Santa Fe, NM – The Sisters of St. Francis of the Progressive Rainbow and Open Minds have had declining vocations for years with the eleven nuns remaining all in their seventies and eighties, and the community not having had a new woman enter their progressive community in over thirty years.
Evidence that they’re doing something wrong and the community needs to change some of their priorities? No, a hard no, according to the community’s “faith leader” Audrey Albern who says “her community will always push for our progressive values of tolerance, complete ecumenism, defending the planet, and promoting LGBT and furry equality, and adding members of all religions and beliefs members of our inclusive Benedictine community.”
Although the community faces a vocational crisis, and, has been in one un-coincidentally since they first turned “progressive” and renamed themselves from the “Monastery of Our Lady of Sorrows” back in 1979, they will not change any of their practices at all to attract more vocations from committed Catholic young women but will instead adopt a technological solution to their challenges, robotic nuns.
“Our faith legacy and moral values can be passed along by these amazing new devices as well as, or perhaps even better than with regular women,” Audrey commented. “We plan to introduce six such robots into our community as postulants this year, with more to follow if we like them. They’ll be able to help our aging sisters with tasks around the community, join with us on protests in support of reproductive rights, pray to the Sun, Moon, and Stars with us in our meditation center, and basically, yes, join us, in every part of our ministry.”
The robots, some of the first of Elon Musk’s line of Optimus robots from the Tesla company, will be AI-controlled and able to carry on a normal human conversation, sing, do almost any hands-on task, and build up habits and personalities over time including being trained to adopt a particular political ideology. “That was an important point for us,” Sister Albern added. “We wanted the robots to come with progressive ideals pre-installed but Tesla refused to do that. Unfortunately, then, we’ll have to put the robots through a postulancy, kicking them out if they can’t conform to our community’s ideals, and also put them through a novitiate before they’ll be allowed to take their full vows with us and permanently join our community.”
Based on current demographic progressions for the community, if they fully adopt robotic nuns, they will be a completely robot-only community by around 2040 at the latest.
While having robotic nuns is completely novel to monastic practice Audrey Albern isn’t fazed. “We at The Sisters of St. Francis of the Progressive Rainbow and Open Minds have always been at the forefront of religious development. Our community is proud to have been the first to eliminate the Psalms completely from the Liturgy of the Hours, to have our sisters pray the Eucharist Prayer along with the priest all the way back in 1992, and we’re also considering just not having a priest at all, or having Mass. Maybe we’ll fix the long-standing travesty of participating in that racist heteronormative ritual completely by next year. Who knows where the spirit will bring us.”