Contemporary Religious Life: Death or Transformation?

Authors

Sandra Marie Schneiders, Jesuit School of Theology/Graduate Theological UnionFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Winter 1996

Publisher

Association for Religion and Intellectual Life, etc

Abstract

We are all aware of the signs of diminishment that mark contemporary Roman Catholic religious communities: aging membership, decline in recruitment, dwindling financial resources in the face of relentlessly rising costs, loss of institutions, if we attend only to the material problems. When these are compounded by ecclesiastical harassment of individual members in their ministries and of congregations in their legitimate exercise of self-determination, and by intense struggles within congregations over self-understanding and identity, the picture can look bleak indeed.

Comments

A slightly different version of this article appeared as a chapter in Religious Life: The Challenge for Tomorrow, ed., Cassian J. Yuhaus, CR (Paulist Press, 1994).

Recommended Citation

Schneiders, Sandra Marie “Contemporary Religious Life: Death or Transformation?” Cross Currents 46 (Winter 1996/1997): 510-35.