Re-imagining consecrated religious life as a process of birth-death-rebirth, the author paints a positive picture for the future that is different, but with the power to transform itself and flourish as something just as fresh and as daring as the founders' visions.

In 1960, more than 1.3 million men and women religious served the Catholic Church. Today that number is under 900,000. When Diarmuid O'Murchu, a seminal thinker on religious life, predicted this trend in the 1970s many dismissed him as a prophet of doom. Here he re-imagines consecrated religious life as a process of birth-death-rebirth and paints a positive picture for the future that will again be different from that of the past but with the power to transform itself and flourish into the next century as something as fresh as daring as the founders' visions.