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A Dismal Record: Why Are They Destroying the Nuns?

…As a snapshot of the current condition of Carmelite monastic life after it had been completely “federated,” it paints a depressing picture; but as a demonstration of what “federations” are likely to achieve once Cor orans is implemented universally, it clangs in the mind like a funeral bell.

Reconciled to managed extinction

Given this incredible picture of a Carmelite Order in the last rattle of its death throes, the rest of the summaries of speeches given at the meeting in Avila read as outright surreal, leaving us to wonder if any of these people are attached in any way to reality.

Sr. Enrica Rosanna, the representative of the Vatican’s Congregation for Religious told them that the “two great challenges to our contemplative life” are “the challenge of globalization and the challenge of irrelevancy.” She warned the nuns against bringing vocations from other countries to keep their monasteries alive, dropping a hint about what now seems to be a particular obsession of the Congregation. Cor orans would take this subject up definitively in 2018:

The nuns were exhorted to “stay awake to welcome the dawn” of a bright new future:

“These are difficult and uncertain times, but it is also the time to stay awake as the new dawn is already announcing itself.”

“Our aim must be to be open to the future. We should not forget that we are following in the tradition of Teresa of Jesus and in the tradition of all those who have followed in her footsteps. It is a wide road that opens up before us. We must be women of hope and faith. We must always believe that God is the one who directs history. From this derives our task, to be creative and, at the same time, faithful (creative fidelity).” [emphasis in the original.]

While there can be no doubt that the impending total extinction of the Carmelite Order in Western Europe was foremost in the minds of the nuns present, it seems that the issue was simply not addressed out loud by the representatives of the bureaucracy.

Instead, Sr. Enrica, after this bizarre and cryptic comment, spoke of the “problems and difficulties that we can encounter” in discernment of mostly non-existent vocations, including “consumerism, modern means of communication, difficulties in creating a stable personality, autonomy of the young, the need to be always supported, the ideology of subjectivism.”

What are these people smoking?

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