The Challenge of Religious Life in the United States Today

Religious life in the United States is at a point of crisis. A combination of vastly reduced numbers of religious, continuing problems to attract new vocations, and widely varied understandings of the basic concept of religious life, including ideas with respect to the evangelical counsels, have created a challenging situation in the American church. While the former vocation situation is beginning to rebound somewhat, opposed ecclesiologies have created deep divisions among religious in general and within individual communities and congregations. This essay proposes one view on the renewal of religious life in the United States. There is a need for religious to reconnect themselves to the institutional church and to see in Vatican II's Perfectae Caritatis renewal, not, as Avery Dulles describes, a false reform, as envisioned by many progressive theologians. The hermeneutic of rupture, which has characterized the progressive view of Vatican II must be replaced by a hermeneutic of continuity with reform. There is a need to relearn and recapture the tradition of religious life for the future prosperity of the American church.