Karen Armstrong

A fact sheet from 2024 on monasticism in the UK reports that ‘the decline in numbers of people entering the religious life has been close to terminal.’ In 2000 there were 710 nuns and 230 monks in Anglican religious orders, and this dropped by a third by 2008. On the Catholic side, monks and nuns numbered into the thousands but numbers of new members were dropping. In 2007, only 13 men and 16 women entered religious life. As the earlier posts have noted there are lots of reasons for this, including the general lack of interest in attending church, the changing status of women, and the abuse scandals all played a part. One sister is quoted as saying:

‘The idea of sending at least one child into the religious orders has died out, and women have more choice in terms of education and careers, meaning most don’t have to enter the convent to get an education.’

Whilst the way of forming nuns that Karen Armstrong experienced in the 1960s have changed, accounts are still emerging about the damage done to those who were under strict and punishing regimes and the damage they inflicted on those in their care – and all apparently in the name of the God of love. Different child abuse enquiries have documented the extensive evidence of women religious inflicting various abuses and humiliations on vulnerable children in their care, and situations where being physically hit, sexually abused, and emotionally deprived was a fact of daily life. The Scottish Inquiry in 2018 noted institutions where children who were bed-wetters were physically beaten and humiliated with name calling; where force feeding was commonplace, and where children were often forced to bath publicly and share bath water; where girls were not educated about menstruation and were punished for blood on bedsheets and many other unfair practices. How can this cruelty be understood?

The research suggests that where there was a strict order, and the religious sisters lived themselves under a strict order, then it was this way of life that was transferred to the children. The women religious had been spiritually formed by breaking down their humanity and previous ways of behaving to conform to some idealised life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The nuns were usually subordinate to male clerical power in the wider church, and in some instances as well as being perpetrators of abuse were also themselves victims. The vow of obedience to superiors was the route ‘to experience God as the ultimate authority’ with emphasis on conformity and abandonment of a sense of self, and where the glorification of suffering seems also to have contributed to abusing others – whether children or young women entering the convent.

Karen Armstrong asks a kindly superior Mother Katherine:

‘“what’s happened to make people like Mother Praeterita [a particularly cold and vindictive superior] the way they are? Uncertain with their minds, not seeing things they don’t want to see. People like Mother Imelda, who seem starved inside …”

She paused and looked straight at me. “They’ve failed in courage somewhere. They’ve let themselves get enslaved by the training, by the letter of the Rule and not its spirit … By clinging to the rules as to the rail of a swimming-pool. Not being willing ever to go out of their depth and trust that God will hold them up …

Of course, we have to love God more than anyone else … the hard thing is to hang onto the inner lights that God sends you. To use your mind and your heart …”’