Yes, I realize it's been a very long time since my last blog entry, but there's been a lot going on here, both with Cloister Outreach and in my personal life.

Unfortunately, the entry title is the result of a combination of both.

Without going into details, expectations are not being met on one aspect of the homefront.  Whenever someone believes that discipline and not drugs is what a child needs, there tends to be tears.

A lamenting aunt, and the question of someone's presence, the reader says.  Who is missing? they ponder.

I'll tell you who's missing--the religious sisters who used to run homes for "problem" children AND the aspirants to our proposed initiatives which would help deal with the same problem.

I had to wait about a week to write this entry--I was too upset.

I'm grieving (still) over the many, many institutions that closed because of the "updates" to religious orders after Vatican II.  "But they didn't have a religious vocation," some say.  Perhaps I need to make a slide show of all these closed institutions, and the people who are now hurting because they're gone.  Then say, "They didn't have a vocation," again.

I run an internet discussion group for ex-nuns, and nearly all of them said the reason they left was due to the changes in the Mass, then the change in the habit, then the loss of community life.  Notice the convents were being emptied in DROVES.  Many who left have stayed single, praying that religious life would return to some semblance of something they recognized.

At least five active religious orders have sold their magnificent motherhouses within the last few years due to lack of vocations.  The cloisters and "habited" conservative orders, OTOH, are building and bursting at the seams.  Communities using the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite (the Traditional Latin Mass) are growing, also.

What is this telling us?

I realize that there's prejudice against new communities, esp. those founded by laity.  I keep trying to tell ppl that there have been many orders founded by lay folk.  Why do so many insist on staying on the fence?  As far as I'm concerned, I would look at the suffering of my fellow humans, then ask God how I can help.  If He shows me an emerging community, then I would ask for the grace and the flexibility to be a good founding member.  Keeping God's Will and the suffering of others at the forefront of one's priorities will lead one to live community life with the greatest of gentle charity.

Our foundations will be started by the Reparatrix Society of Our Lady of the Cloister (the Cloisterites) and the Congregation of Charity of the Miraculous Medal, Servants of the Poor.  I must "stick to my guns" where this is concerned.  I cannot be founding more than two orders at one time.  Both charisms that we are starting with are not exactly generic, but are generalized to the point of being flexible enough to encompass what we're trying to do.  From there the apostolates and charisms will be founded.

Clear as mud?  The reader can always write in with questions.

Here are the URLs:

http://cloisters.tripod.com/cloisterites/

http://cloisters.tripod.com/charity/

And the communities which will be founded by both of the above:

http://cloisters.tripod.com/jointfoundations/

I shall reiterate: Where are you?

Blessings, Gemma