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PAGE 2—The Southern Cross, April 12,1973
Religious and Retirement:
Nuns Feel Financial Pinch
RETIRED SISTERS AT WORK - Sister Anna
Chassey, R.S.C.J., works on an afghan at a new
retirement home for Sisters in St. Louis, Regis House.
Its facilities are not only for use retired nuns, but
are available for the health care ofl'iH"
order. “We just don’t feel the older members of the
community should be cut off from youth. And youth
doesn’t want them to be. When they’re cut off, they’re
missed,’’ said Sister Mary Downey, head of the facility.
6?the * (NC Photo by The St. Louis Review)
Pacelli Gets Evaluation Report
BY AL EVERSMAN
At the April 5th meeting of the
Pacelli Home and School Association,
Columbus, Principal Fr. Robert
Mattingly, reported on the recent
evaluation of Pacelli High School by the
Southern Association Evaluating
Committee.
The Committee reported outstanding
satisfaction with the faculty for its
cooperation, and described Pacelli as
happy, relaxed, and scholarly as well as
in compliance with the standards of the
Southern Association Educators.
Recommendations were also made for
the next ten years.
Sister Marie, Assistant Principal,
announced that May 15th would be
Pacelli Night at the baseball park of the
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Columbus Astros. An honor program
will be held prior to the game, and
Pacelli will receive a substantial share of
the gate receipts.
Tickets will be $2.00 each and will be
sold by Pacelli Students.
Program chairman, Emmett Tice,
introduced girls physical education
instructor, Karen Ciosek, who outlined
plans to add to new building to the
Physical Education plant of Pacelli. Miss
Ciosek also presented a program of five
routines in modern dance emphasizing
fundamental and creative movements.
Students participating were Kathleen
Jones, Cecilia Ramos, Lisa Regnier,
Kathy Land, Michelle Jolley, Allison
Hillsmen, and Sherry Prickett as
accompanist. Fr. Keohane’s dramatic
class will present the program for May.
(First of four articles.)
BY JERRY FILTEAU
(NC News Service)
-“Thirty nuns apply for welfare.”
-“Diocese to aid Sisters’ retirement
fund.”
-“Nuns struggling to make ends
meet.”
Headlines like this, which have
appeared with increasing frequency over
the last few years, tell a story of a new
phenomenon in the U.S. Catholic
Church.
Religious orders of women in the
United States, which prospered and
grew during the great “vocations boom”
from the 1930s to the early 1960s, are
now feeling the delayed effects of the
boom. Coupled with other factors the
decline in new vocations has created a
severe financial crisis among many
religious communities, centering mainly
around retirement costs.
Some of the factors that have created
the crises are:
-Increased medical costs. While
general medical costs have been rising
rapidly, nuns are receiving a double
dosage as fewer and fewer communities
receive free care or reduced rates.
-Earlier retirement ages. In the past,
as one nun put it, “Sisters just never
retired.” In recent years, however, most
Catholic schools and hospitals-the
major employers of nuns-have
instituted mandatory retirement ages of
65 or have extended their retirement
policies to include the Sisters.
-Increased life expectancy. Medical
studies have consistently shown that
nuns as a group are healthier and live
longer than other women. In the past 70
years the average life expectancy of the
American nun has increased 14 years,
and on the average a nun will live four
years longer than other white American
women.
-A tremendous increase in the
average age in religious communities. As
nuns live longer and vocations drop
from their peak in the early 1960s, the
average age of the American nun has
increased steadily.
The large numbers of Sisters leaving
their orders since about 1965, has also
contributed significantly to this increase
in average age. In a recent survey
conducted by the Leadership
Conference of Women Religious, about
half of the orders responding said that
five to nine percent of their members
had left the order since January, 1970.
Most of those who leave are under 35
years of age.
In 1905 only 7.7 percent of all U.S.
nuns were over 60 years old. A recent
study encompassing 110,000 nuns in
the country showed that 33.2 percent
of them were over 60 years old during
the 1964-68 period-and the ratio has
increased significantly since then.
-Finally, it is almost axiomatic that
nuns, particularly school teachers, are
grossly underpaid. A recent study of
1,400 School Sisters of St. Francis in
the United States showed that in the
current fiscal year they gave
$7.7-million in “contributed services.”
Contributed services are determined
by adding up the salaries and value of all
fringe benefits (housing, car allowances,
and other special benefits) received by
the nuns, and subtracting that amount
from the salary that a lay person with
similar training and experience would
receive for the same job. For the School
Sisters of St. Francis, the difference
came out to $5,500 per nun.
As the financial pinch increases, the
communities of nuns are caught in the
bind between allocating funds to build
for the future-a necessity for
continuing their apostolates-and
fulfilling their obligations to women
who have faithfully served their
communities, the Church and society
for 30, 40, or 50 years.
A statewide study of nuns was
conducted last year by the Wisconsin
region of the Leadership Conference of
Women Religious (LCWR). In a report
summarizing its findings, the LCWR
said:
“Of their expenses, the most
drastically increasing costs for the
Sisters are retirement costs. In 1970,
there were 3.3 active Sisters for each
retired Sister. By 1972, the average ratio
had decreased to 2.4 to 1 . . . .The
LCWR study projects that for the
1973-74 school year, there will be 1.8
active Sisters for each retired Sister.”
Statistics like these paint a very
gloomy picture on the surface, but the
Catholic Sisters are facing the situation
with hope and confidence. They are
coming up with hard-headed, creative
solutions.
Most Believe in God
INDIANAPOLIS (NC) - While many
talk about the decline of religion,
practically all Americans say they
believe in God and 40 percent of them
go to Church, according to George
Gallup Jr.
“The growing crime rate and callous
disregard for one’s fellow men” have
contributed to the uneasy feeling that
basic religious beliefs are eroding, the
pollster told the national convention of
the Religious Public Relations Council
(RPRC) here.
Gallup said, however, that surveys
“show that out of every 100 adults
interviewed, 98 attest to a belief in
God.” Some of course, only say they
believe in God because they think it is
the “right” answer to give, Gallup said.
Earlier Gallup studies have shown the
churchgoer to be happier and more of a
joiner than the non-churchgoer.
Benedictine Honor Rolls
The Very Rev. Aelred Beck, O.S.B.,
Headmaster of Benedictine Military
School, Savannah, has announced the
school’s honor rolls for the third
academic quarter.
Named to the high honors list are:
SENIORS - Thomas Bean, Brian
Cannon, Thomas Madison, Mark Shawe
and Sam Young.
JUNIORS - Edgar Oliver, William
Palmer, Robert Powers and Peter
Roberts.
SOPHOMORES Walter MaJ,ler and
Phillip Strenski.
FRESHMEN - Richard Bean, Robert
Kelly, Vincent Maggioni, John Mulherin
and John Spellman.
Listed on the honor roll are:
SENIORS - Anthony Brasili, Patrick
Bremer, LaGuardia Cross, George Del
Rio, Brett Highland, Timothy
Lingenfelser, Glen Morgan.
Gary Moylan, Patrick O’Brien, Daniel
O’Leary, Michael Patterson, Reginald
Robinson, Richard Ryan, Chester Spell
and Glenn Zeigler.
JUNIORS - Thomas Brennan,
Richard Bunbury, James Daly, Chris
Fahey, Kenneth Griffin, Luis
Hernandez, Robert Howard and Jeffrey
Golden.
Rickey Jordan, Robert Kaufman,
Timothy Kelley, Jeff Lasky, Timothy
Lentz, Dean Mamalakis, James O’Keefe
and Steve O’Neill.
William C. Parker, Anthony Perini,
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SOPHOMORES - Joseph Altonji,
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Michael Nielubowicz, Patrick Persse,
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USCC Cafeteria
Joins Boycott
WASHINGTON (NC) - The cafeteria
of the United States Catholic
Conference has a suggestion for cutting
down the cost of meatloaf, scalloped
ham, and chicken a la king. Leave out
the meat, the ham and the chicken.
In sympathy with the week-long
boycott of meat across the nation,
USCC’s cafeteria manager Randall Ward
posted the week’s daily menu with the
assurance that “the foods served will
not contain animal fats or animal
meats.”
“I’d say that more than 90 percent of
the people here were very pleased with
what we did,” said Ward who estimated
there was no noticeable drop in the
number of customers during the week.
Along with the meatless “meatloaf,”
“ham,” and “chicken” dishes, the
week’s fare included tuna, crab cakes,
flounder, macaroni with cheese, and
grilled cheese sandwiches.
The meatless “meat” dishes were
made from diced and crumbled
vegetable protein products with
flavorings of beef, chicken and ham.
Vegetable protein has a meaty
consistency and looks like pieces of
diced chicken meat. It readily absorbs
whatever flavors are added to it.
Ward said the meatless meals he
prepared are high in nutritional value.
He predicted that after the boycott,
more American housewives are going to
utilize vegetable protein products.
“If the boycott teaches housewives
anything, it should be that you don’t
have to have meat on the table for every
meal to have a healthy well balanced
diet,” Ward said.
John Cosgrove, director of USCC’s
Division for Urban Affairs, sent Ward a
letter of congratulations for “this great
support by your shop for a good cause.”
One USCC employe, sympathetic to
the boycott, nevertheless complained
that the prices for the meatless protein
vegetable dishes (around one dollar)
were not low enough. “But,” she added,
“I’d rather eat vegetable protein than
horsemeat.”