Women religious in the Church, then and now

Reading with sadness and almost incredulity the news of where many women religious in the United States see their future, I was reminded of this moving obituary -- of Anita Caspary Ph.D., formerly Mother Humiliata, IHM -- that shows, in remarkably short compass, something of how we got where we are today.  I take particular interest in the decline of the IHM sisters, as two of my great-aunts who wore that habit later repudiated it under Mother Humiliata's strong leadership.  Here is my great-aunt Sister Magdalen Mary, IHM, whom I was privileged to know in her old age, in a wonderful photo worthy of Brideshead Revisited and Mr. Samgrass. With all due respect to my great-aunts and other women religious of their generation, the future of women religious in the Church, in the U.S. as elsewhere, lies in this way of living, not in this one. I had the sense that Sister Magdalen Mary and Sister Mary Aloysius (whom I was also privileged to know late in her life) sensed as much in their last years, living, as they did, in diaspora, but I could be wrong about that. We never discussed it.  They were impressive women -- intelligent and self-confident, but also humble and committed to serving,in the name of Jesus Christ, those in need. The wounds from the way Cardinal McIntyre treated the IHMs remained raw even decades later.