On Wearing Habits

So, I read this, then encountered the comments. I think a lot of people overlooked a certain side of Scalia's remarks, and felt the need to add my own comment to the mix.

To all you consecrated religious out there: At a certain point, the calls for the restoration of habits and a deeper obedience to the promulgated documents of Vatican II come because the laity are starving. We're looking for the real witnesses, for people willing to wear something that will set them apart for the faith, because these days it doesn't bring extra respect. Rather, it's very often an invitation to persecution and ridicule.

We need you consecrated religious to be that publicly so there's a little more room for the laity to be religious, so that the attack on the faith and the faithful is distributed a little more widely, so that there's support for the people who don't back down in the face of the unconscious anti-Catholicism that pervades modern life.

And we need people to openly witness to the truth of the faith, that Jesus is present in the Eucharist, that grace works, that the world is basically good, that there's something worth fighting for, that God is worth sacrifice, that consecration to him does set you apart, that the vocation of being a consecrated religious IS something special, and not just one more humdrum little cog to be fit into the societal machine. We need the witness of vocations that are gifts from God, not social constructs, not man made things, but a human response to transcendence that are truly counter cultural, truly in opposition to the powers and principalities of this world. Nun or brother or priest as social worker does not fit that profile, offers no serious challenge to the world, offers nothing of hope or transcendence--because the world is not enough. The merely horizontal leaves us gasping for the wind of the Holy Spirit, and freezing for lack of his fire, and starving for want of the bread of eternal life.

For God's sake and for ours, be who you were vowed to be!