Religious are ‘catalysts for renewal’

A Pastoral letter from Australia’s Catholic bishops says men and women who have consecrated their lives to God “are not primarily the workforce for the Church” but catalysts for renewal, writes Mark Brolly.
The letter, by the Bishops’ Commission for Church Ministry and entitled Wake Up the World, Celebrating the Year of Consecrated Life, acknowledges that in the short term, “the Church may seem deeply unpromising in any number of ways”. And yet, the letter says, “Religious congregations … will continue to quietly inspire us by selfless lives of poverty, chastity and obedience; offering a humble, yet powerful, counter-witness to the emptiness that so often surrounds us.”