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(Long thread, likely an upcoming video)
There are many aging members of religious life that are uncomfortable with the spirituality of the next generation, more concerned with liturgy and public symbols, less concerned with social justice and pastoral care (generalities).
There are many aging members of religious life that are uncomfortable with the spirituality of the next generation, more concerned with liturgy and public symbols, less concerned with social justice and pastoral care (generalities).
They bemoan the fact that their order is changing because of these new members or dying because they can't find young people like themselves. It is an experience of loss, for sure, and I don't mean to minimize that. But I do wonder: Isn't that what happened when they joined?
If religious in their 70s and 80s think back to what their communities looked like when they entered, they would see a completely different life. They were able to shape the community to the needs of the world and their own spirituality (while aging members likely bemoaned THEM.)
Without putting judgment on whether religious life was best in the 1940s, 60s, 80s, or 00s, the fact is that thriving communities routinely "refound" themselves, going back to their sources and reading them in light of the signs of the times.
What new religious are doing today is precisely what religious did in the 1960s-80s: responding to the present world and bringing their own spirituality. To bemoan the evolution of generations is to negate what they themselves did, radically changing life in their time.
Is every "refounding" a good one? Are drastic changes necessarily good? No. But neither is fossilizing an experience of religious life and Church that was itself an innovation. I can honor what my predecessors did in their time while also seeking something else in my own.
Specifically, I think it is a tragedy that a generation of friars don't wear their habits in public. Quick, casual liturgies with many improvisations make me cringe. The looseness and anonymity of prayer and fraternal life in some houses is disheartening.
40 years ago, these things made them down-to-earth, pastorally adaptive, relatable, and available. And that's awesome! That's just what the Church needed, and I owe a debt of gratitude to these men that I am blessed to call brothers.
But... I will push back a bit today. Wearing a habit IS necessary bc no one knows who we are anymore; it's evangelism, not clericalism. Liturgy can be both immanent AND transcendent. Structured life and commitment to one another is the most radical/prophetic thing we can do.
Can we learn something from our older brothers and sisters? You better believe it. Just as I push back against those who cling to the 1960s, I resist the young, zealous religious who enters to "fix" the order, who looks to previous generations with disdain. We follow giants.
If this thing called religious life is going to continue, it's going to need to evolve just like it always has. My hope is that it might not be reactionary, that instead, generations might learn from one another, even challenge each other. Isn't that what religious life is about?
