Will the Salesian sisters discern with a young woman who needs medicine

[JHFamily]

Just as an aside, I know a young man who was able to come off his meds after entering religious life.  The schedule and life is so regular, he was able to stabilize without them.

[Guest]

Persevere if you feel you are called to religious life because if you are, there is a community for you no two way about it.  Do not give up unless there are really quite sound reasons why you should.  I have not read all this thread and hope that you have a good spiritual director.

I suffer bipolar disorder (almost wrote "I suffer bipolar medication"  ) and was admitted to a contemplative community providing I not take my medication (2 Scripts monthly at $3.20ea then....now $5.60ea).  Leadership felt that if God was calling me to religious life, I would not need the medication.  Personally, I do not think that it was a sound decision because it did infer that God does not call a person on medication to religious life.  Personally, I do not believe that.

I chose to leave the community because I was having a nasty struggle with withdrawals, which was not the only reason I left, nor the major reason.  That was back 30 years ago.   I am now 72yrs of age.  My current SD, priest and religious and in the past in a leadership position in his community thinks that I probably do have a vocation to contemplative religious life - and have chosen to live out the call differently than the commonly established norm.   I did not choose my way of life for any other reason than I felt strongly (after much searching re established communities) that I was being called to it and that it was just unfolding in my path.  In fact I was living the life without knowing it - it was pointed out to me by my then SD/Confessor a priest religious and theologian living and lecturing in our seminary then.  He is now decd.

There is a sort of joke that goes "Tell God your plans and God laughs".  I tend to think too "Tell God the rules and God laughs".

However, I do think that religious life to be religious life per se needs to be lived in community.  Nowadays many religious are living either alone, in pairs or in very small communities.  It is a case of necessity for sound reasons and very close contact indeed is maintained with their primary community, their religious family.  I know a religious sister quite closely in friendship and she lived for a while on her own and then for a while with a retired and quite ill (religious) sister of hers.  My friend was a novice mistress in her Order and for a while too had a young first year professed living with her.

God's richest blessings on your discernment journey, 28yearolddiscerner    Invest in The Good Lord and His Will mo  I am hoping you have a sound spiritual director - they are pure gold and diamonds in the spiritual life.

Edited May 8, 2018 by BarbaraTherese

[Guest]

12 hours ago, BarbaraTherese said:

 Invest in The Good Lord and His Will mo

The above should have read "Invest in The Good Lord and His Will more than your own hopes, dreams and desires and that can be no easy call for sure. I hope you have..........."  ..........

[gloriana35]

It is very sad - indeed, woefully ignorant - that the community Barbara Therese mentioned accepted her on the condition that she not take her medication. Medical problems are real, not about to disappear because of religious practise. 

[Guest]

The presumption was in the leadership that if I had a religious vocation I would not need medication.  My conclusion was that time would tell and it told me pretty early in the piece. I really struggled with withdrawals.  That was added to my primary reason for choosing to leave.  I knew that if I had a bipolar episode, they would have not the first notion of what to do and it very likely would disrupt and disturb the community.  Bipolar episodes can be disruptive at the best of times in the best of environments.  That was all some 30 yrs ago and very much has changed in that time and from reading Catholic Discussion Sites, in the USA anyway to my knowledge, there seem to be religious orders that are more open to a disability requiring medication (dependant on cost of course) stabilising the condition. 

At the time I entered monastic life in my early forties, my bipolar condition was not stable, I was merely in a normal phase and it was only a phase or temporary condition but leadership seemed confident that if I had a vocation it would be a permanent condition and without medication.  It wasn't, although very thankfully, I remained in the normal phase until I got home - and I had a supply of medication in my suitcase, which I took once the enclosure door closed behind me.  I had to travel across two states of Australia via train and bus to get home again.  A monastic nun I knew had rung me and suggested I try the community.  It all happened very quickly indeed from that phone call to my entering.

I write it all off to a much earlier time when attitudes to mental illness were still leaving much lacking in that (for one) very often it was a dark area that many were content, even determined, to leave in the dark.  Years later a secular order was prepared to accept me for distance formation provided I made at least one trip to the community.  It was then located in Ireland and I had no hope of having the funds for a trip there and home again.

The attitude I developed was that if God wanted me in some form of religious life, I would be there.  I certainly tried hard enough, I think, and with a few communities.  I am very confident of my vocation nowadays and at 72years, I sure would hope so!   At some point I had that deep feeling of Peace and Joy - I had come home.

Edited June 10, 2018 by BarbaraTherese

[Guest]

20 hours ago, gloriana35 said:

It is very sad - indeed, woefully ignorant - that the community Barbara Therese mentioned accepted her on the condition that she not take her medication. Medical problems are real, not about to disappear because of religious practise. 

I think it is a reflection of the times in which we live and after all God has called us to our particular time, otherwise we would not exist as we do.

When I look at religious life and how it went over endless years almost from being fully enclosed to being allowed to move about in the community, to today and all the changes we have, including secular orders and the vocation of consecrated virginity and the eremetical life being more widely known and accepted, advocated, not as new but going back to the foundations of The Church.  There is always I think a temptation to think that our own time is a full stop in our religious evolutionary process "But the Advocate, the HolySpirit, whom the Father will send in Myname, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have told you." JOhn Chapter 14.   It isn't I don't think, and the Holy Spirit will continue to speak and inspire until the end of time.  He will not speak of the totally new, rather of deeper insights into what is known.  Religious life and forms of religious living too will go on changing and evolving.  And, as always, The Church as an heirarchical decision making organisation will be very very slow to move, to ensure that whatever is a movement of The Spirit.  They will "test the spirit":

"Beloved, do not trust every spirit but test the spirits to see whether they belong to God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world" 1 John Chapter 4 and the whole chapter is worth the read and not lengthy http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__P12E.HTM

I think probably too it is likely there will be those who feel things are moving too fast and changing, and those who feel things are not changing soon enough.  There will always be those too who are prepared to listen to The Church as Teaching Authority and in obedience.

My take  

Edited June 10, 2018 by BarbaraTherese