c. 2005 Religion News Service

CLEVELAND _ Think Debbie Reynolds riding a motor scooter and singing “Dominique” in “The Singing Nun.” Or Sally Field soaring in and out of trouble as “The Flying Nun.” Or Julie Andrews being late for prayer because the hills were alive with “The Sound of Music.”

Religious life seemed a lot simpler in the mid-1960s. The popular cultural image of happy young nuns gently testing boundaries set by older sisters in bustling convents reflected a high point when the number of American sisters stretched toward 180,000.

It is not so easy being young in religious life today.

Over the past four decades, the numbers in religious orders have declined rapidly even as the median ages of their sisters jumped into the 70s. Nuns under age 50 now make up about 5 percent of sisters nationwide, and can find themselves isolated in a sea of older women in their own communities.

What they have a special need for _ and what a new group holding a four-day national conference (July 28-31) in Cleveland is seeking to provide _ is a venue for coming together to find their place in religious life in the 21st century.

During the conference, some 125 young nuns from across the country can be in a community where they are the majority, and exchange ideas and experiences in four days of lectures, worship, meetings and fellowship.

Giving Voice, the six-year-old national group for nuns under 50, is a source of affirmation in the face of some tough realities, some younger sisters said.

“There’s just that sense, yes, this is our time,” said Maria Cimperman, an Ursuline sister from Cleveland. “There’s nothing in me that says religious life is over. Even when I struggle, God is calling me, and God is calling us.”

From the turn of the century until the mid-1960s, the number of nuns rose steadily and rapidly, growing fourfold to about 180,000 by 1965. The number of sisters had dropped to 70,000 by 2004, and the majority of the remaining nuns are over 70.

Women still are entering religious orders, and in many ways this generation raised after the groundbreaking Second Vatican Council of the 1960s is establishing its own identity. Today, women are serving as theologians, pastoral administrators, housing planners and in other nontraditional roles in an evolving mission to serve the needy.

But where once incoming classes of 10 or 12 gave young sisters an immediate peer group for mutual support, today young nuns can find themselves with few people to talk to in their order who understand their generation’s music, life experiences or even their theological influences.

“It’s not that it’s not heard,” Sister Mary Stanco, 38, of the Sisters of Humility of Mary in Cleveland, said about raising issues from her perspective. “It’s misunderstood.”

What Giving Voice offers younger nuns who may be the only person under 50 in their congregations is a sense that what they see in isolation as individual experiences are really the experiences of a generation, said Sister Kristin Matthes, 40, national director. This new group of nuns has an intense concern for social justice.

Cimperman, who entered the Ursuline Order at age 22 in 1986, said the martyrdom of Ursuline nun Dorothy Kazel in El Salvador in 1980 answered the question burning inside her: “How do you love so deeply and so fully that come what may, you say yes?”

Stanco entered the Sisters of Humility of Mary as a 29-year-old in 1996. The seed of religious life for the lay social worker was planted in Magnificat High School in Rocky River, Ohio, where sisters taught their passion for a faith that inspires work for social justice.

Post-Vatican II nuns also have a lot more freedom to choose how they live out their vocation than nuns of earlier generations, who were funneled into parochial schools, hospitals or other institutions run by their orders.

For example, Cimperman teaches social ethics and moral theology to graduate students at the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio. Sister Beth Rancourt, 48, a Sister of Notre Dame, is a pastoral associate at St. Rita in Solon, Ohio. Stanco is director of research and planning for Humility of Mary Housing Inc.

That freedom extends to social relationships. The nuns no longer face curfews in convents and are more free to have friendships with married couples and people of both sexes.

“You need intimate friendships,” Cimperman said.

The younger nuns say they also benefit by having so many “wisdom figures.”

Sunday, at the Ursuline motherhouse in Pepper Pike, Sister Mary Andrew, 95, clasped the hands of Cimperman. She has been a “pray-er” for the younger nun since she entered the order, saying the rosary every day for nearly two decades.

“I pray for her: Lord, you know what to do with her. And he does,” Mary Andrew said. “She has (a good vocation) now, but I want her to keep it.”

For her part, Cimperman appreciates the intergenerational friendships.

“They walk with me. I walk with them,” she said.

The walk is not always easy. There are financial burdens imposed by an imbalance of working nuns paying the health care costs of older sisters and there is the emotional toll of seeing the suffering of many friends at the end of their lives.

Stanco remembers when a lot of sisters in her order had breast cancer, and were in different stages of dying. “It’s a little daunting sometimes. It’s hard.”

Giving Voice sisters do not minimize these concerns.

During the conference, the sisters will talk about the crises in religious retirement funding and vocations that are forcing orders to sell properties, or consider disbanding or merging their communities. In the back of some of their minds, there is the worry about whether the motherhouse will have to be sold in 10 or 20 years to pay bills.

“The question looms over us: Is this the life of the future?” Stanco said. “How do we tend to our life?”

But there also is a sense of optimism about continuing the mission of their orders handed down over generations.

At 48, Rancourt, who entered the Sisters of Notre Dame at 18 in 1975, is one of the 10 youngest nuns among the several hundred in her congregation. She believes God will continue to call women to religious life.

“This is where we are now today, but we don’t know what religious life will look like in another 10 years,” she said. “We really need to trust God. … For me, it’s OK. I know others might be frightened by that.”

If there is a theme among younger sisters interviewed, it is one of hope amid uncertainty, that they have been chosen for this moment in history.

“That’s what God says to us: You are made for this time,” Stanco said. “We deal with what we know and hope for what we don’t know. Hope is the word.”

Two years ago, when Giving Voice met in Chicago, the energy in the room was palpable, Cimperman said.

“If this is the future of religious life,” she recalls thinking, “this is a go.”

(David Briggs writes for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland.)

KRE/PH END BRIGGS

Editors: Check the RNS photo Web site at https://religionnews.com for photos to accompany this story. Search by slug. Also see sidebar, RNS-NUNS-SIDEBAR, transmitted July 28.