Some folks at St. Catherine’s University in St. Paul, MN, came up with the idea of National Catholic Sisters Week. It’s this week. They had some sort of event to celebrate over the weekend. It was strictly LCWR. There’s been no mention on the CMSWR side of such a week or any events.
In honor of this, I thought I would put down some current stats concerning Facebook pages related to Catholic Sisters.
First, Imagine Sisters, which is essentially a CMSWR vocation/information site/Facebook page is, as I am writing this, at 19,999. Any second it will be over the 20,000 mark. ***Update on 3/27/2014: 21,154 up by 1,155
Concerning a few CMSWR communities, let’s look at their Facebook stats:
Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist: 27,163 (update 4/20/14: 38,476)
Franciscan Sisters, T.O.R. of Penance of the Sorrowful Mother: 9,768 (update 4/20/14: 13,698)
Salesian Sisters – Daughters of Mary Help of Christians: 4,570 (update 4/20/14: 4,646)
Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis: 1,600 (update 4/20/14: 1,674)
Nashville Dominicans: 1,388 (update 4/20/14: 1,581)
Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ: 698 (update 4/20/14: 738)
Now, the LCWR has a Facebook page. It has 4,426 likes. ***Update on 3/27/2014: 4,444 likes up by 18. This type of growth could be called “less than substantial.”
A Nun’s Life (Podcasting, including visits to various LCWR convents): 4,132 likes.
Adrian Dominican Sisters: 1,415
Many communities have likes of less than 1,000.
But… the LCWR has the media giants on their side. Why aren’t they more popular?
Well, if you look further into the events of National Catholic Sisters Week, there was a showing of a movie called Radical Grace. In it, the Vatican Hierarchy is the enemy. They use clips from the media giants which portray the sisters as victims. This helps their point, of course.
The CMSWR sisters don’t consider the Vatican to be the enemy.
But, I think that since the term “National Catholic Sisters Week” is neutral, it really helps the CMSWR communities, even though they aren’t promoting it at all.