"A feminist mentality has also entered into women's religious orders. This is particularly evident, even in the most extreme forms, on the North American continent. On the other hand, the cloistered contemplative orders have withstood very well because they are more sheltered from the Zeitgeist, and because they are characterized by a clear and unalterable aim: praise of God, prayer, virginity and separation from the world as an eschatological sign. On the other hand, active orders and congregations are in grave crisis: the discovery of professionalism, the concept of 'social welfare' which has replaced that of 'love of neighbor', the often uncritical and yet enthusiastic adaption to the new and hitherto unknown values of modern secular society, the entrance into the convents, at times wholly unexamined, of psychologies and psychoanalyses of different tendencies: all this has led to the burning problems of identity and, with many women, to the collapse of motivations sufficient to justify religious life."
-Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (The Ratzinger Report, pp. 99-100).
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