Pathways to Re-Creating Religious Communities.

It is no secret that religious communities, especially women's religious communities defined in the traditional canonical sense, are in crisis, at least in the West. Membership is in precipitous decline, the population of those who remain ages, and few communities can boast of many new recruits. This situation has been addressed by astute commentators such as Sandra Schneiders. Wittberg's book is not a consideration of the crisis but a discussion of the possibilities, desirability, and practical strategies for the founding or re-founding of religious communities. As a sociologist, she has studied nascent communities, and in her final pages she provides some profiles (thinly disguised) of both male and female communities in the United States as models for discussion.

Wittberg, herself a religious sister, reminds us that religious communities have had a long history in the church, and that not all have ancient pedigrees. Active congregations of sisters, for example, are largely a post-Enlightenment phenomenon who have had some monastic usages grafted onto their life. Many religious orders are of post-Tridentine origin and a fair number derive their charism from the French school of spirituality of the seventeenth century. Such congregations should not be confused with the more venerable contemplative orders who possess a much clearer idea of what their life should be and how they should live it. Even the traditional monastic orders in the West, however, have had good reason to go back to their sources. As a prominent Cistercian abbot once remarked to me, ecclesiology after Vatican II presents a real theological challenge to those who wish to live the vita regularis. The same dilemma confronts the mendicants and the religious orders in general.

As a sociologist, Wittberg is aware of this complexity. The most interesting part of her book, the second half, concerns itself with the opportunities and pitfalls of actually imagining how religious communities might start and, perhaps, flourish. This question leads her, at the end of each chapter, to provide a checklist of problems that need be squarely faced if one is not to fall prey to a kind of romanticism (padding about in sandals with Gregorian chant playing in the background), or to a theological naivete (what constitutes a serious theology of vows would be a good theological reflection-starter), or to a desire to replicate past strategies without asking whether or not they are merely historical epiphenomena or somehow truly implicated in an authentic version of religious life. And as always, there is the problem of a charismatic leader who attracts people to his or her person but perhaps not to a genuine vision of gospel life.

This book exudes a realistic optimism, and I share its hopefulness. Although it is true that many traditional ways of ordering religious congregations have seen their day, it is also true that new experiments are aborning. A few may succeed. Anyone who has read much church history realizes that this has always been the case. When the Gregorian reform began to take root there was an impassioned debate about the nature of the experiments. This led some devoted souls to reimagine monastic life, others to test the eremitical vocation, the life of poverty, or the imposition of a regular life on canons. Lay groups such as the Patarines in Milan and, later, the Beguines, took shape. The same energies were present in the period after the Reformation, in the post-Enlightenment period, and earlier in this century. It is also happening today. As people attempt this re-imagining of religious life they may well wish to use Wittberg's book as a kind of checklist for ways to proceed and ways not to. In the interim, we should not count out all of the traditional orders. A few years ago, according to Wittberg, the Jesuits had 40 entering novices in the entire United States, but Indonesia had over 350. That is a fact worth pondering.

Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.