'Barbie becomes a nun' would be a great sequel," she wrote.

She seriously considers draining the pool, putting her condo on the market, cutting her hair and donning the religious habit. Barbie has a new purpose in life, and she's never been happier."

Sister Mary Joseph's original post has generated almost 20,000 views, nearly 700 likes, and over 100 retweets and counting. Read more

And another former convent in Grey Lynn has just been sold for $4.1million.

Warwick Jordan who runs Hard to Find Bookshop needed a new home for his 90,000 books.

His shop was in Onehunga but the building was sold and the new owners wanted a commercial rent.

Even after he had raised $27,000 on the Givealttle website he still did not have enough to keep going.

So Jordan asked Bishop Dunn if the Catholic church has any suitable property available.

The Church offered him a vacant building in Newton which had been a convent.

It had once been, for a short time, home to St Mary of the Cross, Mary MacKillop.

It was in poor condition but it rent was within Jordan's reach.

He used the money from his Givealittle campaign to buy 2km of timber for shelving.

And he spent about $100,000 refurbishing the building.

The Hard to Find Bookshop reopened for business in its new location last week.

The other convent at 454 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn, is a 1922 Spanish Mission-style building.

It has not been in church ownership for 25 years.

The Tower Group purchased it in 1993 and it has been on-sold since then.

It did have a Heritage B status but that has been lifted

Now known as the Hotel California it has become a boarding house for needy people who are a bit down on their luck.

Auckland Council last year served health notices on the then owner who was given a month to fumigate the building and arrange for cleaning and repairs.

At that time the owner, Rentyn Turner, would not comment when approached by the Herald at the boarding house.

Source

• newsroom.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• stuff.co.nz
• nzherald.co.nz
• Image: hardtofind.co.nz

Those were exciting years. In February 1968, aged 19, I entered an Irish Cistercian monastery. It was just three years after the Council ended and a few months after the Cistercian general chapter met to implement the decisions of the Council.

I left six years later, in 1974, just before I would have made my solemn profession. But I still regard the community as friends and brothers.

By the time I left some major changes had taken place: the adoption of English in the liturgy, the end of the very strict silence (we had communicated by sign language), the move from sleeping in dormitories to our own rooms, and a more relaxed attitude towards trips outside the monastery.

Then there was the introduction of newspapers and even the radio (later television and the internet were also allowed).

Those were the years of "dialogue" (encouraged by Pope Paul VI): with each other, with the superior, with the outside world.

The question was: how to be monks, true to the original charism of our order, in the 20th century?

Undoubtedly some of the changes were necessary (eg the rule of silence); others were adopted too hastily and carelessly (the loss of the Latin liturgy and Gregorian chant - the Council had asked monks especially to preserve this).

As the Church's Year of Consecrated Life has just ended, it is worth reflecting on what has happened to religious life in general in Western countries over the past 50 years and whether it has a future.

At first sight it is a rather grim picture. Most religious orders in the West are declining numerically and ageing. This makes them less attractive to young people.

Since most of the active orders no longer wear the habit, they have become almost invisible to wider society. Continue reading

• Professor John Loughlin is a Research Fellow at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. This article was first published in The Catholic Herald.