Watch more of our conversation on the Catholic Church, sexual abuse, divisions over health care reform, and questions about the church's moral authority.

There will always be a purpose to monastic life, say the sisters of Mount St. Scholastica, as long as there is a need in the world for silence, prayer, simplicity, and balance.

"Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?" Those stirring words come at the beginning of one of the most durable spiritual guides of all time, the Rule of St. Benedict.

"Women religious say this represents an investigation or an attack on the American way of being church, which has stressed more lay involvement, more religious involvement, collegiality, more accountability demanded of the bishops," says National Catholic Reporter editor Tom Fox.

The Vatican reported this week that the number of Catholics in religious orders around the world continued to decline. 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.

There is a group of Benedictine nuns in Missouri who bake and sell millions of Communion wafers, small and large. But some would-be communicants complained that they are allergic to the gluten in the wheat in the nun's wafers. So they could not receive Communion. For the sisters that was a challenge.