Co-Bearers of Apostolic Life and Its Universal Task

Nuns and religious sisters have been in the news lately, due to a visitation of religious congregations taking place in the United States. Unfortunately, most accounts reduce the reality of religious life to institutional service, and/or a kind of professional religious lifestyle (a sort of second-class clergy). The call of the Second Vatican Council to return to the historical roots of religious life and to renew the memory of the founders of religious life seems mostly to have been forgotten. In contrast, Joseph Ratzinger reminds us of this history.

"An element that, while by no means absent from the movements, can easily be overlooked, now comes powerfully to the fore here: the apostolic movement of the nineteenth century was above all a female movement, in which there was a strong emphasis on caritas, on care for the suffering and the poor-we know what the new female communities meant and continue to mean for the hospitals and for the care of the needy-and a central emphasis on schools and education. Thus, the whole gamut of service of the gospel was present in the combination of teaching, education, and love. When we look back from the nineteenth century, we see that women always played an important role in the apostolic movements. Think of the bold women of the sixteenth century like Mary Ward or, on the other hand, Teresa of Avila, of female figures of the Middle Ages like Hildegard of Bingen and Catherine of Siena, of the women in the circle of Saint Boniface, of the sisters of the Church Fathers and, finally, of the women in the letters of Paul and in the circle around Jesus. The women were never bishops or priests, but they were co-bearers of apostolic life and its universal task."

The Theological Locus of Ecclesial Movements

In his 1998 address to the gathering of movements in Rome, Joseph Ratzinger, clarified the essential nature not just of ecclesial movements, but also of their precursors in monasticism. The essential task of religious orders, the various kinds of monks, nuns, brothers, sisters, and movements of the faithful is to be an apostolic ferment among the local Churches, to make the memory of the apostles present in the parishes and dioceses of the Church.