Abp Welby hosts major gathering of Anglican Religious Communities

From Anglican News Service-

The Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby is today welcoming over 100 members of a broad range of Anglican religious communities to Lambeth Palace to discuss the renewal of Religious Life within the Church.

The conference will bring together members of diverse religious communities – some centuries old, others newly emerging – that are bound together by a common commitment to prayer, community living, and a radical service of Christ, often in demanding social contexts.

The event marks a significant early step towards Archbishop Justin’s vision for the renewal of prayer and the Religious Life, which he has declared as a core priority for his ministry. The Archbishop will give a keynote address later this morning in which he will set out his vision to explain and encourage those gathered.

More here-

http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2014/03/abp-welby-hosts-major-gathering-of-anglican-religious-communities.aspx

Karen Armstrong, Religious Author And TED Prize Winner, Recalls Experience As A Catholic Nun (VIDEO)

From Huffington-

Karen Armstrong is an acclaimed religious author, prestigious TED Prize winner and one of the world's foremost religious scholars -- not to mention a former nun. At just 17, Armstrong began her religious journey and became a Catholic nun, embarking on what she hoped would be an experience of total enlightenment and spiritual awakening. However, life at the convent turned out to be much different from what Armstrong expected.

While at the convent, one of Armstrong's struggles was almost unheard of for a nun, as she tells Oprah in this video from "Super Soul Sunday." Armstrong says she developed an inability to pray and couldn't seem to do anything to focus herself on prayer.

"I was completely unable to pray, which is a bit of a drawback for a nun," Armstrong tells Oprah. "When I used to go in to make my meditation every morning, off my mind went, down every skittering kind of alley and byway. This was a source of terrible shame."

When Armstrong told her superior that she could no longer pray, she was brushed off. "She said, 'Oh, Sister, you're always so dramatic. Everybody has an off day,'" Armstrong recalls.

More here-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/08/karen-armstrong-catholic-nun_n_3403608.html

Pope Francis To Nuns: Don't Be Old Maids

From Huffington-

 Pope Francis has told nuns from around the world that they must be spiritual mothers and not "old maids."

Francis also warned the sisters against using their vocations for personal ambition, saying priests and sisters who do so "do more harm to the church."

Francis has complained frequently about such "careerism" in the church – a buzzword that is frequently used to describe Holy See bureaucrats.

The pope made the comments during an audience Wednesday with about 800 sisters attending an assembly of the International Union of Superiors General, which gathers the leaders of women's religious orders from some 75 countries.

The meeting came before Francis' general audience in St. Peter's Square, where in a break with tradition, he walked around a quadrant of the square greeting pilgrims.

More here-

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/pope-nuns-old-maids_n_3236008.html

Nun's music sends message against rebuke by Vatican

From The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-

When Kathy Sherman was in college during the final years of the Vietnam War, she played the guitar with friends in her dorm room and sang folk and protest songs over bowls of popcorn. They sang Peter, Paul and Mary and Joan Baez, and some friends said her voice reminded them of Judy Collins.
Sister Kathy graduated and joined an order of Roman Catholic nuns, the Sisters of St. Joseph of La Grange, but she never stopped making music. Last spring, when the Vatican issued a harsh assessment of the group representing a majority of U.S. nuns accusing them of "serious doctrinal problems," Sister Kathy, 60, said she responded the way she always does when she feels something deeply. She wrote a song.

The words popped into her head two days after the Vatican's condemnation, as she was walking down the hallway in her order's ministry center, feeling hurt and angry: "Love cannot be silenced," she thought. "It never has. It never will." She went into the center's dining room and tried out the lyrics on some of her sisters. They liked the message.


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 http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/news/us/nuns-music-sends-message-against-rebuke-by-vatican-664514/#ixzz2DtarC76A

Anglican Faces: Harriet Cannon

From The Living Church-

Harriet Starr Cannon was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on May 7, 1823. Both of Harriet’s parents died of yellow fever when she was 17 months old; she was left with her elder sister and closest friend Catherine Ann, then three years old. An aunt welcomed the two orphaned sisters into her home in Bridgeport, Connecticut — making for seven children in one house in this then-bustling mercantile center on Long Island Sound. As a young girl Harriet lost her sight in one eye in an accident, but all accounts point to a happy childhood despite many significant early setbacks. One relative described her as fond of dancing, “a great society girl and not at all religious.”

The decision to consecrate her life completely to God came in the wake of a personal tragedy. Catherine Ann Cannon married in 1851 and moved to California, intending for Harriet to join her when she had established a home on the West Coast with her husband. A telegram brought the news in 1855, just as Harriet was preparing to leave for the West, that Catherine had died. The event changed the direction of her life completely; later, she wrote: “You know, she was my all — neither father, mother, or brother. We were two, but were one — but if God had left her with me, I should not have been here.”

More here-

http://www.livingchurch.org/anglican-faces-harriet-cannon

Religious women tend to live longer lives, according to new study

From Indiana- (the photo isn't of anyone in the story)

Annetta Wildermuth of Mulberry is four years away from having lived 100 years. But during that time she has seen many of her friends and relatives pass away.

"I think my long life is a blessing," the 96-year-old said. "I don't think that it's something I have earned."

Wildermuth is a woman of faith. She attends Faith Baptist Church just about every Sunday, teaches a science and religion class at Faith Christian School and volunteers at a retirement home in Mulberry.

Her pious lifestyle may be linked to her long life, according to a psychology study. The study titled, "Does Devoutness Delay Death? Psychological Investment in Religion and Its Association with Longevity in the Terman Sample," was published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

It is known that religious people, especially women, tend to live longer lives than people who are not religious but the reason for this link was not yet understood, according to Howard Friedman, study co-author and professor of psychology at University of California at Riverside.

More here-

http://www.jconline.com/article/20100111/LIFE08/1110303

Religious life: The path is less chosen, but young women still hear the call

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette-

Angela Russell was a teenager visiting relatives in France when she prayed in a chapel where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared in 1830. That was where she first felt a call to be a Catholic sister.

"It was an overwhelming sense that I was going to dedicate my life totally to Christ," said Sister Angela, 21, a Beaver native who recently entered the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in Nashville, Tenn.

Far fewer women than in the past take that path, and those who do are often attracted to traditions that many communities no longer practice. Since 1965, the number of sisters in the U.S. has fallen from 180,000 to 61,000. A Vatican-ordered study is under way of conditions that may have contributed to the decline.

Yet women still answer the call. Sister Angela is among three local women seeking vows in the Nashville Dominicans. Two just made temporary vows in the Sisters of St. Francis of the Neumann Communities, formerly the Millvale Franciscans. The Little Sisters of the Poor, a community in Brighton Heights known for traditional habits and ministry to the elderly, count a medical doctor among two novices. This weekend a half-dozen women were expected at a discernment retreat for the Sisters of the Holy Spirit in Ross.

A recent study from the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University found that two-thirds of communities have at least one person working toward final vows, which typically takes at least seven years. Their average age is 32. But in less traditional communities, 56 percent of newer members are 40 or older. In more conservative ones, 85 percent of sisters make final vows by age 39.

More here-

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09251/996290-51.stm?cmpid=newspanel1