That’s a question haunting a lot of sisters doing good works in America’s inner cities. There are more than ten times as many sisters as brothers in the United States. Sister Pat is 65. The average age of an American nun is nearly 67, and their numbers have dropped from a high of nearly 180,000 in 1965, to less than 95,000 in 1993. (By the year 2000, they’ll be down to 73,000.) Even people who want to serve the poor may not want to make it a permanent career. Only 460 women joined sisterhoods last year, while nearly 3,000 left–mostly to meet their heavenly reward. It’s a reward they deserve. Since the second Vatican Council concluded in 1965, thousands of sisters have taken up social service, and they’re now doing some of the grittiest, most thankless work in the American ghetto. “It’s amazing what some of these older women are accomplishing,” says Sister Anne Munley, a sociologist who helped conduct a survey of nuns. “But it’s a fact that sisterhoods are getting smaller.”
That worries Sister Mary. Judith, who founded a literacy program in west Baltimore in 1988. City officials estimate that one in four Baltimore adults is “sub-literate,” and they lavish praise on Sister Mary Judith’s program. But Sister Mary Judith herself just turned 70. She has younger volunteers at the center, of course. But they aren’t willing to devote their entire lives to it. “I see young women who once upon a time I would have pegged as headed for the convent,” she says. “Not these days.”
Many sisterhoods are trying frantically to attract lay volunteers to fill the gaps. But sisters have a distinct advantage over volunteers: they don’t get burned out as fast. Most people are quickly exhausted by the same intractable scourges day after day, but sisters manage to keep going. Many of them attribute that fortitude to their spiritual core. Praying for strength may not work for everybody, but it does for nuns, “You’re linked to something,” explains Sister Anne Munley. “You’re not just out there alone. You’re part of something that has a history and a heritage.” Unfortunately, it may not have much of a future.
