Like many Roman Catholics these days, Father Antonio Rungi from Mondragone in Southern Italy, is very concerned about the serious drop in numbers of people who have a ‘vocation’ - those seeking to join the church as priests or nuns. Many monasteries in Italy are dieing because of the lack of new members. It appears that a life of poverty, chastity, and total obedience to an organization dominated by elderly men is not so attractive, especially to women, as it once was.
Father Rungi thought he had a possible solution - the internet. He formulated plans to create an online pageant where nuns could write about their work and vote. “We have to draw more attention to the world of nuns, who are often not sufficiently appreciated by society,” he wrote, adding that he had hoped his initiative would help boost sagging vocations to religious life.
Some ideas are just doomed from the start, and it appears that this was one of them. There are at least three things wrong with it.
First, it was misunderstood by the Italian press and by the church authorities. People started to write about Nuns on the Catwalk, and Sister Italy 2008. Many people failed to grasp the concept of ‘internal beauty’ and ’spirituality’. It was attracting the attention for all the wrong reasons.
Secondly, only someone isolated within a church community could think that a blog about spirituality, with a contest for the best, would have a significant impact on turning round the decline in women becoming nuns. There are bigger issues such as increasing secularization and the declining power of the church, not to mention poverty, chastity, and total obedience to an organization dominated by elderly men that need to be addressed. An internal beauty contest isn’t going to make an iota of difference.
Thirdly, why is it that no-one has pointed out to Father Rungi that there is a glaring contradiction in the whole concept. People who seek to be spiritual, by definition, are likely to be humble and self-effacing, and are unlikely to want to write about their own work or want others to write about it. And they are unlikely to want to do something so tawdry as vote about it. If they participate in a pageant of spiritual people they are shooting themselves in the feet the moment they enter the contest, and in the eyes of the genuinely spiritual, would be automatically disqualifying themselves from any prize that really mattered.
Many monasteries in Italy are dieing because of the lack of new members.
Pardon my brutal comment, but I just have to say it. It used to be that gays and pedophiles could hide behind the church’s institutions and have all the forbidden pleasures.
And the abuse wasn’t limited to sex. Many nuns were known for physically, verbally, and psychologically abusing pupils at religious schools.
Unfortunately for the RC church, nowadays, even the “holy” ones get prosecuted for their actions, so that must be a strong deterrent for a large sector of potential nuns and priests.
As for Father Rungi, maybe he should create a webpage detailing the very real behind-closed-doors pleasurable sexual encounters between nuns and priests. I bet he’d have more success that way.
The last paragraph I think is very relevant.
What a riduclous idea, I can’t think of anything worse. Perhaps, the allure of the church, in our ever increasing globilisation of celebrity, and consumerism means that, even in a typical Cathoilc country like Italy, the appeal and calling to be a preist or nun just isn’t there, when young people haev much more alluring life choices fuelled by the factors mentioned.
This is not way to fill the convents or monastries.
Quite frankly, I can eventually see this kind of living shrinking to a very minute domain within our society and perhaps may not survive at all in 100 yrs.