Best Active Orders

[Veritas]

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Oh, and can we forget the "marine corps" of religious life? The MC's Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity!


[url="http://home.comcast.net/~motherteresasite/addresses.html"]http://home.comcast.net/~motherteresasite/addresses.html[/url]

[franciscanheart]

missionaries of charity!! i have a friend discerning their order! and i know another who says that should she be called to religious life, she would enter there!

[stlmom]

[quote name='srmarymichael' post='752441' date='Oct 10 2005, 08:07 AM']
The best active orders are the ones that you're called to!
[/quote]



The only other thing I would add to all these wonderful suggestions is the recommendation that Fr. Benedict Groeschel once said---to look at a community and observe how small and poor it is (I am paraphrasing here). I think he meant that a community should maintain a family spirit by being relatively small, and that they should not amass too much in the way of property and other assets so that they can live out their charisms relying on God's Providence. I don't think he meant that a community should live on the verge of destitution or to turn away good vocations, but that large numbers and assets can sometimes negatively impact community life.

[SisterAli]

Little biased because this is my order but....I know very well that the School Sisters of Christ the King are orthodox, wear a habit, faithful to the pope, and are very active in their apostulate of teaching. Their website is in my signature.

God Bless,

Allie

P.S. I agree that the best active order is the one you are called to!

Edited May 11, 2006 by SisterAli

[dspen2005]

Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy, SOLM

[MikeZakYm]

Start with prayerful discernment of your own gifts as well as the gifts and charisms of the various communities

At the HERE I AM LORD CONFERENCES most are habited but even those who are not are, for the most part, faithful

Don't let the lack of a habit automatically bias you into thinking they are not faithful. And if a community 'has problems', pray for the sisters in those communities because many of them had nothing to do with what ever might be wrong.

Too many are ready to ignore communities w/o a habit. That would be a shame. If an order has a strong charism for service to the poor and they choose to not wear a habit, maybe the reason is practical not a sign of rebellion.

If you need to check out the [url="http://www.religiouslife.com"]IRL[/url] and [url="http://www,cmswr.org"]CMSWR[/url]

Better yet do some investigating about Women's Religious communities since 1950 by reading Sisters in Crisis by Ann Carey and published by Our Sunday Vistor.

I could name 75 communities (from memory) who are faithful but only a handful who are not. Why? Because there are many good Sisters who are out there building up the Kingdom of God in spite of what their communities position on things is. Please don't dismiss the many, many faithful sisters (many who are still working in their 80's) just because their community might have taken a wrong turn. These women were faithful in their habits and are faithful w/o it. Most importantly they still have the JOY of their vocation.

One needs to investigate all and until then. Pray, Pray, Pray

If you trust in God and His plan for you, He will lead you in the right direction

By all means give your reccomendations from personal experience, I know just about every community listed on this thread so far and would agree. I pray that all women discerning religious life and men the priesthood, diaconate or brotherhood spend a [b]lot of time [/b] in prayer, [b]listen to disenting voices[/b], have a [b]strong spiritual director [/b] and remember in the end [b]it's all about Jesus [/b] and building the Kingdom of God here on earth.

Fr. Stan quoted a sister who taught him as saying, Be the best priest possible or don't be a priest

Be the best priest, brother, or sister you can be. Who knows, God might be calling you 'open the eyes' of a community by your faithfullness

Pax Christi

[stlmom]

Great post Mike!!