Is there a definitive cause for the collapse in religious vocations? In this Pints With Aquinas episode, host Matt Fradd asks Sister Miriam Heidland, SOLT, a pressing question: Why are there so few religious sisters today? “I think part of it is the attack on spiritual motherhood and spiritual fatherhood…really, it’s the attack on man and woman, and like, who are we?” she begins. Sister Miriam then shares a personal story and offers her opinion on why there are fewer vocations to the religious life today. “I was talking with the bishop many months ago, and he was saying that in the 1960s…there was a religious community in Wisconsin that was receiving a hundred women a year. 100 women! And they built a brand new novitiate, and then by 1972, they were receiving just four,” she says. At this point in her conversation with the bishop, Sister Miriam says, he posed the question: “Women still have the capacity to say ‘yes’ to this divine invitation. What is preventing them?” Sister Miriam …
The number cause is FEMINISM, in my opinion. Young women have been brainwashed to want to "have it all" = career & 'family" although the latter needs to not be an 'oppressive patriarchal structure' but some self affirming set-up or divorce. Religious life is not even on the radar.