{"id":4348,"date":"2005-08-08T00:01:41","date_gmt":"2005-08-08T00:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/even-more-vocations.html"},"modified":"2005-08-08T00:01:41","modified_gmt":"2005-08-08T00:01:41","slug":"even-more-vocations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/08\/even-more-vocations.html","title":{"rendered":"Even more vocations…"},"content":{"rendered":"

A very nice article from the local paper about the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, growing as other orders shrink and age.<\/a><\/p>\n

They were smart. They were good at sports. They were fun to hang out with. <\/p>\n

\n
\n

But spend the rest of her life with them? <\/p>\n

Nope, not what Showalter planned. She was going to college, intending to become a scientist, a wife and a mother. <\/p>\n

But in late July, as Sister Maria Faustina, Showalter took permanent vows in the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, an order based in Ann Arbor Township. <\/p>\n

"God puts this call in your heart; he places it there, and it’s a gentle call. You can choose to ignore it, and I tried to for three years,” said Sister Showalter, 27. <\/p>\n

The Sisters of Mary, founded in 1997, are growing at a time when many other Catholic religious orders are shrinking or simply disappearing. Four young sisters, including Sister Showalter, made perpetual vows late last month, and Friday morning, six more made their initial vows. A new group of 17 postulants – beginning sisters – is expected in September, which will bring the community total to 64. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The Order’s website.<\/a><\/p>\n

Now someone please help me out here – I’ve wasted several minutes here, looking for a link to another Ann Arbor-based order (I think) – very solid spiritually and vocationally, that does not, in fact, wear full habits, but rather some simple clothing and a large cross. I actually wrote about them once, in an article for OSV. As I recall, their primariy apostolate was care for the impoverished elderly. Anyone?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A very nice article from the local paper about the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, growing as other orders shrink and age. They were smart. They were good at sports. They were fun to hang out with. But spend the rest of her life with them? Nope, not what Showalter planned.…<\/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-4348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nEven more vocations... - 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\/2005\/08\/even-more-vocations.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Even more vocations... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A very nice article from the local paper about the Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, growing as other orders shrink and age. 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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\/4348","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=4348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}