BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Like many Catholic girls, Pat Schloemer of Price Hill once pondered becoming a nun.
She eventually decided against it and later married and bore five children. But the widowed grandmother of 11 now finds support and spiritual fulfillment in the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati -- not as a woman religious, but as a lay associate of the order.
"I could talk about what I wanted my relationship with God to be and no one would say, "Oh, she's weird.' It was like they understood," said Mrs. Schloemer, 68, who has been a Sisters of Charity associate for almost two decades.
Lay associates, whose ranks have rapidly expanded in the quarter-century since their founding, will meet here this weekend with women religious for the annual North American Conference of Associates and Religious. More than 200 associates from all over the United States and Canada are expected for three days at the Drawbridge Estate in Fort Mitchell.
Although religious orders have had different types of lay affiliation for centuries, associates date to the years following the Second Vatican Council, which urged a new relationship between lay people and religious. A recent study placed the number of U.S. associates at 14,500, and another study found that most were well-educated Caucasian women over 50.
The Sisters of Charity were among the first to admit an associate, a Colorado woman who joined in 1973. Most lay associates continue to work and raise families as they pledge to meet, pray and worship with a community on a regular basis.
"Lay people look at religious and say, "We want what you have. Can we collaborate with you in prayer and mission?' " said Jean Sonnenberg, co-director of the North American Conference of Associates and Religious and editor of The Associate magazine.
Change of perspectives
Mrs. Schloemer meets every other week with an assigned woman religious, volunteers at the order's retirement home weekly and attends liturgies and retreats. The relationships have changed her notions about nuns -- "I had an idea they were so rigid, and they just have the best time" -- and Sister Mary Ann Humbert said the changes go both ways. "It expands my world and my spirit to find out how other people live the gospel from a different perspective," said Sister Humbert, director of associates for the local Sisters of Charity. "As women religious, we thought we had a corner on the (spirituality) market, and it's both refreshing and threatening to see that we don't."
