Sister Mary Traupman might be the emblem of the post-Vatican II woman of the church: She lives alone, practices law and yet belongs to a religious community tugging against the past to enter an age in which tradition and devotion sometimes collide.

When she joined the Sisters of Divine Providence 53 years ago, Sister Mary wore the flowing black habit of her order: a floor length black dress, a cape that stretched below the waist, a veil with a stiff, white wimple, and a bib-like collar both stiff and combustible. She remembers the time a fellow sister's bib ignited when she held a candle too closely.

"All this for the church," she said. "And now we're being investigated."

That investigation -- two really -- is more properly called an Apostolic Visitation, an inquiry by Vatican authorities to sort out the current role of women in American religious orders.

A more ominous-sounding inquiry has also been opened into an umbrella organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office once known simply as The Inquisition.

The first inquiry is believed to be interested in examining whether the role of women religious has strayed too widely from church tradition. The second centers on the LCWR's positions on female ordination and church positions on homosexuality.

Both matters have women religious apprehensive and contemplating their roles in a church that long relied on its women for a range of duties, stopping just short of full priesthood.

As Vatican II ushered in sweeping changes in the church in 1965, nearly 180,000 women belonged to religious orders in the United States. Most were members of "active" orders -- the women who ran hospitals, staffed elementary and high schools, did social work among the poor and immigrants.

While those women are often referred to as nuns, that definition is incorrect. Nuns are members of contemplative orders and live, by and large, cloistered from the rest of the world. Those groups are not among those now being investigated by the Vatican.

Rather, it is the orders to which women such as Sister Mary Traupman belong, that have invited scrutiny by church leaders.

Precisely what concerns Rome has never been fully outlined.

"The planned visitation comes as a surprise to the conference and its purpose and implications for the lives of U.S. women religious remain unclear," said a statement by the National Board of LCWR.

"I know some have seen it negatively but there's also the positive way of looking at this," cautioned Sister Patricia Rogan, who serves as liaison between Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik and the religious communities. "Any time you do an evaluation you always learn."

Among concerns, if not complaints, swirling around women religious from conservative Catholic quarters are what some viewed as an increasing reach into the secular world. After Vatican II, many orders dispensed with habits in favor of modest secular dress. Some sisters embarked on careers not previously open to them.

Rita Murillo, who grew up in Johnstown, Cambria County, and joined the Sisters of St. Joseph 48 years ago, said many of those changes were really a turning back to tradition.

"We were told by Vatican II to go back and look at our roots," she said. "The women who founded the Sisters of St. Joseph in 1650 in France were basically doing the corporal works of mercy."

Losing the long, dark robes that made her impossible to overlook, she found herself working summers among Latino migrants on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. In 1982 she entered law school.

"I'd wanted to be an attorney when I was in high school, but that wasn't an option because I was in the full habit. That was not one of the works of the community," she said.

Today it is. Sister Rita told her story between sessions at the Allegheny County Courthouse, where she was defending needy clients.

One challenge facing the church is that the flood of Rita Murillos and Mary Traupmans of a half century ago has abated. In 1965, more than 173,000 women belonged to religious orders. By 2008, that number had fallen to 61,855, according to a survey by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate of Georgetown University.

Similarly, the number of priests in the same time period has dropped from 58,632 in 1965 to 40,580.

A steady but hard-to-measure undercurrent of talk among some women religious about female ordination appears to be part of the push by the Vatican for the inquiry into the LCWR, the umbrella group that represents many of the religious orders.

That inquiry, called a "doctrinal assessment," has already begun, according to Sister Annmarie Sanders, a spokeswoman for the LCWR.

The group yesterday issued a statement that hinted strongly that the Vatican, represented by Toledo Bishop Leonard Blair, is poised to crack down on talk of female ordination.

A letter provided to the conference "refers to a 2001 meeting between LCWR and CDF officials when LCWR was invited 'to report on the initiatives taken or planned by your Conference to promote the reception of the Church's teaching among our member communities, especially on issues such as the Apostolic Letter Ordinatio sacerdotalis." That letter restated the church hierarchy's longstanding declaration that women should not be ordained into the Catholic priesthood.

Whether those doctrinal concerns about the LCWR might also inform the separate Apostolic visitation has some women religious wondering.

"I think the ordination question very likely plays a part in this, because many women religious support the ordination of women," said Sister Traupman.

But while some women religious fret -- indeed, leaders of several local orders did not return calls and others issued vague statements rather than take questions -- not everyone expects any kind of upheaval, or even knows whether worry is warranted.

"Canonical visitation is a process in the church that is part of our normal structure," said Sister Patricia McCann, archivist for the Sisters of Mercy. "It is not something that is just used when there are problems."