Tuesday May 1 2012 - THE TIMES
After years
of falling numbers of women taking religious orders, applications to nunneries
are on the rise.
Ruth Gledhill investigates why
Until recently, nuns in Britain had fallen out of the habit. In parts of the country,
years went by without any women seeking to get themselves to a nunnery. Then, suddenly,
convents have reported a spike in interest.
In the past three years the number of women entering the religious life
has nearly tripled from 6 to 17 and there are also many more who have entered
convents but have not not yet taken their initial vows. This influx is thought to
be a result of the Pope's visit to Britain last year. Such has been the sudden
surge in inquiries that religious orders have had to ask bishops how to cope, so
unused to receiving new vocations have they become, and so accepting of the
received wisdom that, with many convents closing and being sold off, their way of
life was likely to be coming to an end.
Now, if these inquiries result in more women taking their vows and becoming
novices, numbers could edge back up to where they were in the early I980s, when
more than a hundred women a year took vows as sisters in enclosed and other religious
orders.
This week, the media have reported that even a former girlfriend
of the Prime Minister has become a nun called Sister John Mary. "I thought
of marriage ... then God called," Laura Adshead,44, a former pupil of the
Cheltenham Ladies' College, told a television documentary about the Benedectine
orders he joined, the Abbey of Re gin a Laudis in the Connecticut hills in the
US.
Her documentary tells a story of heartbreak and addiction before finding
God in recovery. The documentary, God is the Bigger Elvis, shows photographs
of her smoking, posing in a leopard-print top and drinking a glass of wine.
She says: "I feel like I tried most things in life that are supposed
to make you happy. That journey took me down into alcoholism and drug addiction."
She felt called to the religious life in 2008.
"I remember having to tell my mother, 'I'm going to join
the abbey,' and she said, 'Yes, I can see this world has no real meaning for you
any more'." I looked at this place and saw women who had what I wanted. You
make a decision here to surrender your life to God."
The documentary's title is inspired by the convent's prioress,
a former actress who starred with Elvis Presley in two of his films, Loving You
and King Creole, before becoming a nun in 1963.
Sister John Mary's journey seems to reflect a new trend in
parts of the world, including the UK, where, after years of apparently relentless
decline, vocations to the religious life are on the increase.
Take the Congregation of Jesus in York. After years of no
activity at all, six women have sought to enter the order in the space ofl2 months.
At the Society of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton there has also been a rise, with
three women due to join the novitiate later this year.
Many young British women have also gone to New York
to join the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal after meeting Franciscan friars from
Canning Town, East London, who are active at Catholic youth events. The Franciscan
Sisters have a house in Leeds, although novices still go to New York for their formation.
Sister Hazel Buckley, novice directress at another
order, the Franciscan Missionaries of the Divine Motherhood at Clapham Common, London,
says she had no novices for 12 years but now has a first-year novice, a woman born
in the Philippines but who lived in England for 20 years before joining the order.
Two more are due to arrive from Singapore this summer.
"One noticeable thing is that people who are thinking
about religious life now are much farther on in their lives than when I started,"
she says.
"That was 1958. I was 23 and T was considered
a late vocation.
"At that time, people entered on the whole at
18. Now they are making their life choices much later."
Sister Buckley says that many women were reaching
their thirties and forties wl.th deep feelings of insecurity. "They
might not have had secure relationships or a secure
home. They start to think about what really matters."
Father Christopher Jamison director of the National
Office for Vocation, and former abbot of Worth Abbey, West Sussex, Who on Friday
announced a new national vocations framework for the Catholic bishops of England
and Wales, said the three-year-project was a response to the call by Pope Benedict
XVI during his visit to Britain last year
for young people to ask themselves what kind of person
they would really like to be.
Father Jamison said: "Many people today,: especially
the young find : It difficult to listen to their deepest spiritual desires, so
the Church needs to offer a structured approach to vocation if the call of Christ
is to be heard by more people." He continued: "It's against
a background that's surprisingly upbeat given the general perception of the state
ofthe clergy and religious life in this country. In the last few years, the number
of people applying to seminaries has been gradually increasing and, in more recent
years, just in the last couple of years, ever since the Papal visit, the number
of women approaching women's congregations has also been increasing." It was not fully reflected yet in
the figures because i t takes time from an initial approach to become a novice,
said Father Jamison, "But it is certainly more than anecdotal. There are congregations
of wo men who have been contacting us to say, 'Could you help us because it's
been a while since we've had this sort of response: and so we are now happily
supporting them in dealing with an increase." Judith Eydmann, development co-ordinator
of the National Office for Vocation, says: "For young women itis not j ust
the life that is attractive. They
feel that it is what Christ has called them to, the
total dedication of their lives to the service of God. We have moved away from a
model of recruitment to one of discernment and that gives people a safe environment
in which they can make safe choices."
She says new Catholic movements such as Youth 2000
have been key to the increase. Among the general Catholic population of more than
five mi Ilion across the UK, aboutlO per cent have had contact with new movements
but among those entering monasteries, convents and seminaries, the proportion is
50 per cent.
In a further new development, one in five of the new
vocations are converts to Catholicism, compared with the 1970s when nearly all those
seeking to become cradle Catholics. In spite of Sister John Marys story of recovery
from addiction, Eydmann says this was not the norm.
"Most people entering a congregation
or religious seminary are given a detailed psychological
assessment over a whole weekend," she says. "One of the things that is
checked is a person's motivation. Going to a monastery or religious life cannot
be an escape from things such as addiction because a person is confronted with
them self in a very profound way when they enter formation."
It might not be an escape, but in seeking a spiritual
path away from the stresses and pressures of modern life and towards a closer relationship
with God, it is once more being seen as an option – one that is more than just another
lifestyle choice.
Whether these newly formed nuns are finding God, or
God is finding them, the religious life is coming back into fashion as one that
offers not so
, much riches, but a way of life exemplified by courage,
wisdom and serenity - not bad for women who might be tempted to think they haven't
a prayer.
