Friendships are an important, frankly, essential, part of religious life. Friendship strengthens community and is a source of grace for living out the vows. Allowing deeper friendships within community life was recognized during the period of renewal.
From the 1967 Chapter of Renewal:
Our interpersonal relationships depend upon our experience of love in our houses – there exists great room for ‘shading’ here – and basically on our relationship with Christ.
The young finally professed have special need for our understanding. A beginning might spring from a real awareness that things are different today, that we do not yet have the ‘answer’. Particularly effective is the ‘apostolate of (one’s) presence’, the power of ‘one kind, loving, understanding woman”.
Love, the driving force: a journey of discernment 