1990s Carmels in UK/Ireland

[AccountDeleted]

I missed Beatitude's post the first time around but have since gone back and read this thread. Her post is excellent and great advice. 

I have lived in both 1990 and 1991 Carmels and I can echo her sentiments that a vocation is about more than just the Constitutions or the habit style. 

Kirk Edge is a difficult community to get to know very well from the outside so if you are still thinking about them in a couple of years and we're both still on phatmass here, shoot me a PM and I will be happy to give you some 'inside' information about them.  

[Antoniette]

St. Helen's did officially close in Feb 2015. Some of the nuns dispersed to nursing homes (religious ones) others are still temporarily placed. It's closing had been considered for a while now. Their extern novice did not stay and their youngest sister was taken by cancer. i believe that pushed the sisters over the edge. it really is a sad time for the surviving sisters, and please include them in your prayers. I don't know how I would handle being vowed to live and die in a house, remaining 10, 20 or even more years and uprooted in my 70's. The sadness is compounded by the fact it was a great prayerful Carmel.

 

[AccountDeleted]

St. Helen's did officially close in Feb 2015. Some of the nuns dispersed to nursing homes (religious ones) others are still temporarily placed. It's closing had been considered for a while now. Their extern novice did not stay and their youngest sister was taken by cancer. i believe that pushed the sisters over the edge. it really is a sad time for the surviving sisters, and please include them in your prayers. I don't know how I would handle being vowed to live and die in a house, remaining 10, 20 or even more years and uprooted in my 70's. The sadness is compounded by the fact it was a great prayerful Carmel.

 

​It is happening more and more that frail and elderly nuns cannot stay in their own monastery but must go somewhere else for the care and attention they need and that the community can't give them because they are also aging or in poor health. Even the new postulants tend to be older than they used to be, so there just isn't the youth and vitality that is needed to keep elderly sisters at home until they die anymore. In the communities where they have had to send a sister away, they do make every effort to visit the sister as often as possible when they can, but even that isn't easy. 

It can be very difficult for the sister involved but the community also experiences a loss at her absence. I have been in communities where they have tried very hard to keep the infirm sister with them but it has placed an enormous strain on the resources of the rest of the community, especially if they are no longer a large or young community. I know that one sister I nursed (90 years old) dreaded the idea of being forced to leave her 'home' but fortunately the community was able to hire a part-time nurse for the night work and sisters were able to care for her during the day, so she didn't have to leave. But another sister, who suffered from Alzheimer's, became impossible to keep, so they sent her to Sclerder, a Carmelite nursing home in Cornwall. But even that Carmel closed last year and handed over their monastery to Chemin Neuf, an ecumenical Christian community. That is a real shame because another sister where I lived said she wanted to retire there when she got too 'old' (she was 85 at the time she said it!). The news article is here http://www.carmelite.org/index.php?nuc=news&func=view&item=1140 . 

 

The article does say that more sisters are staying at home with their communities, but this hasn't been my experience in the past. Perhaps the future is looking brighter for this kind of thing though.  I think the main problem has been the design and layout of the older monasteries, not being easily accessible for wheelchairs or walkers, but some monasteries are making renovations to solve these problems.