The Internet is breathing fresh life into an ancient institution in trouble for years: the nunnery.
Faced with declining enrollment since the mid-1960s, some Roman Catholic convents have harnessed a distinctly modern tool to attract young women to the religious life: e-mail.
It is “an apostolate we didn’t expect,” said Sister Joseph Andrew Bogdanowicz, vocation director at the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, in Ann Arbor.
“But now it’s become so all-encompassing,” she added. “If I’m not traveling or giving a talk, I’m e-mailing.”
Young women who come to live at this handsome brick campus enter a rigorous, tightly controlled program that ends, after eight years, with their final vows of chastity, obedience and poverty.
Days begin at 5:30 a.m., when full sisters and those in training gather in the airy chapel before a 19th Century Spanish altarpiece and offer prayers for the world.
The rest of the day is packed with other communal prayers academic study, spiritual reading, athletics, vespers and, at 10 p.m., “profound silence.”
Duty-filled days
And of course, chores and duties. On one recent sunny morning, the young women were in the convent’s huge kitchen baking biscotti that smelled, well, heavenly.
Dominican sisters typically work out in the world — often in Catholic schools — following the 13th Century St. Dominic’s mandate to preach and teach.
Before this particular Sisters of Mary community was founded in 1997 to spread the Dominican message — largely through the assistance of Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan — Bogdanowicz had never e-mailed a soul.
100 e-mails daily
Today she wades through about 100 e-mails a day, many from women looking for guidance in their “discernment,” the period of deciding whether to enter a religious vocation.
The results speak for themselves.
As many convents dwindle, the Sisters of Mary are thriving with 73 postulants and novices — the two intermediate stages of training that lead to final vows.
“There’s no room at the inn, even for us,” Bogdanowicz said. “We just can’t build fast enough.”
Said Mother Assumpta Long, who heads the convent, “God continues to bless us beyond all our imaginings. It’s obvious that he wants this `family.”‘
And in a world where the average nun is 69, here in the Washtenaw County countryside, the average age is 24 — if you exclude Bogdanowicz, Long and the other two older women who founded the community.
Often derided as debasing the language and letter-writing in general, e-mail has presented Bogdanowicz with a remarkably efficient means of communicating in depth with young women, she said.
“I don’t really have much time for phone calls,” she said. “But I can type fast. And e-mail allows that space for the young woman to really take her time and answer with clarity and precision.”
The point is, young women need considerable mentoring to help walk them through the discernment process — precisely the assistance Bogdanowicz provides, she said.
For Tracy Wietecha of Pinckney, who is finishing high school, e-mailing with Bogdanowicz — and other young women contemplating donning the habit — has been an indispensable part of her decision to become a sister.
Wietecha will enter the Sisters of Mary as a postulant in August.
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Vocation came early to Wietecha. She says she realized she wanted to become a nun in the 4th grade and began communicating with the Sisters of Mary.
“I started writing Sister Joseph Andrew when I was in 6th grade,” she said. “She’s given me so much guidance and wisdom. She’s always there for us, to answer our questions and direct us.”
As is typical of the iPod generation, Wietecha’s connection with the Internet goes far beyond e-mail. She has a blog where she discusses her career choice, and has created a blog ring where she and about 20 other young people wrestle with religious issues.
Sister Peter Mary Campagna, a novice who traded college for the convent and has been in Ann Arbor a little more than a year, also blogged about her religious vocation before entering.
Many who visited her blog then e-mailed her directly, and Campagna found those discussions immensely helpful.
“When I would struggle or have questions, to have the reassurance of all these young women who were going through the same experience — it really helped,” said the young woman, who is from Oregon.
This sort of support is particularly important in a world where nuns aren’t nearly as numerous or visible as 40 years ago, Bogdanowicz said.
In an ironic twist, many of these young women give up all e-mail privileges once they reach the convent. The sacrifice is part of the retreat from the world that characterizes their religious vocation.
Campagna says some friends have asked how she can bear not having access to e-mail.
She explains to them “that in religious life, you’re called [on] not just to give up evil, but also goods like e-mail,” she said. “It purifies you of those external things you don’t need, to learn your dependence on God.”
Can’t beat convenience
There is, of course, one other overriding advantage to e-mail compared with letters or phone calls when dealing with dozens of earnest potential applicants with a million questions.
“E-mail lets me cover a lot of territory,” Bogdanowicz said. “I can run in and pray for them like crazy, and then push `Reply All,’ and hit them all.
“And that,” she added, smiling beatifically, “is beautiful.”