With 23 postulants this year at the Motherhouse
of Nashville's Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia, the order has the
largest group of new nuns in training in the United States.
While many religious orders in the United States are declining, the Nashville Dominicans are flourishing, The Tennessean reports.
Most of the new sisters are in their 20s and want to be traditional
nuns, wearing full habits and living in a convent. They say that life
as a nun offers more than the secular world could ever give them.
The new sisters are a diverse group, including those right out of high
school and from across the globe. One, a nurse of Vietnamese descent,
came from Sydney, Australia. Another sister is from the Ivory Coast.
Three were engineers before coming to the convent.
They love Pope Benedict
XVI and the retired nuns at the convent, as well as Christian rock
bands Third Day and Jars of Clay. They have left everything behind,
families, friends, careers, even their iPods, cell phones, laptops and
Facebook accounts.
"God showed me that everything I longed for in my heart was here,"
Sister Angela said. "My vocation was a romance with the Creator."
John Allen, senior correspondent for the National Catholic Reporter
newspaper, was quoted as saying that in the 1970s, many nuns rebelled
against the Catholic culture they had grown up in, which was seen as
stifling and over controlling.
"That world no longer exists," he said.
The young nuns in Nashville don't seem driven by conservative theology
or ideology, driven instead by a love for God, the report said.
FULL STORY
Flourishing Nashville convent trains largest group of nuns in U.S. (The Tennessean)
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Dominican Sisters of St Cecilia