Here's a USCCB report on vocations. Only 122 candidates were making perpetual profession in 2011---that includes habited and non-habited nuns and brothers.
There was a lot of demographic information--average age of nun making perpetual profession is 39, brothers 42. A bunch of other stuff.
But at the moment there are about 57,000 nuns in the U.S. At the "replacement rate of 122 per year," that would mean that 12,200 nuns would make profession in a 100 year period.
http://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-te...ew-Sisters-and-Brothers-in-Perpetual-Vows.pdf
And so even if the habited orders are garnering a greater percentage, that is still a very, very small number.
A lot of men and women try out religious life, even today, God bless them. Most of them don't stay.
The recent book I read by someone who left the Missionaries of Charity after 20 years indicated that she became a postulant in the Bronx with 8 other women, and by the time six months was over she was the only one left.
And I don't think that's a bad thing. If a woman or man devotes 2 or 3 or 4 years to God's service and decides it's not really his/her calling, God bless him/her, with my thanks, for the work he/she's done.
I also worry for the women in the habited orders, who see how the sisters in the LCWR are being treated. It's bound to send up some red flags to them, and it's bound to make them worry about their lives being dictated by outsiders who have very little knowledge about their actual ministries. I'm sure they are watching all of this unfold as their own skepticism and cynicism grows and they build some self-protective barriers and boundaries.
!
