"A 2004 survey by Our Sunday Visitor’s Catholic Almanac showed there were approximately 71,486 nuns in the United States, down 50 percent from the 1960s."

This is misleadingly optimistic as well. U.S. population in mid-60s was fewer than 200,000 and now it's more than 300,000. So doing the tiniest bit of math, if nuns were 140,000 in 60s, now they should be 210,000 to keep keep pace, especially with all those Catholic Latinos rolling in. But it's not 210,000, it's 70,000!

Anyhow, you're too young for this:

"More alarmingly, from the church's point of view, is that the average age of nuns is 70 years old."

So even if your icon is out-of-date as many suspect, you got some time. More gloom:

“'I just don’t think there is the context and the milieu for that kind of institution in today’s world,' said Dr. Helen Rose Ebaugh, a University of Houston sociologist, author of "Women in the Vanishing Cloister" and former president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion."

Ouch!

"But, call me agnostic."

Good for you. Be sure to read your Bertrand Russell every night before you go to sleep :)

Good post, LisB

I was raised as an Episcopalian, which is the American branch of the Anglican Church. (Hasn't recognized the King of England as head of the Church since the Revolution.) The ceremony and doctrine are extremely similar to the Catholics. I have always enjoyed the Catholic history and tradition, but I got hooked on science and science fiction at age 11 and have demanded that things be rational and understandable ever since. Like you, I always found the Holy Ghost to be a puzzling intrusion into the otherwise mostly rational Father/Son relationship.

But the tradition is a very powerful thing. The rules for how to behave when going into the church. Crossing yourself. Meditating - oops praying - with prayer beads like a Hindu Yogi. And the cathedrals. Banks used to build buildings that looked a lot like stone cathedrals to give the impression of solidity and permanence. Visiting the Churches and cathedrals involves much the same impulse that sends a lot of us into researching genealogy and family history, I think.

But I'm still an Enlightenment-driven rationalist at heart. It's cold out there in the rational world, and sometimes scary, but as I read more and see others there with me, I know that it's where I belong. It's exploring the universe as a human being.

I still visit a cathedral and light a candle every so often, though and offer a prayer to Mary. I did it while stationed in Germany (Rome, Paris, Frankfurt, Barcelona and little churches in between) and it is a connection to western history, good and bad. The Cathedral on Jackson Square in New Orleans is a great visit, but in recent years it has been closed every time I was in town. Tintern Abbey in Wales and the Welsh National Cathedral (Cardiff) are also good visits. The Abbey, now in ruins, is especially so if you learn a bit of the history before going. It is sort of a three dimensional history of the taming of a piece of the wild Welsh frontier after the Norman Conquest. Makes you wonder who those people clearing and working farms there were. The farms were just the social infrastructure that allowed them to carve and set the stones upon each other.

Thanks for the post. I think I recognize both your attraction and your unwillingness to totally accept assimilation into the Borg. Though perhaps for me if there were a Jeri Ryan there ....

I'm not certain, as I begin this post that what I say here is on-topic, but faith and religion "is" mentioned. I was baptized Lutheran and confirmed Methodist in my early teens. While serving in the Navy, I spent months at sea...Never sighting land. This gives one lots of time to read and think. I enrolled in a college course titled "Introduction To Religions." There was one major text book and the requirement that one read portions of the Bible, Koran, Bhagavad Gita, Book of Mormon, etc. By the time I had completed the course, I knew more about the various religions of the world, but had become a true agnostic...How could one avoid going to hell without practicing "all of the above?" Ultimately, I chose to practice the Golden Rule. That seemed like an effective religion without all of the glitz.
As with most of us, I experienced joyful and tragic events through my life. I did pray in thanks for joyful events and I prayed for help when confronted with events I couldn't control. I prayed privately and silently.
A few years ago, I experienced congestive heart failure. Mayo Clinic cardiologists informed me that my life expectancy was one bed-ridden year if I didn't receive a heart transplant. I was told that every effort would made to quickly get me accepted into the Mayo program. Until that event, I had not realized how important "the promise of tomorrow" was! When the end of your existence becomes defined, you lose hope. Had I bought into the various "hereafters" that the religions promised, I believe that my despair would have been greatly alleviated. It was not a sense of fear that I experienced. but the loss of tomorrow.
In conclusion, I wish that I could believe that there is a future after death. I can't. I do know that looking at death as final is a helpless feeling. Tomorrow is only a day away.

Count me in, if you will consider North Carolina or Nova Scotia.

I thought about being a priest. Then I got laid...

Well, hell, all this nun-talk's got me down. For a change, rock out with Outkast. If ya can keep still, you are seriously rhythm-challenged. All you shouldn't do a bed and breakfast, you should do a bed-and-juke-joint!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrr81SRhp_s

Please listen!!! It's only 5 paltry minutes out of your lives.

Seems more and more women want live husbands ..

Maybe. But I can't see why! Anyway, there are fewer priests as well, and other explanations of the social change.

For one thing, it could be that all of those gay men and lesbians who formerly had to seek refuge in religious orders so as to avoid the choice between either (a) an unhappy heterosexual marriage or (b) the scandalous exposure of their sexual orientation through a lifetime of unmarried status and its attendant whispers and ostracism, are now taking advantage of the greater acceptance of gays and lesbians in lay life, and are not running off to the seminaries and convents.

There are also economic factors involved. In the case of women, the traditional economic life-choice was among marriage, the convent, lifetime dependency on relatives or destitution. More economic options and greater possibilities for financial independence makes each of those other options somewhat less attractive than formerly.

While the economic choices for men weren't nearly as stark, they were still real. Prior to social insurance, working class men expected to rely on their children for economic support in their old age. Thus, they had to have families. But the rectory was another option.

The percentage of American households that are comprised of married couple has been in decline for many years. I believe that percentage recently went below 50%. So the idea that the ranks of nuns are dwindling because more women are choosing marriage seems iffy.