{"id":3257,"date":"2006-04-09T23:42:33","date_gmt":"2006-04-09T23:42:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/whither-religious.html"},"modified":"2006-04-09T23:42:33","modified_gmt":"2006-04-09T23:42:33","slug":"whither-religious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/whither-religious.html","title":{"rendered":"Whither religious"},"content":{"rendered":"

The numbers tell the story in England:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

Although there was a modest recovery last year, when the numbers rose to 18, insiders concede that it was probably a blip, rather than any upsurge, following the funeral of Pope John Paul II.<\/p>\n

Vocations to monastic orders fell from 107 in 1982 to 52 in 1990 and to 20 in 2000. The total number of monks in England and Wales stands at 1,345, many of whom are in their sixties and seventies.<\/p>\n

The news is no better for nuns, who have experienced a parallel decline and now total 1,150.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In 1982, 100 women entered convents, 50 of them into enclosed orders, but by 2000 the number had declined to 22 and in 2004 it was just seven. Last year saw a slight increase to 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The numbers tell the story in England: Although there was a modest recovery last year, when the numbers rose to 18, insiders concede that it was probably a blip, rather than any upsurge, following the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Vocations to monastic orders fell from 107 in 1982 to 52 in 1990 and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nWhither religious - Via Media<\/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\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/whither-religious.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Whither religious - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The numbers tell the story in England: Although there was a modest recovery last year, when the numbers rose to 18, insiders concede that it was probably a blip, rather than any upsurge, following the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Vocations to monastic orders fell from 107 in 1982 to 52 in 1990 and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/whither-religious.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-04-09T23:42:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Whither religious - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/04\/whither-religious.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Whither religious - Via Media","og_description":"The numbers tell the story in England: Although there was a modest recovery last year, when the numbers rose to 18, insiders concede that it was probably a blip, rather than any upsurge, following the funeral of Pope John Paul II. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}