The Other Side of the Church in the United States: Nuns with Habit and Hope Facing the Progressive Rot

In the United States, the Church is experiencing an increasingly evident moment of polarization. A few months ago, in San Antonio (Texas), the Association of United States Catholic Priests (AUSCP) held its annual assembly. There, openly contrary proclamations to doctrine were heard, with justifications for sexual aberrations and speeches seeking to empty Catholic morality of content. It is the face of a progressive Church that is decomposing, trapped in a stale modernism that yields no vocations and marches toward sterility and disappearance.

On the other extreme, the light. From September 18 to 21, 2025, at the Drury Plaza Hotel St. Louis at the Arch, the National Assembly of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR) was held. There, dozens of major superiors from women’s communities faithful to tradition gathered. The image was striking: all in habit, all rooted in Eucharistic adoration, common life, and fidelity to the magisterium. In contrast to the doctrinal disorder of the AUSCP, the clarity of the nuns who mark the future. The meeting in St. Louis included days of communal prayer, moments of adoration, conferences, and spaces for dialogue among the superiors. It was a true cenacle of fidelity, where the different charisms enriched each other mutually. This year’s theme was “a renewed appreciation of the deeper theological reasons for this special form of consecration”, with emphasis on the centrality of Christ and the visible witness of religious life.

The main speaker was Monsignor Roger Landry, national director of the Pontifical Mission Societies in the United States, Papal Missionary of Mercy, and EWTN commentator at the last conclave. In his conferences, he reminded that religious are called to be “living signs of hope” and “leaders of hope” according to the thought of the new Pope. His words found an echo in the nuns gathered, whose very presence, united in communion and visibly consecrated with the habit, is already a prophetic witness for the Church.

The CMSWR confirms itself as the great pole of vocational attraction in the United States. While progressive congregations agonize with aging and empty convents, the communities that remain faithful to the habit and tradition overflow with vitality, youth, and hope. It is no coincidence: where consecration is lived integrally, the Lord blesses with vocations.

It is not a matter of two different Churches, but of two paths: progressivism that dies for lack of faith, and fidelity that flourishes with vocations and joy. The photo of the CMSWR nuns, all in habit, summarizes what is at stake. The future of the Church does not lie with the AUSCP nor with progressive experiments that renounce doctrine, but with the living tradition that continues to bear fruit.

The Church that is reborn will be the one that never stopped being Catholic.