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The Rise and Decline of Catholic Religious Orders: A Social Movement Perspective (SUNY Series in Reli (Suny Series in Religion, Culture, and Society)

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Today's decline of Catholic religious congregations is part of a pattern where every several hundred years some kind of virtuoso religious life arises, grows, flourishes, declines, and is replaced by another. Wittberg examines this phenomenon as social movement and analyzes it in terms of frame transformation theories. She exposes the extent of the present problem, provides a survey of Catholic religious life, explains the theoretical and historical background, examines the motives why recruits have joined and other resources have supported religious orders over the centuries. She examines the reasons orders flourish and decline, the strategies and supports they use to maintain their existence, and the importance of an ideological framework for both the individual order and the general kind of order flourishing at any given moment. She examines particularly the revaluation of religious life at Vatican II, the subsequent reinterpretation of the three vows, and the loss of internal and external resources that led to the dramatic decline of religious orders since Vatican II. She looks with some hope to the possibilities that remain for religious life, but also with diffidence in the ability of the heirarchy and the orders themselves to rise to the challenge. Religious usually understand themselves and their orders in terms of their spiritual motivation and the work of the Holy Spirit. Neither of these figure much in this work where the analysis is sociological, and so for the typical religious the book may be eye-opening and very informative of the many other factors that enmesh their lives. This is a scholarly book. More than 40% of it consists of glossary, indices, notes, bibliography, charts, etc. The language is often technical, but educated readers even without a sociological background can stay the course if they are so inclined. Wittberg helps by providing continual summaries of chapters just completed and sketches of what lies ahead. For those interested in Catholic religious life today and tomorrow, it is well worth the effort.