BOB ABERNETHY, host: The Vatican released a major report this week cracking down on the umbrella group that represents most of the Catholic nuns in the United States. The report criticized the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) for what it called “serious doctrinal problems.” While acknowledging the group promotes social justice, the report faulted the sisters for being silent on other issues dealing with the right to life, including abortion and euthanasia. Members of the conference were also chastised for publicly challenging the Catholic bishops on certain occasions.

We have an analysis now of the Vatican’s charges and their consequences from David Gibson, national reporter for Religion News Service, a longtime Vatican observer, and author of the book The Rule of Benedict. He joins us from New York. David, welcome.

DAVID GIBSON (National Reporter, Religion News Service): Good to be here, Bob.

ABERNETHY: What stood out for you in this report, this challenge?

GIBSON: Well, Bob, I think it was really significant that this announcement came the day before Pope Benedict celebrated the seventh anniversary of his election as pope. Back seven years ago in 2005 when he was elected, so many people thought he’d be the German enforcer when he became pope, and that really hadn’t proved to be the case for most of his seven years on the throne of St. Peter’s, and many are wondering if this signals a new crackdown overall from the Vatican. The nuns were certainly very surprised at this announcement. They didn’t expect it, and they’re sort of formulating their response, and how that back and forth goes over these next few months will be really telling, I think.

ABERNETHY: But what is the Vatican going to do. and what are the U.S. bishops going to do to the nuns? They’ve got—they’re going to have severe oversight, right?

GIBSON: Yeah. I think you could compare it to a hostile takeover, more or less. They’re going to take this organization. and the bishops have the canonical authority under church law, so they can kind of do what they want. In fact, the nuns, the LCWR is thinking or one option they may have is simply disbanding.

ABERNETHY: Leadership Conference on Women Religious.

GIBSON: Yeah, the Leadership Conference on Women Religious. They’re thinking of simply disbanding and reorganizing on their own, out from under the church’s purview. But the church will have, they have—the archbishop of Seattle has a five-year mandate to oversee this overhaul, and they can rewrite their statutes and vet their speakers for their conferences and pretty much do as they like.

ABERNETHY: Do you see a role that the U.S. bishops might have played in preparing and going along with this announcement?

GIBSON: Yeah. I think obviously the bishops were on board with this. In past years, even under the late Pope John Paul II, the American bishops often pushed back on some of these things and defended their own, or they were involved in negotiations to try and mediate an agreement before you had this kind of firm crackdown. But, obviously, I think the bishops were on board with the Vatican from the get-go on this.

ABERNETHY: Some people have said that they see signs of a split within the Catholic community—between attention to social service, taking the care of the poor and all on the one hand, and religious freedom, defending religious freedom on the other, as the bishops are trying very hard to do, especially on proposals for health care reform. Do you see that, and is this part of that?

GIBSON: I think to a degree it is, Bob. I think it’s really the split between social justice, between doing all those things that the nuns in America and sisters throughout Catholic history have done, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, housing the homeless, running hospitals and universities, educational institutions, schools, and the more doctrinal issues, the pro-life, anti-gay marriage initiatives, the preaching that the bishops want to do, and the bishops are really wanting to get everyone on board here.

ABERNETHY:Thank you very much, David Gibson of Religion News Service.

GIBSON: Thank you.

DEBORAH POTTER: The bells of St. Mary’s set the rhythm of life at this abbey in Glencairn, sounding the call to worship. On this day, Sister Michelle rings double bells for the Feast of the Ascension.

SISTER MICHELLE MILLER: It has a knack to do it, and about one or two of us have the knack, so that’s where I am. I was ringing the double bells yesterday. From a young age I had a yearning to be a nun, in my teens, so it was part of my journey in seeking a life where I felt I could be as close to seek God as possible.

POTTER: Life here is all about seeking God. This is Ireland’s only Cistercian monastery for women, founded in 1932.

MOTHER MARIE FAHY (Abbess, St. Mary’s Abbey): It’s a place where God is loved and worshiped, and it’s a place where we pray for humanity. We’re conscious of interceding before God for people, and it’s a place of conversion, where we constantly try to become who we are meant to be as fully human persons and overcome the demons and the less positive aspects of our life.

POTTER: In some ways, life here is the same as it’s always been, governed by the Rule of St. Benedict. Seven times a day, the nuns gather for prayer, starting well before dawn. They spend hours in church and in lectio divina, reading the Bible and other sacred texts.

SISTER MICHELLE: The first word in the rule is “listen.” So in that sense you learn to listen to how God is speaking to you, and to the Holy Spirit in daily life, and how you gradually more attune yourself to his grace. And it takes a lifetime to sustain that, and in that sense you learn to love, and love your sisters as they are, where they are. And it’s a sense of freedom.

POTTER: Most of the day is spent in silence. It’s peaceful most of the time. The abbey is also a working farm with eighty head of cattle.

SISTER LILLY: Takes energy to keep up!

POTTER: For four hours a day every nun works, as they always have. It’s what they work at that’s changed.

NUNS AT COMPUTER: They just added that blue part on top of the head. Ah, yeah, that’s an extra job.

POTTER: Computers and automation have come to the convent. In addition to a small greeting card business, a bakery produces Eucharist bread that’s sold to churches across Ireland. The oldest nuns help with the shipping.

MOTHER MARIE FAHY: We live by the work of our hands and also have some left for helping out those who are maybe less fortunate. Work is creative. Part of you needs to have some kind of creative expression; you can’t spend all the time praying and reading. It’s very important to have a balance.

POTTER: The balance of life here is partly what drew Sister Fiachra, who used to run a garden center.

SISTER FIACHRA NUTTY: You know what they say about weeds? They’re like the poor, they’re always with us.

POTTER: She entered the convent five years ago and expects to make her solemn profession next year, committing to live the rest of her life as a cloistered nun.

SISTER FIACHRA: I felt I needed space to be with God, and that’s not very easy, I’ve found, for me in the outside world, because I am quite an extrovert, and I get involved in an awful lot of things, so enclosure was important to me, but at the same time I have a horror of restriction, as in claustrophobia. So here we are absolutely truly blessed. We have 200 acres within which to wander, you know, so that was a huge factor for me. Also the enormous welcome and warmth I felt from the community on my very first visit. That was just so wonderful.

MOTHER MARIE FAHY: We’re not completely silent. We value communication, and communication is important to maintain good relationships.

POTTER: Thirty-seven women now live at the abbey, and unlike in the past when all would have been Irish, today there are sisters from India, Nigeria, and the Philippines. They’re also older. A third are well above retirement age. The oldest is 93. In the past decade, a dozen nuns have died. Like most monastic communities, St. Mary’s is smaller than it used to be. But six women are in formation, on the path to becoming nuns—far more than might be expected. Only nine women entered religious orders in all of Ireland in 2006, according to the most recent survey.

SISTER SARAH BRANIGAN (Vocations Director, St. Mary’s Abbey): I knew that people wouldn’t be rushing in the door, but I am surprised at how occupied I am, actually, with inquiries from people of all different ages. People from 20 to late 60s, so there are a steady flow of inquiries about this kind of life.

POTTER: Several times a year, the abbey hosts “monastic experience weekends” for women of all ages who want to try it out, and they share the experience in more modern ways, too, on their Web page and even on Facebook, where they’ve picked up more than 400 fans.

SISTER SARAH: I feel that monastic life has an enduring kind of appeal. I don’t see it as part of the traditional Catholicism that is in demise, if you like. I see it as lasting.

POTTER: For those of you who live here, what makes it really unique and special?

MOTHER MARIE FAHY: I think the opportunity to live close to God and close to one’s self and have time for prayer and have time for leisurely walks and good reading and reflection on God’s word, and I think living at a deeper level.

POTTER: As the world outside the cloister becomes ever more frenetic, the sisters of St. Mary’s live a simple life in communion with each other and with God.

MOTHER MARIE FAHY: “Christ Jesus intercedes for us before the Father. With him we pray…”

POTTER: For Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, I’m Deborah Potter in County Waterford, Ireland.

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: On any given weekend, some 15,000 people worship with the evangelical Northland Church, but about a third of them never set foot in the building here in Longwood, Florida. They’re worshiping online via the Web and Facebook and Smartphones.

MARTY TAYLOR (Northland Church, Director of Media Design): We call ourselves a church distributed because we don’t want to be confined to this space. We want to be everywhere, every day, and technology is a great tool for us to be able to do that.

LAWTON: On site, worship leaders always welcome the online participants. On this Sunday that includes a small gathering at a nearby prison and people from as far away as Japan. As the main service progresses, online minister Nathan Clark connects with his virtual flock.

NATHAN CLARK (Northland Church, Online Minister): I provide pastoral care. I provide direction and really help them connect to other people around them as well, ultimately to connect them to God while they are in the worship environment.

LAWTON: Sometimes that includes offering an online prayer.

CLARK: For a long time I said, “I will pray for you right now,” and in 20 seconds later, “Okay, I’m done.” But I don’t think that has the punch. I type it all out, and I email all the prayers. A lot of people have told me that the prayers that we exchanged together they actually took and they printed out and carried them around with them afterwards, and it’s cool because it ended up giving that prayer shelf life far beyond what you and I would experience if we did it out loud.

LAWTON: With the explosion of online technologies and social media, religious institutions across the spectrum are finding more and more creative ways to connect with their members and reach out to new audiences. The Vatican, for example, has its own channel on YouTube, while the Dalai Lama tweets updates through Twitter. The innovations are providing new ministry opportunities, but some wonder if they are also changing fundamental beliefs and practices.

Northland Church and its prominent senior pastor, Joel Hunter, have been on the cutting edge of using new technologies, and they are helping others follow suit, especially churches in other parts of the world. Their online worshipers, they say, are demographically much like those who attend the main service. But the online ministry allows Northland to connect with people who wouldn’t have been comfortable attending a church. At the same time, Clark says Northland has created a worldwide church community.

CLARK: The relationships the Apostle Paul had that we see throughout the New Testament were often carried out by letter, and I don’t think there’s anything that substantially different than what we are doing here.

LAWTON: Still, some question the nature of a virtual religious community.

REV. HENRY BRINTON (Fairfax Presbyterian Church, Fairfax, VA): There’s a level of trust and support and accountability that you get in a face-to-face relationship with someone which I don’t think is possible online.

LAWTON: Reverend Henry Brinton of Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia believes that, especially in the Christian tradition, there are limits to how much worship can really occur online.

BRINTON: There is something powerful about coming into a sanctuary and being with others. We still require that baptism be done with water and that communion be a community meal where real bread is consumed, where the fruit of the vine is received, and people do feel a very strong connection with God and with each other through those physical acts.

LAWTON: Northland leaders say they try to build face-to-face connections as well.

TAYLOR: Our goal is not for someone to log in and watch a service and, “Hey, I’m done.” We want them to be in community with other people where they meet together and have a meal together and go out and serve others together.

LAWTON: One way of doing that has been through Roku set-top boxes that enable people to watch Web-streamed video on their TVs. Northland created the first church channel on Roku, which allows people to gather in places from bars to prisons to homes to watch the live stream of the service. About 150 miles away from Northland Church, a small group gathers every Sunday to watch on Marcy and Ron Burth’s 53-inch TV.

RON BURTH (Northland House Church): The main reason why we bought the big TV was for sports.

MARCY BURTH (Northland House Church): We were going to watch tennis, call the balls, be down on the football field. God had other plans.

LAWTON: The Burths hadn’t been able to find a church they liked in their own neighborhood, and they invited neighbors who weren’t part of a church either.

MARCY BURTH: We have a closeness that you don’t have when you’re in a large congregation, but we really do have the benefit of the live service coming into our home.

RON BURTH: It seems to be unorthodox, but yet it’s really the early church that did meet in homes initially.

LAWTON: Would you go back to a traditional church having been through all of this?

MARCY BURTH: Probably not.

LAWTON: Outside Boston, the Daughters of St. Paul are also making active use of new technologies. Their order was founded almost a hundred years ago by an Italian priest who believed the media would have a profound impact on culture.

SISTER KATHRYN JAMES HERMES (Daughters of St. Paul): He said, “Look at the churches.” He said, “Where are the people? The people are not in the pews. Where are they?” So it’s our job to go out to wherever they are and make that place a church, a sanctuary, a place where they can meet God and God can meet them.

SISTER SUSAN JAMES HEADY (Daughters of St. Paul): Whereas maybe people before might have thought they had to go to church to do religion, they are doing it in the comfort of their home, having religious, theological discussions with their friends—maybe even a lot more fun because people like to get on their computer and go on Facebook.

LAWTON: Many of the sisters have blogs, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages, and they have developed a series of mobile web apps, such as the Rosary App, that people can use on their Smartphones and iPads. Sister Sean Mayer is an administrator of the Facebook page for the award-winning Daughters of St. Paul choir. She says the tool allows them to interact with their fans almost instantaneously.

SISTER SEAN MAYER (Daughters of St. Paul): I try to put up something every two to three days. When we are actually recording or when we’re on the road, it’s every two or three minutes practically.

LAWTON: Their most active site is the “Ask a Catholic Nun” page on Facebook, which has more than 12,000 followers.

SISTER HEADY: The site was founded not to be a place for debates, but more for information so that people who have questions about the faith or who would like to connect with a sister and may not have the opportunity in their local parish could get on and ask a question.

LAWTON: People from all over the world ask questions about the Christian faith or Catholic Church teachings. Some ask for opinions about difficult relationships. Recently, there were some questions from Muslims trying to understand the concept of the Trinity.

(speaking to Sister Heady): Are there sometimes you’re not sure what the right answer would be?

SISTER HEADY: Well, the good thing about Google is anything you want to know you can Google. So I have my reliable sources, the catechism of the Catholic Church. There’s certainly Scripture. There’s other reliable places that you can search out answers.

LAWTON: She recognizes the limitations and tries to direct people to a local priest or counselor, but this format, she says, also has its place.

SISTER HEADY: Sometimes people need to first venture into a safe place where they are unidentified, and they just connect with someone, and I consider it a blessing that they have connected with me and not some other kook that will lead them astray.

LAWTON: Pope Benedict XVI has encouraged the church to use social media, but he cautioned Catholics to make sure they are authentically representing the church online. Professor Stephen O’Leary at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication says the grassroots character of social media does pose challenges to traditional religious authority structures.

PROFESSOR STEPHEN O’LEARY (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California): In many cases, members of the congregation are acting as media producers and are functioning independently of their own local church. So the authorities from the church—pastor up the line to the denominational heads—no longer have the kind of control that they once did.

LAWTON: O’Leary likens social media to the invention of the printing press, which made the Bible and theological debate more accessible to everyone. This, he says, paved the way for the Protestant Reformation.

O’LEARY: It was the innovation which had changed everything and challenged the authority of the church in a way which was never possible before. I think that today’s media technologies, from the Internet to Twitter and all these things, are having a similar effect on the church.

LAWTON: O’Leary and other experts agree it’s still too soon to know what the ultimate impact of social media will be on religion. Still, many groups say there is no choice but to move forward.

SISTER HERMES: I think we have to have a little more faith in God, that somehow he knows what’s happening and that he himself, God himself, is actually using this means to bring some of his love and peace into the world.

LAWTON: And whatever the impact, there’s no going back.

I’m Kim Lawton reporting.

Originally published July 16, 2010

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KIM LAWTON, correspondent: At the CORE/El Centro natural healing center in Milwaukee, Sister Madeline Gianforte is using Reiki on one of her clients. In this Eastern healing technique, practitioners place their hands on or above someone in an effort to enhance the body’s flow of energy. They say that can lead to physical and spiritual healing.

SISTER MADELINE GIANFORTE (CORE/El Centro): As a practitioner, I’m just facilitating that energy. But you are doing your own healing in the sense of connecting to the divine and the healing that happens within.

LAWTON: Gianforte is a nun with the Sisters of Saint Agnes. She’s also a trained Reiki master. She says Reiki fits well with her faith.

Sister Madeline Gianforte

GIANFORTE: It’s an incredibly spiritual, prayerful experience for me. It calms the inner part of my being so much that I can tap that deepest place, the core place of who I am.

LAWTON: But the US Catholic bishops say Reiki is superstition, and they’ve urged Catholics not to provide or support it. Reverend Tom Weinandy is executive director of the bishops’ doctrine committee.

REV. TOM WEINANDY (US Conference of Catholic Bishops): The problem that we had with Reiki, in the end, was that we felt it sort of fell between the crack, that it was neither really a medical or scientific technique nor was it a religious technique that was compatible with Christianity.

LAWTON: Reiki, with its strong emphasis on the spiritual, was developed in Japan in the early 20th century. Using various hand positions, practitioners help their clients access what they call a universal life force, a spiritual or divine energy force. They claim that energy force can reduce stress and accelerate the body’s natural healing process. A favorite of New Age centers, Reiki is also increasingly used in hospitals and medical clinics.

GIANFORTE: I did a lot of Reiki with my mom when she had cancer, and she was very, very sick with chemo and radiation, and one of the greatest things for her was that it alleviated a lot of the side-effects and the symptoms of radiation and chemo, and then ultimately in her final stages it kind of allowed her to peacefully go.

LAWTON: Gianforte helped found the nonsectarian CORE/El Centro as a place where everyone, but especially low-income people, could have access to alternative medicine and natural healing techniques. Reiki is one of many practices here based on an Eastern holistic philosophy focusing on the body, the mind and the spirit.

GIANFORTE: If the spirit isn’t addressed, and only the body is, a complete healing won’t be possible.

LAWTON: Lauri Lumby Schmidt uses Reiki in her ministry as a spiritual director.

LAURI LUMBY SCHMIDT (Authentic Freedom Ministries): There is a wide range of things that people can experience, but it does tend to be much more profound than just straight relaxation.

LAWTON: Schmidt did her Reiki training or “attunements” with Catholic nuns, who she says, taught it from a Christian perspective.

SCHMIDT: When I really look at Jesus’ ministry and what he was all about, it was about healing, and he empowered his disciples to do the same thing. He commissioned them to go out and heal.

LAWTON: But the Catholic bishops say they received more and more questions about Reiki, so they commissioned a study, and last year released guidelines which said “a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition.” And the guidelines concluded “it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions, such as Catholic health care facilities and retreat centers, or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy.”

WEINANDY: God is God, and human beings are human beings, and we can petition God, but we can’t manipulate him, and we felt that this was what was happening in the context of Reiki, that the person learned how to be in touch with the divine cosmic forces such that they could now manipulate it through a laying on of hands or a massage or something that the person could be healed.

LAWTON: Many Reiki supporters were taken aback by the statement’s tone.

GIANFORTE: It’s not a religion. It’s just a practice that assists people in connecting more deeply to the more spiritual soul places within themselves, so I was pretty surprised by that.

LAWTON: The document said the Church recognizes two kinds of healing: natural means through the practice of medicine and healing by God’s divine grace. In the Christian tradition, there is the sacramental anointing with oil and the laying on of hands.

WEINANDY: Christians can pray for one another, lay hands on a sick person, and ask Jesus to heal them, but you’re not channeling divine energies through your hands.

LAWTON: Weinandy says sometimes individuals or even places such as the pilgrimage site in Lourdes, France appear to have a special gift of healing. But he says physical healing is never guaranteed, and it’s always up to the will of God.

WEINANDY: It’s not that he loves one person more than the other, but we don’t know why the Lord would heal one and not another person, but it is a mystery.

LAWTON: Reiki practitioners deny that they are trying to manipulate God.

Rev. Tom Weinandy

SCHMIDT: You can tell when you are facilitating and sharing Reiki with someone that you are not guiding it, you know. You can tell that there’s a higher power that is doing the work.

LAWTON: Schmidt says she chooses to give the credit to God.

SCHMIDT: For me, Reiki is another form of prayer. It’s allowing myself to be a vessel through which then God’s healing can then be experienced by the person that is receiving the Reiki.

WEINANDY: If you try to plug Reiki into Christianity, what you’re saying is Jesus is not good enough on his own. He’s got to be supplemented by something else, in this case, the divine forces, so you’re either downgrading Jesus and Christianity or you’re taking the heart out of Reiki.

LAWTON: The bishops’ document is not a mandate, and local dioceses may implement it as they choose. But Reiki supporters say it’s already had a chilling effect. Many Catholic institutions, including hospitals and retreat centers, are no longer offering Reiki, and most nuns are reluctant to speak publicly about their use of Reiki.

SCHMIDT: Some people, I think, find comfort in the perceived security of a black and white theology, and Reiki doesn’t fit within that black and white theology, and so in those kinds of situations there tends to be judgment, there tends to be fear, there tends to be reaction.

LAWTON: Schmidt says she’s sad the bishops would oppose something that has meant so much to her spiritually.

SCHMIDT: I see Reiki as being life-giving. It definitely flows out of my relationship with God. It’s drawing me closer in my relationship with God. I certainly have grown in my awe and wonder over how God can work in the world.

LAWTON: But Church leaders say they believe Reiki is spiritually dangerous.

WEINANDY: I want to stick with Jesus. I don’t want to open myself up to other forces that may be, you know, supernatural in some sense but not of God. I think it’s a risky business to be playing around with this sort of thing.

LAWTON: While the theological debates continue, the National Institutes of Health has funded a study on the possible health effects of Reiki.

I’m Kim Lawton in Milwaukee.

DEBORAH POTTER, guest anchor: An association of Catholic women religious leaders is asking the Vatican why the group is being investigated. The leadership conference that represents almost all of the Catholic religious orders in the United States is the target of a “doctrinal assessment,” the results of which will be a secret report to Rome. The group was warned eight years ago that it had failed to promote some of the church’s teachings, including the male-only priesthood. A separate “apostolic visitation” is looking into what the Vatican calls “the quality of the life” of all 60,000 American Catholic sisters.

Joining us now to discuss these investigations is Tom Fox, editor of the independent newspaper the National Catholic Reporter. Thanks for joining us.

TOM FOX (Editor, National Catholic Reporter): Great to be here.

POTTER: Tom, I wonder if you could tell us what appears to be behind these investigations or, maybe put another way, what does it seem that the Vatican is after?

MR. FOX: Well, the truth is that no one really knows, and that’s one of the disconcerting elements. This really has taken the women by surprise. They met, as you said, with the Vatican eight years ago and went over certain matters, and every year since then they’ve been returning to Rome talking to Vatican officials, been open for communication, and now, out of seemingly nowhere, comes these investigations.

POTTER: Why do you think it might be happening now? Has there been some kind of change in the make-up of religious orders, or is it just changing philosophies in Rome that might be pushing this forward?

MR. FOX: Well, there’s been a conflict going back 40 years, since the Second Vatican Council, between two models of church. One is the more conservative, traditional model, male-clergy-hierarchical model, and the second has been the model of the Second Vatican Council, which stressed collegiality, and the women religious of America really embraced that, and they changed their constitutions to become more collective in their own leadership. And they really represent the forefront of this second model of church. And I think today the older, more conservative model feels that it’s strong enough now, maybe, to rein in this last remnant of the Second Vatican Council.

POTTER: So is it in effect a sort of push to reestablish a kind of orthodoxy in the Catholic Church in America?

MR. FOX: I think that there’s a continued concern by the Vatican that American Catholics are not orthodox enough, that the women religious may not be orthodox, but let’s be clear this that this is not on traditional teachings on God, Trinity, Jesus. This is—these are teachings on homosexuality, on the male priesthood, and the primacy of the Catholic Church.

POTTER: And yet that seems pretty central to what concerns the Vatican.

MR. FOX: That’s a very central concern, at this point, to the Vatican.

POTTER: So what, then, are the wider implications of an investigation into the women religious for the Catholic Church in America?

MR. FOX: Right. That’s a good question, and I think women religious say that this really represents an investigation or an attack, if you will, on the American way of being church, which really has stressed more lay involvement, more religious involvement, collegiality, more accountability of—demanded of the bishops, and so we’re really seeing here maybe the clash of two models, and I think the women religious are right that this really is wider than just the women religious themselves.

POTTER: Now, there have been some discussions that perhaps what the Vatican’s really doing is sort of assessing property for its value. Does that have any bearing, do you think, any validity?

MR. FOX: Well, again, Deborah, the fact is that no one really knows, and so you end up in this speculation, and of course there have been millions of dollars in lawsuits against the Church, and the Church is hurting for money, and so some of the women are at least speculating that Rome wants a better assessment of their property values and—with an eye on maybe using some of that money to pay some of these bills.

POTTER: Obviously, we’ll be watching this and report the results when we can get them. Tom, I appreciate you being here. Tom Fox from the National Catholic Reporter.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: The Vatican reported this week that the number of Catholics in religious orders around the world continued to decline. In the latest figures for 2006, there were just over 945,000 monks and nuns, down about 7,000 from the year before. The overwhelming majority, 753,000, about 80 percent, were women. Around the U.S. the number of nuns has also been going down, and their average age rising. But there are a few places where the reverse is true. Betty Rollin found a Dominican teaching order in Nashville fairly bursting with dedicated young nuns.

BETTY ROLLIN: They are the Dominican Sisters of Saint Cecilia in Nashville, Tennessee, a traditional order that began in 1860. Their day begins at 5 a.m. with meditation followed by a Mass. Meals are held in silence. Their vocation is to teach. The sisters here have come from different states and different backgrounds, most of them raised Catholic, some not. In 1965, there were about 180,000 nuns in America. By 2007, that number dropped to 63,000 with an average age of 70. The average age of the Dominican sisters is 36. Their numbers have increased so steadily in the past 15 years that they have had to build a 100,000 square-foot addition to the property. The sisters here — the first year postulants, the second year novices, and those who, after seven years, have taken their final vows all say they have been called by God and that they are in love.

Sister KATHERINE WILEY: When you’re a little girl, you’re planning your wedding, you’re playing bride. But just to allow the Lord to transform my heart to see that I would still be a bride, but I would be his bride.

Sister CHRISTIANA MICKWEE, O.P.: When you have fallen in love with God, everything doesn’t seem quite so important anymore because God, the creator of the world, has asked you to be his bride. No, I will not be having sex. No, I will not be having children. No, I will not be marrying a spouse. But my very body and blood is united to God in a way that isn’t offered to everyone in the world.

strong>Sister CHRISTIANA MICKWEE, O.P.

Sister AMELIA HUELLER: A woman wants to give herself so totally to one man, to hold nothing back, to be so intimate with him and to bring forth life with him. It took me awhile to understand — well, “understand” is the wrong word — but to see that God will fulfill all of that, that he was asking me in a total way to give myself totally to him.

ROLLIN (to Sr. Hueller): How do you know that this God that you’ve given everything to is really there?

Sr. HUELLER: Because it’s whom I am in love with, and when you fall in love with someone, it has to be a someone. You can like something a lot. You can say I love this or that. But when you are falling in love, and a woman knows when she is in love, it has to be a person.

ROLLIN: Sister Amelia Hueller was brought up in a non-religious home and converted to Catholicism.

Sr. HUELLER: I finished high school, I went to college in Washington, DC for four years, and I came up against relativism: the idea that we can’t — people said that we couldn’t know what was good, what was bad, what was true. So I really began questioning where truth comes from. Where does goodness come from? I know I have values. Who gives them to me? And so between that moment and here, it was a process of, “This is scary, I don’t understand this. I don’t see why I would be called. How can I be called? I am so normal.”

ROLLIN: After seven years of study and contemplation, Sister Christiana Mickwee took her final vows last summer. She teaches fifth grade at a parochial elementary school.

Sr. MICKWEE: For me, it wasn’t so much a voice per se but through prayer — just in the silence, just letting him be there and finding out, really asking him, “What do you want from me, God?” I mean, I really had everything I could have wanted in the world, and there wasn’t anything that I was trying to get away from.

ROLLIN: Sister Catherine Marie Hopkins, who has been a Dominican nun for 23 years, helps direct the order’s educational program.

Sister CATHERINE MARIE HOPKINS, O.P.: Very rarely do people come and say, “I’ve always wanted to be a sister.” You know, I always found that very suspect. You know, usually it was, “I was going through life very happily and suddenly this strange idea came and I tried really hard to eliminate it.” In my own life, that was the case.

ROLLIN: This life is not for everyone who comes here. Who is most likely to remain?

Sr. HOPKINS: I would say those who are most comfortable with themselves — the young person who would have made a good wife and mother, who would have made a good career person. They’re not the loner. They’re not the introvert, necessarily, although we have all personality types in the religious life.

ROLLIN: Colleen Carroll Campbell, who is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, wrote THE NEW FAITHFUL: WHY YOUNG ADULTS ARE EMBRACING CHRISTIAN ORTHODOXY. Ms. Campbell found that the conservative orders, like the Nashville Dominicans, are the ones that are attracting young people.

COLLEEN CARROLL CAMPBELL (Author, THE NEW FAITHFUL): These are orders where the sisters still wear their full-length habits, where they still gather to pray seven times a day, where they still live what is really a very traditional religious life.

ROLLIN: The new nuns say they were hugely affected by Pope John Paul II, who reached out to young people in his World Youth Days and rallies, entreating them to remain faithful to the traditional teachings of the church.

Ms. CAMPBELL: Young adults really saw in Pope John Paul II someone who was calling them to something the world never dared called them to, and that is sacrifice, self-denial, laying down their lives at the feet of Christ and asking him, “What do you want me to do with my life?” And for a lot of these young women when they ask that question, following John Paul’s example, what they heard is that I want you to give up everything and follow me as a consecrated woman.

The younger sisters we’re seeing tend to be very firmly in support of the pope in terms of Catholic teaching, including on the non-ordination of women. So this is kind of an interesting reversal here, and often it is referred to by some of the older Catholics as, you know, the “young fogies” because they’re in many ways more traditional than their elders. There’s an element of reaction there. After Vatican II, there were many good changes. There were a lot of things that got tossed out prematurely: the devotional life — almost completely obliterated; liturgical music and the liturgy itself just became very entertainment-oriented.

ROLLIN: Regimentation, rules, sacrifice — all part of convent life. But those who are here speak mainly of their joy.

Sister HUELLER: With sacrifice can come great joy. We know that sacrificing is not opposed to being happy. In fact, it can be our path to happiness. So sadness, no; sacrifice, yes.

Sr. MICKWEE: The joy I see in my sisters is far greater than the joy I see in many of the people that I grew up with.

ROLLIN: Colleen Carroll Campbell thinks that their initial passion may fade, but that the joy these young women feel will sustain them and encourage others to a more religious life.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Betty Rollin in Nashville, Tennessee.