Abbreviation | SFCC |
---|---|
Formation | 1970 |
Type | Independent congregation of religious sisters |
Key people | Sister Lillanna Kopp – founder |
Website | http://www.sfccinternational.org/ |
Sisters for Christian Community is a contemporary, non-canonical, ecumenical community of religious sisters founded in 1970 in direct response to the Catholic Church's Second Vatican Council.
Members live by a profile that embodies the values and principles defined and set forth in the official documents of the council.
Members live according to the evangelical vows of poverty, celibacy, and obedience and manifest their commitment to God within a new form of consecrated life they believe to be both prophetic and ecclesiastical. The Vow of Poverty is lived as serving and sharing; Obedience is practiced by the individual member through a careful listening to God and the cry of the poor; Chastity is lived as celibate love. Each member is self-supporting and responsible to finance her ministry, personal needs, housing, medical care and retirement. Each member determines her ministry on the basis of her personal call within community, her training and interests, as well as response to both the God within herself and the needs of those around her. Sisters For Christian Community are most often found in ministries that favor the poor and marginalized of the world. The primary mission of the Sisters For Christian Community is to work toward a global community of equality, justice and integrity.
The community is organized into geographical regions. As of 2015, there are 31 regions spread throughout 14 nations, which include but are not limited to: Australia, Canada, England, Guam, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Ireland, Kenya, Mexico, the Netherlands, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, Scotland, Uganda, and the United States. Members convene annually at an International Assembly to conduct community-wide business, and to explore the spiritual theme and topic selected for the specific assembly. The location of the International Assembly is in a different place each year. All community decisions, at both the local and international levels, are made through a process of consensus.
Leadership in Sisters For Christian Community is primarily for the purpose of communication. Selection of a leader is through a community-wide process in which each member discerns her qualifications, ability, and time before offering her services at either the regional or international level. Serving in a leadership role is an unpaid, voluntary endeavor for the good of the community.
Formation in Sisters For Christian Community is called the Becoming Process. A person in the 1st stage is an Inquirer. Any member may serve as the contact between an Inquirer and the local community members for 1 year. The Inquirer attends meetings in the local region in order to learn about Sisters For Christian Community and to meet members.
The Region members and the Inquirer discern when she is ready to sign the Covenant of Affiliation and enter the 2nd stage as an Affiliate. The new Affiliate selects her SFCC mentor with whom she works closely for one year. She continues to attend meetings. During this period, the Region formally introduces the new Affiliate to the international membership through the community-wide newsletter, ALL-TO-ALL (ATA). The Region membership and Affiliate mutually discern when the Affiliate will be affirmed into full membership of the Sisters For Christian Community. Affirmation includes the pronouncement of the evangelical vows of poverty, obedience and celibacy, referred by Sisters For Christian Community as Serving, Listening and Loving. [1]
Among its more prominent members in 2020 is Sr. Alison McCrary, whose resume includes Executive Director of the National Police Accountability Project, President of the Louisiana Chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, spiritual advisor on Louisiana’s death row, and social justice attorney. [2] She is frequently mentioned in the media. [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Celibacy is the state of voluntarily being unmarried, sexually abstinent, or both, usually for religious reasons. It is often in association with the role of a religious official or devotee. In its narrow sense, the term celibacy is applied only to those for whom the unmarried state is the result of a sacred vow, act of renunciation, or religious conviction. In a wider sense, it is commonly understood to only mean abstinence from sexual activity.
A nun is a woman who vows to dedicate her life to religious service, typically living under vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in the enclosure of a monastery or convent. The term is often used interchangeably with religious sisters who do take simple vows but live an active vocation of prayer and charitable works.
Clerical celibacy is the requirement in certain religions that some or all members of the clergy be unmarried. Clerical celibacy also requires abstention from deliberately indulging in sexual thoughts and behavior outside of marriage, because these impulses are regarded as sinful.
A monk is a person who practices religious asceticism by monastic living, either alone or with any number of other monks. A monk may be a person who decides to dedicate their life to serving other people and serving God, or to be an ascetic who voluntarily chooses to leave mainstream society and live their life in prayer and contemplation. The concept is ancient and can be seen in many religions and in philosophy.
Religious vows are the public vows made by the members of religious communities pertaining to their conduct, practices, and views.
In Christianity, an oblate is a person who is specifically dedicated to God or to God's service.
The Society of the Divine Word, popularly called Verbites or the Divine Word Missionaries, and sometimes the Steyler Missionaries, is a Catholic missionary religious congregation. As of 2020, it consisted of 6,023 members composed of priests and religious brothers working in more than 70 countries, now part of VITA international. It is one of the largest missionary congregations in the Catholic Church. Its members add the nominal letters SVD after their names to indicate membership in the Congregation. The superior general is Paulus Budi Kleden who hails from Indonesia.
The Missionaries of the Sacred Heart of Jesus are a missionary congregation in the Catholic Church. It was founded in 1854 by Servant of God Jules Chevalier (1824–1907) at Issoudun, France, in the Diocese of Bourges.
A religious congregation is a type of religious institute in the Catholic Church. They are legally distinguished from religious orders – the other major type of religious institute – in that members take simple vows, whereas members of religious orders take solemn vows.
Anglican religious orders are communities of men or women in the Anglican Communion who live under a common rule of life. The members of religious orders take vows which often include the traditional monastic vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, or the ancient vow of stability, or sometimes a modern interpretation of some or all of these vows. Members may be laity or clergy, but most commonly include a mixture of both. They lead a common life of work and prayer, sometimes on a single site, sometimes spread over multiple locations.
The Missionaries of Our Lady of La Salette are a religious congregation of priests and brothers in the Latin Church. They are named after the apparition of Our Lady of La Salette in France. There is also a parallel religious community of sisters called the Missionary Sisters of Our Lady of La Salette. A lay fraternal group of associates also works in cooperation with the vowed religious. The Missionaries are dedicated to making known the message of Our Lady of La Salette, a call to healing of inner brokenness and personal reconciliation with God, especially as found in the first three commandments. The missionaries are popularly known as "the La Salettes."
In Christianity, the three evangelical counsels or counsels of perfection are chastity, poverty, and obedience. As stated by Jesus in the canonical gospels, they are counsels for those who desire to become "perfect". The Catholic Church interprets this to mean that they are not binding upon all, and hence not necessary conditions to attain eternal life (heaven), but that they are "acts of supererogation" exceeding the minimum stipulated in the biblical commandments. Catholics who have made a public profession to order their life by the evangelical counsels, and confirmed this by public vows before their competent church authority, are recognised as members of the consecrated life.
The Rosminians, officially the Institute of Charity or Societas a charitate nuncupata, are a Roman Catholic religious institute founded by Antonio Rosmini and first organised in 1828.
Clerical celibacy is the discipline within the Catholic Church by which only unmarried men are ordained to the episcopate, to the priesthood in some autonomous particular Churches, and similarly to the diaconate. In other autonomous particular churches, the discipline applies only to the episcopate.
Vocational discernment is the process in which men or women in the Catholic Church discern, or recognize, their vocation in the church. The vocations are the life as layman in the world, either married or single, the ordained life and the consecrated life.
The Missionaries of the Company of Mary is a missionary religious congregation within the Catholic Church. The community was founded by Saint Louis de Montfort in 1705 with the recruitment of his first missionary disciple, Mathurin Rangeard. The congregation is made up of priests and brothers who serve both in the native lands and in other countries. The Montfortian Family comprises three groups: the Company of Mary, the Daughters of Wisdom and the Brothers of Saint Gabriel.
Miles Jesu is a Catholic institute of consecrated life founded on January 12, 1964, in Phoenix, Arizona, whose membership comprises lay people and clerics who take religious vows and in addition, since it is structured as an ecclesial family of consecrated life, it also has people in other states of life as members.
A religious brother is a member of a Christian religious institute or religious order who commits himself to following Christ in consecrated life of the Church, usually by the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. He is a layman, in the sense of not being ordained as a deacon or priest, and usually lives in a religious community and works in a ministry appropriate to his capabilities. A brother might practice any secular occupation. The term "brother" is used as he is expected to be as a brother to others. Brothers are members of a variety of religious communities, which may be contemplative, monastic, or apostolic in character. Some religious institutes are composed only of brothers; others are so-called "mixed" communities that are made up of brothers and clerics.
The Society of Our Lady of the Most Holy Trinity (SOLT) is a Society of Apostolic Life within the Roman Catholic Church. It was founded in 1958 by Father James H. Flanagan, a priest from the United States. The Society maintains missions in various countries, describing itself as Marian-Trinitarian, Catholic, missionary, and family. Membership in the Society includes priests, permanent deacons, religious sisters, religious brothers, and the lay faithful.
Amanda Tan, RGS, commonly known as Christine was a Filipino missionary, nun, and activist, who was known to be one of the key figures who was against the human rights abuses during the Martial law era. She headed the Association of Major Religious Superiors of Women (AMRSP) from 1973–1976, a group of religious sisters who not only vocalized their disdain against the Martial Law dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, but also managed to help Filipinos who are suffering from poverty. She, along with eight other religious sisters are known as the Bantayog sisters - honored for living a life resisting against the regime of Ferdinand Marcos by having their names were immortalized on the Wall of Remembrance.