{"id":986,"date":"2009-08-11T09:46:26","date_gmt":"2009-08-11T09:46:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/08\/old-nuns-asian-priests-the-all.html"},"modified":"2009-08-11T09:46:26","modified_gmt":"2009-08-11T09:46:26","slug":"old-nuns-asian-priests-the-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/08\/old-nuns-asian-priests-the-all.html","title":{"rendered":"Old Nuns, Asian Priests &amp; the Allure of Habits"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"mt-enclosure mt-enclosure-image\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/stevenwaldman\/imgs\/elderly%20nun3.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"elderly nun3.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/128\/import\/assets_c\/2009\/08\/elderly nun3-thumb-298x403-7111.jpg\" width=\"298\" height=\"403\" class=\"mt-image-left\" style=\"float: left;margin: 0 20px 20px 0\" \/><\/a><\/span>Three things surprised me about the study of nuns (by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University for the National Religious Vocation Conference) reported on by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/08\/11\/us\/11nun.html?_r=1&amp;ref=us\">Laurie Goodstein in today&#8217;s New York Times<\/a> (MSM):<br \/>\n&#8211;I knew the population of Catholic clergy was aging but this is truly amazing: &#8220;Ninety-one percent of nuns and 75 percent of priests are 60 or older.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8211;I knew a lot of the new priests were non-white but figured most were Hispanic. Many are Hispanic but a) almost three times as many are white and b) there&#8217;s a very significant minority (14%) of new recruits are Asian and Pacific Islanders<br \/>\n&#8211;Those called now actually prefer some of the most traditional aspects of Catholic clerical life &#8212; communal living and wearing habits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Three things surprised me about the study of nuns (by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University for the National Religious Vocation Conference) reported on by Laurie Goodstein in today&#8217;s New York Times (MSM): &#8211;I knew the population of Catholic clergy was aging but this is truly amazing: &#8220;Ninety-one percent of&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Old Nuns, Asian Priests &amp; the Allure of Habits - Steven Waldman<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/08\/old-nuns-asian-priests-the-all.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Old Nuns, Asian Priests &amp; the Allure of Habits - Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Three things surprised me about the study of nuns (by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University for the National Religious Vocation Conference) reported on by Laurie Goodstein in today&#8217;s New York Times (MSM): &#8211;I knew the population of Catholic clergy was aging but this is truly amazing: &#8220;Ninety-one percent of&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/stevenwaldman\/2009\/08\/old-nuns-asian-priests-the-all.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Steven Waldman\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-08-11T09:46:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"swaldman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Old Nuns, Asian Priests &amp; 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He's also the author of the Founding Faith: Politics, Providence, and the Birth of Religious Freedom in America, which has been published by Random House. Before co-founding Beliefnet in 1999, Waldman was a political journalist, serving as National Editor of U.S. News & World Report and National Correspondent for Newsweek. 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