The Other Ministerial Priesthood: The Prophetic Ministries of Religious Clergy

Abstract

S lightly less than one-third of the priests in the United States are members of religious orders committed to everything from contemplative monastic life to active ministries of preaching and teaching.1 The role of clerical religious in the twenty-first century poses an interesting problem. Like other ministerial cadres of the church, institutes of religious priests since Vatican II have experienced decline in numbers, the shrinking of institutional commitments, and the shock of scandal that has touched other elements of the church’s leadership. Their recruits are fewer in number, older than in decades past, and less connected to the web of Catholic tradition than previously—a now familiar profile for vocations to priesthood and religious life across the board. Many universities, colleges, and schools founded by religious decades ago sometimes retain merely a vestigial presence of the religious group that founded them, and a critical question for these institutions is how to maintain the spirit and charism of their founders in the absence of controlling numbers of their members.2 On the other hand, certain characteristic qualities still set clerical religious apart from diocesan clergy. On Sunday many Catholics seek out churches staffed by religious for good preaching, solemn liturgy, a spirit of fraternity and hospitality, or an aura of the sacred. These are subtle qualities, and religious do not always provide such ministries better than diocesan clergy. Not all religious priests work hard at preaching well, but often better preaching is found in a parish or chapel where religious serve than in the average parish church. If religious priests are less harried and