See the article: Precious Blood sisters prepare for change. It is about an order of Religious sisters, in O'Fallon, Missouri, which is about 34 highway miles northwest of downtown Saint Louis, Missouri. The order is planning to redevelop some of its 42 acres of land and 19th-century buildings.
Its surrounding area is rapidly growing and becoming urbanized. At one time, more than 600 sisters lived here; now that number is 208, with half retired.
Among the changes following the Second Vatican Council, the sharp decline of Women Religious has been truly spectacular, which has led to an great secularization of the Church, exceeded only by forced secularization done by the Communist and Liberal revolutions of the past couple of centuries.
Where once Catholic schools and hospitals were largely staffed by vowed religious, these institutions are now either closed or are secularized. Consequently, the education received nowadays often lacks significant Catholic character, to the point where a growing number of Catholic families choose to homeschool their children. Also, in many secularized Catholic hospitals, the spiritual care once given is now harder to find; there are also problems with secular ethics overwhelming these institutions.
If you think that sectarian institutions are a thing of the past, don't complain to me when society declines into an amoral police state, and when the hospital ethics committee declares you a "non-person", undeserving of healthcare.
Contemplative religious orders haven't fared quite as badly since the Council, though. New vocations nowadays tend to be into contemplative orders.
In another story, Hilary White tells of the inability for medium-to-large sized religious orders to find affordable, large convents in urban areas. New traditional religious orders are growing rapidly, leading to a housing shortage.
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