{"id":4723,"date":"2005-07-29T07:49:07","date_gmt":"2005-07-29T07:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/giving-voice.html"},"modified":"2005-07-29T07:49:07","modified_gmt":"2005-07-29T07:49:07","slug":"giving-voice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2005\/07\/giving-voice.html","title":{"rendered":"Giving Voice"},"content":{"rendered":"

A group of women religious under 50 is meeting in Cleveland this weekend. <\/a>No, not Nashville Dominicans, Daughters of St. Paul, Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist<\/a>, and such. The sponsoring group is called Giving Voice<\/a> and is thoroughly mainstream. We come here not to cast a shadow on the admirable committment of any<\/em> religious women, no matter the community, but it’s kind of sad when you consider that if the members of this order attended the gathering, they could probably raise attendance by 50% all by themselves.<\/a><\/p>\n

From the article:<\/p>\n

\n
\n

Young nuns — those under age 50 — make up only 5 percent of sisters in the hundreds of religious orders in the United States. That’s less than the number of nuns who are 90 or older, who represent 7 percent, Coleman said. The majority of U.S. nuns are between 70 and 89 years old.<\/p>\n

The young nuns meeting this weekend must figure out how to continue a viable and visible religious life with fewer sisters. While tackling the big question, they plan to discuss topics from how to promote ecclesial leadership of the laity to religious retirement funding to the state of religious vocations.<\/p>\n

Sister Mary Stanco, who works as the director of research and planning for Humility of Mary Housing Inc. in Fairlawn, said the challenges that her generation faces make the conference necessary and beneficial.<\/p>\n

“We have to tend to religious life for the future. What better way to do that than to come together and have conversations about what we need to do? We all have the same goal — to answer to the call of the needs of today,” said Stanco, 38, of Cleveland. “We all really want to make a difference. This is a very hopeful group and we are as diverse as the world is diverse but we’re all here because of a calling to serve others.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A group of women religious under 50 is meeting in Cleveland this weekend. No, not Nashville Dominicans, Daughters of St. Paul, Sisters of Mary of the Eucharist, and such. The sponsoring group is called Giving Voice and is thoroughly mainstream. 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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. 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