Declining Institutional Sponsorship and Religious Orders: A Study of Reverse Impacts

Sociology of Religion, Fall, 2000 by Patricia Wittberg

The loss or attenuation of their institutional connection appears to have reduced the number of young women entering both communities, neither of which has more than a few young sisters in the initial stages of membership. [2] It also affects the reasons why women join, or stay, in the orders. Many new recruits were in professionalized service ministries prior to becoming sisters, and they are well aware that providing a ministerial service no longer distinguishes sisters from the laity. To the extent that the new entrants are interested in service works at all, they do not want to work in the order's institutions, much less administer them.

Because of the big business aspect that's gotten into the hospitals in the last few years, the younger sisters, at least in our community, who would be capable to go into those kinds of roles, that does not turn them on. And so they are getting their Masters' or whatever -- they might get an MBA or they might get a Nurse Clinician's Masters' -- but they want to go out and go into the clinics, where they have more contact. (Former social services administrator, present council member, Community A) Withdrawing from their institutions, therefore, has begun to affect the orders' very definition of their identity and purpose. It has become less evident -- even to the sisters themselves -- how one community differs from another, or how their service as sisters differs from that of a lay person. To the extent that the difference is mentioned at all, it is based on the harder-to-define spiritual and communitarian traits within the group. As new entrants are increasingly attracted by these latter distinctives, the per ceived role of the community will further change to match the changed expectations of its members. Instead of providing an established institutional setting for ministry, the community's primary function may become facilitating the individual works of its members: offering spiritual and communal support against burnout, providing financial subsidies, or doing publicity work for them. The orders will, in essence, become different entities as a result.

Internal Functioning

One might expect that the decisions made by the current governing councils of the two orders today will be similarly affected by the fact that the councilors are less likely to have come from top administrative positions in their former institutions. Only half of the present governing council of Community B have had such experience -- and both of them in education rather than in health care. In contrast, the previous provincial superior of Community B had been a hospital administrator. While the members of the governing council of Community A have all had administrative experience in the community's institutions, an examination of their archival records revealed a gradual shift in the type of this experience: from the early 1960s until 1990, the provincial superior and at least 40 percent of her council had served in hospital administration. Since 1990, however, the provincial superiors have been former education or social service administrators. Only one member of the five-member council between 1990 and 19 96 had had any experience in health care administration; since 1996, none have. While the present study has not investigated exactly what kinds of differences these changes in background have made, it is logical to assume that there has been some impact, both on the kinds of alternatives considered and on the conscious and unconscious priorities that underlie decision-making in these communities today.