Vatican official says religious orders are in modern 'crisis'

You might say that it's an obvious thing to say, but the important thing in this case isn't what's being said so much as who's saying it. We can rest assured that a response will be forthcoming similar to the responses to other problems we've been seeing in the recent past.

Of course, not only is the Vatican looking at the failures, but it will be looking at the successes. Places like Collegeville, St. Meinrad's, the entire Jesuit Order, many Mendicant houses will be judged as failures, no incoming vocations, little or no definitive Catholic witness, frequent liturgical abuses and problems with sex abuse and homosexuality. These will be contrasted by the success stories at the FSSP, Spanish Carmelites, SSPX, Solesme Congregation of Benedictines and what underlies that, just the exact opposite of what you'll find with the liberal houses.

People don't want a flabby, do-nothing Catholicism that is securely and hypocritically aligned alongside the Goliaths of modern politics and Education. They want an ever youthful, manly and vibrant Catholicism that aligns itself alongside the Davids of the fullness of Catholic Educational tradition, the unapologetic proclamation of the Truths of the Catholic Faith and a politics that doesn't play the lapdog to Big Government liberals.

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A top Vatican official said religious orders today are in a "crisis" caused in part by the adoption of a secularist mentality and the abandonment of traditional practices.

Cardinal Franc Rode, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said the problems go deeper than the drastic drop in the numbers of religious men and women.

"The crisis experienced by certain religious communities, especially in Western Europe and North America, reflects the more profound crisis of European and American society. All this has dried up the sources that for centuries have nourished consecrated and missionary life in the church," Cardinal Rode said in a talk delivered Feb. 3 in Naples, Italy.

"The secularized culture has penetrated into the minds and hearts of some consecrated persons and some communities, where it is seen as an opening to modernity and a way of approaching the contemporary world," he said.

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