By Jenna Marie Cooper, OSV News
Q: Why are there so many different kinds of convents out there? I don’t understand why a young woman who feels called to give her life to God would need that many choices. (Ohio)
A: The short answer to the question of why there are such a variety of convents out there is: You would have to ask God!
But looking at this question on a more fundamental level, we believe God gives us the kinds of consecrated life we need for the good of all the people of God.
The Church teaches that religious life – and really, all of consecrated life (the umbrella category that encompasses “religious life,” strictly speaking) – is based around the concept of “charism.”
“Charism” is a Greek word often translated as “gift.” In our current Catholic terminology, a “charism” is a spiritual gift from God meant to benefit the wider Christian community. (For a scriptural example, see Rom 12:6-8)
In the specific theological context of Catholic consecrated life, a “charism” is an inspiration or spiritual gift from God that informs a whole way of life centered on following Christ more radically in the spirit of the Gospels.
For example, St. Francis of Assisi was given the charism of imitating Christ more closely through a love of holy poverty. In the religious order he founded, Franciscan friars, nuns and religious sisters share in the same “gifted” spirituality that was given to their founder.
Throughout the Church’s history, God has granted charisms of consecrated life to different members of the faithful to meet the needs of the Church that arose over the course of centuries.
For example, at the very beginning of the Church we had women who renounced marriage in order to dedicate themselves entirely to the Lord as consecrated virgins, with a charism of living as “brides of Christ.” This radical, spousal love of God often expressed itself in martyrdom in the Church’s first few centuries, and through their witness many people were convinced of the truths of the faith.
Later, when the Church was no longer suffering from violent persecution at the hands of the Roman emperor, men and women longing to bear a similar witness as the early martyrs freely embraced a life of prayer and penance, often in solitude in the desert, as a “bloodless” or “white” martyrdom. They became the first hermits.
In late antiquity, as Roman civil society was collapsing, St. Benedict wrote a “rule of life” for monks living in community. This was the beginning of the Order of St. Benedict, which founded monasteries that served as islands of peace and stability in a chaotic world – and which we can largely thank for the preservation of our western intellectual cultural heritage.
During the later Middle Ages, at the height of “Christendom” when the Church was a major influence in Europe and beyond, many Church leaders grew lax in their spiritual lives.
This was the point in history when God inspired saints such as St. Francis and St. Dominic to found new religious orders dedicated to rekindling the fire of the faith in Christian hearts that had grown cold. Similarly, in the Counter-Reformation era of the 16th century, orders such as the Jesuits and Discalced Carmelites came about in part as an “answer” to some of the objections of the Protestant leaders of the day.
In early modern times, various social needs inspired founders to establish active apostolic communities dedicated to works of charity. For example, St. John Bosco founded the Salesians to care for youth, and St. Jeanne Jugan started the Little Sisters of the Poor to care for the impoverished elderly.
In the 20th century, the Church established secular institutes as a new form of consecrated life dedicated to evangelizing secular society from within as a “leaven in the world.” Going forward, the Lord may very well give us new charisms, although this never negates the older ones.
Jenna Marie Cooper, who holds a licentiate in canon law, is a consecrated virgin and a canonist whose column appears weekly at OSV News. Send your questions to CatholicQA@osv.com.
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