in groups or with a spiritual director.
“Some have done what they were always expected to – they’ve got their job in the city, a nice flat, car, boyfriend – and it’s not enough. They’re not saying, as they might have 50 years ago, that religious life is a better way to get to God. They’re saying: ‘I’m not quite sure why, and I think I’m completely not worthy, but it seems that God’s calling me to this’.”
Meanwhile, the Bishop of Plymouth, Mark O’Toole, where no men started training for the priesthood in 2014, called on his diocese to “storm heaven with prayers” for vocations.
In a pastoral letter this weekend Bishop Mark O’Toole said God was not calling fewer people, but that fewer people were responding. “When a vocation goes unanswered it is not only a sadness for the one who does not respond, but also a sadness for the entire Church which has just lost another priest,” he added.
Above: Women Religious in England. Photo: Mazur/catholicnews.org.uk
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