Finding the Treasure: Locating Catholic Religious Life in a New Ecclesial and Cultural Context

Religious Life in a New Millennium #1

by Sandra M. Schneiders

This book analyzes where religious life is going on the dawn of the next century and what elements remain since the profound changes that are a valuable basis for future growth.

Genres: Theology, Religion, Spirituality

480 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2000

Reviews

[Jack Mullins]

After reading two and a half books of hers, Sandra Schneiders has made her way to the top of the list of people I'd like to share a meal with. In Finding the Treasure, she drafts a compelling map of the current landscape of vowed religious life. Even 25 years later, her analysis rings true in my ears. That said, as a lay, male Episcopalian, my ecclesial context is very different from that of the author, a woman in Religious vows in the Roman Catholic Church. This leads to my one gentle criticism of this work.

The author suggests (here paraphrasing) that vowed Religious should not be ordained as ministers in their churches or congregations, since to be ordained makes one an agent of the "institutional church," thus compromising the prophetic mission of Religious life to beckon the church into the Reign (i.e. Kingdom) of God here on earth. As an Episcopalian, the idea of ordained ministers as agents of the institutional church simply falls flat.

At the same time, she derides (rightly, in my opinion) the prevailing theology of ordination in the Catholic Church—that the priesthood of the ordained is qualitatively different than the priesthood merited to all believers in their Baptisms. She does not propose in any detail a more constructive theology of ordination, but she seems to view the priesthood of the ordained as a participation in and nucleus of the priesthood of all the baptized.

To me, the prophetic mission of Religious life together with this more constructive theology of ordination point to a possibility of Religious communities modeling for the wider Church what it looks like to live as siblings, the ordained alongside the not ordained. If one accepts her position that to be ordained compromises the Religious vocation (a vocation rooted in faithfully living one's baptism), then how can the broader church, consisting of all the baptized both lay and ordained, hope to bring about the Reign of God on earth?

[Michele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on vowed religious in todays world

[Chfmarypaul]

I would like to read this book