Millennial Nuns

should be thoughtful and should engage directly with the passage. Make sureyou are^ specific as possible with how you are reading the passage, and use quotations.After 50 years of decline, the number of young women “discerning the religious >r going through the long process of becoming a Catholic sister—is substantially
affiliated survey of American Catholics reported that they had considered becoming a Catholic sister. That’s more than 900,000 young women, enough to repopulate the corps of “women religious” in a couple of decades, even if only a fraction of them actually go through with it.
And the aspiring sisters aren’t like the old ones. They’re more diverse: Ninety percent of American nuns in 2009 identified as white; last yearTTewer than percent of new entrants to convents did. They’re also younger: The average age for taking the final step into the religious life a decade ago was 40. Today, it’s 24. They re disproportionately middle children, often high-flying and high-achieving. Typical discernment stories on blogs or in the Catholic press start with lines like “she played lacrosse and went to Rutgers” or she was “a Harvard graduate with a wonderful
boyfriend.”

Question for Writing

Fairbanks gives a number of details that she sees as contradictions between contemporary
women who choose to become nuns and women who have done so in the past. What are
some of these contradictions, and why does Fairbanks call attention to them?
Tip: Spend about 5 minutes reading over and marking up the passage. Underline whatever terms and sentences seem important to you, and write in the margins why they are important. Doing this early on in the writing process will help generate ideas. (Feel free to write directly on this
assignment.)