Nuns in a time of nones: The winding path to today’s religious vocations

[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nn(RNS) — Sister Maria Angeline Weiss recalls her choice to embrace the religious life of a Catholic sister as fairly straightforward. As a 16-year-old Catholic high schooler in Allentown, Pennsylvania, she was drawn to the “joy and her simplicity” of one of the nuns who taught at the school “and her love of prayer.”That teacher belonged to an order called the Sisters of Christian Charity. When Weiss, now 35, visited one of the order’s convents, she said, “I very quickly felt like I was at home.” Weiss entered a Sisters of Christian Charity community at the age of 18.
But for Sister Madeleine Davis, who has taken her initial vows in Sisters of Christian Charity, the path has been more circuitous.
Growing up in an evangelical Protestant family in northern Illinois, Davis — then Abigail, before she took her religious name of Madeleine — didn’t know much about Catholicism. But when she was in high school her brother, inspired by the writings of the early church fathers, converted. On his visits home from college, they began to have long conversations about faith. A few years later, Davis was hospitalized after a car accident, and a Catholic chaplain dropped by to see her. Though a brief encounter, she said, she experienced …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]