I was taught by the Sisters of St. Joseph, from Chestnut Hill, Pa. (just outside Philly), and remember tales of the black-habit-wearing nuns heading to Cape May for their summer vacation, where they’d sit on the sand, in habit and veil and everything, and soak up the sun. (One of the sisters who taught me recalled not long ago: “In the evenings, back at the retreat house, you could always tell who had been to the beach. You’d see women in the showers with white bodies and red hands and faces!”)

Well, the Philadelphia Inquirer has a look at how things have changed for the sisters by the sea:

Three women in capri pants lounge on wicker chairs in an enclosed porch within sight of the sea. One has pierced ears, another has dyed hair, the third is wearing a T-shirt with a Winston cigarette logo.

They don’t look like nuns.

But the dress code changed significantly after Vatican II. And besides, these sisters are on retreat here at St. Mary-by-the-Sea in Cape May Point.

Dress is not the only thing different at houses such as St. Mary. Retreat, the centuries-old practice of traveling to a secluded spot for an intense period of silent renewal and reflection, is no longer the province solely of avowed Catholic sisters.

Decades of decline in the number of women taking religious vows, juxtaposed with an increase in people describing themselves as spiritual but not religious, has created a sea change, if you will, in attendance at retreats.

Group and individualized retreats are increasingly popular among the Christian laity, among women (and some men) for whom spirituality has supplanted religion – even among secular members of the Jewish community.

“I’ve been eager to come here for years,” says Alice Farber, 64, a secular Jewish woman from Roxborough, who left St. Mary yesterday after an eight-day retreat.

“As an artist, I love nature and this is a beautifully situated house for that,” says Farber, who is retired from a career teaching art in the School District of Philadelphia, and is certified as a masseuse.

“But also as an artist I crave quiet, contemplative spaces like this. It feeds the creative soul.”

If you’ve been to the lighthouse at Cape May Point, just south of the town of Cape May, you’ve likely noticed St. Mary’s red roof in the near distance – so unlike Red Roof Inns elsewhere.

This summer and next, St. Mary, which began life in 1890 as the Shoreham Hotel, is marking its 100th year as a retreat house for the Sisters of St. Joseph in Chestnut Hill.

It’s hard not to feel calm in this place when the floorboards creak and the porch chairs seem to call as clearly as the songbirds and the crashing waves: Come, feel the wonder of the sea and its creatures.

Initially, that call went out only to the Sisters of St. Joseph, a 17th-century French order whose members came to Philadelphia as teachers in 1847.

But in the 1970s, the number of religious sisters started to decline everywhere. Nationwide, there were 65 percent fewer nuns by 2008, according to the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate at Georgetown University.

The Sisters of St. Joseph lost half their number by 2008. The median age of the remaining 1,000 sisters is 70. But the order also has about 500 associates – women and men, many of whom are married, who share the order’s mission without taking formal vows.

Those declining numbers forced some religious orders to sell their beach retreats, so St. Mary opened its doors to sisters of other orders starting in about 1980, says Sister Dorothy Urban, an administrator at the order’s motherhouse in Chestnut Hill and liaison to the retreat house at Cape May Point.

Another shift became palpable by the 1990s, as an increasing number of women – and later, men – began to self-identify as spiritual, but without specific religious beliefs. A 2002 Gallup poll showed 33 percent of Americans fell into that category, up from 30 percent just five years earlier.

In support of that trend, in the 1990s St. Mary began welcoming women and men of all faiths who were seeking spiritual, if not religious, calm.

Take a look at the link for more.

PHOTO: Sister Dorothy Urban on a porch at St. Mary-by-the-Sea. “We used to play softball right in this courtyard,” she says of her days as a young nun. “. . . And the statue of St. Mary was there, too; we just played around her.” Photo by David M. Warren / Philadelphia Inquirer