Religious Orders: Frequently Asked Questions

Contents of this page:

 

How do I become a member of a religious community?

Obviously, the entrance policies vary from community to community. But the following is a basic overview of the formation process:

1. Contacting the community: There are many religious communities for men and women, and each has a different mission or charism. Finding the community that fits your gifts and talents may take time and research. Feel free to contact our office if you would like a directory of the various religious communities or check out the links of the various communities serving in the archdiocese. You may also contact any religious community directly. The vocation director will gladly send you more information.

Once you narrow down your community choice, you will want to stay in regular contact with them. Many communities will include you on their mailing list and may offer monthly meetings with a priest, brother, or sister from the community. This is a flexible time in your discernment so that you may continue to ask the big question: "Where is God leading me?"

2. Candidacy/Postulancy: This is a more formal time in your discernment that allows you the opportunity to live within a religious community. While participating in religious life through continued ministry, school, and prayer, the postulant or candidate will receive guidance from many community members to help in his/her transition to religious life. This period generally takes one to two years.

3. Novitiate: This one-to-two year period is a time of intense study and prayer, giving you the time to learn more about yourself, the community, and your relationship with God. This stage also begins your official welcoming into the community.

4. Temporary Vows: At this point of your discernment, you make a vow of poverty, celibacy, and obedience for a period of one to three years. This is a time to enter more deeply into the religious life as a vowed religious, while continuing your discernment of accepting final vows. The period of temporary vows can last up to nine years.

5. Final Vows: After making your decision, through the grace of God, to live out your call within the community, you will accept final vows and become a full member of the community.

Women's Communities serving the Archdiocese of Indianapolis

 

Bishop annointing a girlMen's Communities serving the Archdiocese of Indianapolis

 

What do the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience mean today?

These three vows are also called the evangelical counsels and describe a radical way to live out the Gospel. In each age, they can provide a strong witness to Gospel values in the face of competing or even contrary values in the prevailing culture.

  • POVERTY - A religious chooses to share all in common rather than have personal ownership of material goods. In the face of a materialistic, consumer culture where one's value is often determined by earning power or the acquisition of wealth, poverty testifies to our dependence upon God as the source of all gifts and our solidarity with one another, especially the poor. When so many are ignoring people who are on the fringes of society, religious with a vow of poverty can connect with the poor, work with them and speak about their needs and concerns.
  • CHASTITY - A religious chooses a celibate way of loving rather than entering into a conjugal relationship. Sex is used in our society for so many purposes, including the selling of products and recreation, and the prevailing message is that one must be sexually active to be fully human ... even if that means promiscuity. Chastity reminds us of the deeper meaning of sexuality. A genuine witness of chastity expresses a unique way to love, a way to serve others, and invites others to consider that there is more to life that meets the eye, that our relationship with God is indeed primary.
  • OBEDIENCE - A religious chooses obedience to indicate a preference for the common good over personal desire. The contemporary definition of freedom is to be able to do whatever one wants to do as long as it does not interfere with the rights of others - freedom from responsibility. Obedience demonstrates that the most perfect form of freedom is that which makes a commitment to another person, divine or human, or a cause. Obedience enables one to truly put his or her life at the service of the Church.

National Conference of Catholic Bishops

 

Discalced Carmelite Sister Mary Joseph Nguyen

By Mary Ann Wyand, The Criterion

Born in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, Discalced Carmelite Sister Mary Joseph Nguyen has found peace and happiness half a world away at the Monastery of St. Joseph in Terre Haute.

Her childhood years were filled with adversity, but her faith and loving family led her through the turmoil of war in Southeast Asia to safety in the western United States and later a contemplative life of prayer as a Carmelite nun in the Midwest.

Her father served in the South Vietnamese army and helped the American government, she said, but after the war communist officials detained him at a re-education camp to brainwash him with new government doctrine. She was forced to relocate with her mother and four siblings to the New Economic Zone in Vietnam.

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While working full time, she was an active member of her parish, where she taught sixth-grade religious education classes and participated in the young adult ministry twice a month for Bible study, reflections and service projects.

“I had a full and promising future ahead of me,” she said. “However, life was not very satisfying for me because something was still missing in the very depth of my heart.”

In October 2002, she participated in a silent retreat and spent this quiet time reflecting on her life and God’s presence in her life.

“I have come to appreciate God much more and am very grateful to him for the grace to have him in my life and for his abundant blessings,” she said. “I started going to retreats more and spending more time in prayer. I would come to church to adore Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.”

During these “wonderful vacation times with God at retreats and alone with him before the tabernacle,” she said, “I started to have a sense of God inviting me to religious life with his very gentle but persistent voice inside my heart. The feeling grew stronger and stronger each day. I tried not to think about it; however, the more I ignored the feeling the more it came back to me.”

At first, she doubted that God was calling her to religious life.

Read more about Sister Mary Joseph

 

Holy Cross Brother Joseph Umile

By Brandon A. Evans, The Criterion

While the life of a priest can be countercultural enough in our day and age, it is even more puzzling to some people why religious men would want to be “only a brother.”

It’s an attitude that Holy Cross Brother Joseph Umile, president of Bishop Chatard High School in Indianapolis, has dealt with before.

“I’ve had people ask me how come I didn’t go all the way,” Brother Joseph said in regard to priestly ordination.

Many people see becoming a brother in a religious order as a step to the priesthood, he said, and the old joke was that brothers are religious who couldn’t learn Latin.

In reality, the lives of priests and brothers are unique paths within a religious community. The Congregation of Holy Cross is comprised of two equal societies of brothers and priests, most of whom focus on education.

The question that a man has to ask himself, Brother Joseph said, is how he sees himself functioning as a religious. What sets apart a priest is a special commitment to the sacraments—no matter if he has a parish assignment or not.

“The essence of their way of life is still to be the sacramental ministers of the Church, and that is fundamentally different than a brother,” he said.

For him, “it really wasn’t a question.”

Read more about Brother Joseph

 

Photo essay - Benedictine Sisters of Our Lady of Grace Monastery

Benedictine sisterThe Benedictine Sisters of Our Lady of Grace Monastery in Beech Grove recently celebrated 50 years since its founding.

In that time, the Benedictine sisters who came from Monastery Immaculate Conception in Ferdinand, Ind., in the Evansville Diocese, and those who followed them, have engaged in a myriad of ministries.

Among them are two that exist on the many acres of land owned by the monastery.

The St. Paul Hermitage prides itself as “a place to call home” for elderly people. Since it opened in 1960, more than 1,000 people have lived there—and the waiting time is about three years.

The facility offers apartments, residential living and 24-hour nursing care.

The Benedict Inn Retreat and Conference Center is an ecumenical ministry operated by the sisters to provide programs for spiritual, educational and physical growth.

The center is located at the former Our Lady of Grace Academy, an all-girls school that closed in 1978.

The sisters have communal prayer each day, and many of them are involved in ministries throughout the archdiocese.

See the rest of the photos