Gone are the cloisters filled with sisters draped in long, dark gowns called “habits,” garments from much earlier centuries, often topped with starched pleats that pinched the wearer’s face, allowing only the chin to be seen just above the eyebrows.

Gone are the Catholic elementary schools filled with baby boomers who were taught almost exclusively by the sisters, who worked for a spit thief.

Gone are the motherhouses where young women flocked to be educated and trained in particular religious order disciplines.

Gone, for the most part, are the habits and the women, many of whom left, like their male counterparts in religious life, in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

The much smaller and aging body of women that remains is often seen, understandably, as the last vestige of religious life. It is easy to conclude from that view that the religious life is over.

“Wrong,” says Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister, in this episode, a discussion drawn from her classic book, The Fire in These Ashes: A Spirituality of Contemporary Religious Life.

The old forms of religious life, the “form” of it, are indeed a thing of the past. “What remains,” she says, “is a culture of young people looking for a way to live out their spiritual life, their contemplative understandings, their need to serve and their commitment to Jesus.” The religious life is not dead. That is changing.

“Risking the Questions” is a joint project for Bone vision and NCR. This podcast is made possible in part by the generosity of Bill and Jeanne Buchanan. In episode 3, Chittister and her friend and cinemaformer National Catholic Reporter editor Tom Roberts, discuss changes in religious life.

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