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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 August 2016
Anglican religious communities are currently experiencing decline. Member numbers are decreasing as their average age increases, recruitment of young people is virtually impossible and it is not uncommon to find a small and dwindling group of elderly religious inhabiting premises designed for a time when committing oneself to life as a member of a religious order was much more fashionable. There are several underlying reasons: young people are offered a wider and more diverse array of possible occupations; employment with a specific employer is no longer undertaken for life, but people tend to move from one job to another and from one sector to another; women in particular have more choices than previously and for those with a religious vocation the priesthood is a more exciting alternative; and, bearing in mind that many Anglican religious communities incline to the Anglo-Catholic end of the spectrum, the Ordinariate beckons.
2 Advisory Council on the Relations of Bishops and Religious Communities, A Handbook of the Religious Life, fifth edition (Norwich, 2004).
3 Ibid, para 502.
4 Ibid, para 503.
5 Ibid, paras 504 and 508.
6 Ibid, para 505.
7 Not usually, presumably, where dismissal is occasioned by marriage or a public renunciation of faith.
8 Ibid, paras 401–409.