The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has initiated a doctrinal investigation of the largest U.S. women's religious leadership organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
The Vatican already announced a separate study last December to assess the "quality of life" in apostolic women's religious communities throughout the United States.
Apparently Levada and associates are going after supposed "doctrinal" errors being perpetrated by communities who contribute leadership to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the US, who represent about 68,000 women religious.
Talk about a witch-hunt and disrespect for women.......................I'm not sure the hunters know whom they are confronting, though. Goes back to that pet peeve of mine: Rome cannot deal with the independence of thought in much of American Catholicism.
Most of the women religious are of the Vatican II era--they are old ladies. I'm not sure what the old men in Rome are afraid of, except that they cannot control the world.
The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has initiated a doctrinal investigation of the largest U.S. women's religious leadership organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
The Vatican already announced a separate study last December to assess the "quality of life" in apostolic women's religious communities throughout the United States.
Jane
I cannot help but see irony in the juxtaposition of those two "reviews." The first was, in theory, supposed to look at the life of nuns, the health of the orders, and at least came across as an effort to try to understand why the massive dropoff in vocations. To the degree there could be a sense of something like an "olive branch" there, the new study strikes me more like a club.
This reminds me that the Vatican today continues to see the dropoff in vocations as being a problem with orthodoxy. My concern with that approach, is that it MIGHT be true IF the candidate pool of today thought, believed, and lived as did the candidate pool of, say 50-100 years ago. I don't think that's the case. I tend to think that trying to pull the church back to more orthodoxy is simply going to drive out the "less orthodox," but is (IMHO) unlikely to draw replacements, since most of those in modern society who tend to relate well to orthodoxy are likely already in the church, or some other church that tailors to a highly dogmatic form of orthodoxy.
I have an elderly aunt who is in a retirement community. She is lucky, because her order received a nice endowment, and was able to build a retirement center. But the order has so quickly died off, that the VAST number of units in that complex are now filled by the laity. We also have a younger (55-60ish) friend who is her order's leader (I've never been good with the titles within the women's orders, sorry), at least of the US, if not the world. Her order has ZERO American candidates these days. They generally have about 3-5 trying to come into the order in the US from other countries at any one time, but most of them wash out - too many cultural and educational differences to overcome. It is striking to talk to these women, and get their views on the state of the church. For those of you who think I'M harsh on the church's leadership, all I can say is that I'm a pushover compared to these two women!
As I've said before, I don't know what the answer is to the vocation mess, but I'm pretty sure it's not a shift towards more orthodoxy. Sadly, the bishops have, right in front of them, startling evidence of what it takes go get people to jump on board, by the busload. Look at what happened to the RCC during and immediately after VII. For all the bellyaching about the "abuses" under the perception of what VII may have meant, people got genuinely excited about the church. Vocations spiked, parishes grew, and people stepped forward and became active in ways not seen in this country alone for a VERY long time, if ever. People saw something they LIKED in the church. And ever since the powers that be have been trying to reverse those things. As they do, vocations have dried up, and the church is bleeding people big time.
Sometimes, it can be as simple as the forest for the trees. Vatican II offered a sense of hope, of dynamism, and of newness. People liked this. Whether right, wrong or otherwise, the message of "full speed in reverse" is simply not resonating with Catholics or the public today.
The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has initiated a doctrinal investigation of the largest U.S. women's religious leadership organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
The Vatican already announced a separate study last December to assess the "quality of life" in apostolic women's religious communities throughout the United States.
Apparently Levada and associates are going after supposed "doctrinal" errors being perpetrated by communities who contribute leadership to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the US, who represent about 68,000 women religious.
Talk about a witch-hunt and disrespect for women.......................I'm not sure the hunters know whom they are confronting, though. Goes back to that pet peeve of mine: Rome cannot deal with the independence of thought in much of American Catholicism.
And they especially cannot deal with independent thought among women. Any women, anywhere in the world.
Most of the women religious are of the Vatican II era--they are old ladies. I'm not sure what the old men in Rome are afraid of, except that they cannot control the world.
The women in the leadership conference are unsurprised. They saw the witch-hunt coming when the "visitation" was ordered - and they weren't even informed, in spite of representing 68,000 women religious.
Rome's fear of women seems to be assuming paramount importance. Those men simply cannot understand nor deal with women as their full equals.
Hans Kung can publicly and notoriously and persistently dissent from the church's "infallible" teaching on "infallibility" and yet he is not excommunicated.
The greatest "sins" in this church in the eyes of these sad men are all related to women. Thus, while Kung is not excommunicated for dissenting against the teaching on infallibility, the priest in St. Louis who merely attended an illicit ordination is subject to excommunication. The pope will lift the excommunications of bishops who not only do not accept his authority, they dissent against a whole council, and were ordained illicitly themselves. And continue to repeatedly snub his conciliatory gestures. Yet he will stand by and watch as a bishop excommunicates a priest who simply attends an illicit ordination of a woman.
The whole two thousand year old long history of distortions, rooted in ancient patriarchy, is finally being unraveled. Most Christian churches recognized the truth and moved forward before now. Only the RCC and the Orthodox continue to cling to patriarchal attitudes.
And the patriarchs in Rome are reaching the point of sheer panic. They will be able to keep some women under control for a while (those who live in cultures that deny them education and many rights as it is), but it's all slowly unraveling before their very eyes. As the "under" developed world develops, they will lose even that vestige of control over women. They are sticking their fingers into the dike in as many places as they can, as fast as they can, but, they won't be able to hold back these forces forever and the whole church is at risk of being swept away by the flood that could come if they don't come to terms with reality.
There are those in the US church today who persist in being ostriches. They bury their heads so that they won't have to actually look this in the eye, so they can continue to deny that the PTB in the church do not respect the dignity of women as full human beings, equal in every way to male human beings. As I have said before, the PTB hide this truth underneath as much flowery prose as possible, and some point to this false flattery and call it "respect for the dignity of women". But those who read with eyes wide open can still see the truth. The truth is that God made them male AND female in "his" image. Someday the men who run the church will come to accept this truth.
But if they refuse to read with their eyes wide open, then they need only look at the actions. As they say, actions speak louder than words. But, they will also choose to look away from that too. Some Catholics in the US, like some of those men in Rome, cannot really deal with truth.
Your commentaries are so well-thought out and presented. If I can manage the new system I will comment on them tomorrow.
Something crossed my mind tonight about Sister Theresa Kane's response to JPII here in the US many years ago:
COPYRIGHT 2000 National Catholic Reporter
Sr. Theresa Kane thinks the pope wants to do something for women
The kneeling figure being blessed by Pope John Paul II is Mercy Sr. Theresa Kane, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. It is Oct. 7, 1979, and she is about to make international news for her welcome to the pontiff on his first U.S. visit.
As part of her address, moments later, Kane said, "As women we have heard the powerful message of our church addressing the dignity and reverence of all persons. As women we have pondered these words. Our contemplation leads us to state that the church in its struggle to be faithful to its call for reverence and dignity for all persons must respond by providing the possibility of women as persons being included in all ministries of the church."
Kane's gently issued plea reverberated around the Catholic world. It was not what the pope wanted to hear. He was visibly annoyed.
She did indeed annoy John Paul II and the Vatican has a long memory--JPII asked to be remembered to her a long time later. I had not recalled that she was president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
I think these women will shut the visitators out. About the original visitation Sr. Sandra Schneiders (I think) said as much--ask them into the "parlor" and get rid of them.
WG
These women religious will not be run over. I've known too many of them for too long, especially the Religious Sisters of Mercy and the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. It's a small enough world that some of those who run these two orders now are former classmates of mine and none dropped off a turnip truck. I also knew those who taught us--no clergy or prelates ran over them either, other way around.
Why would any intelligent woman--as we know they are--pay attention to a pope who is so in love with the techniques of the Inquisition?
Ah, but WG, that isn't really the question. This is meant to be a thread that invites insight, etc. into wassup, not a toss-off answer thread. Toss-off answers tend to disrupt a real discussion of what's afoot.
The truth is one probably has to have known why the Vatican has been so irritated with these Vatican II American women religious for so long. I have a very good idea because they taught me. I also worked in the office of the Catholic hospital for six summers in high school and college: a hospital founded and administered by the Sisters of Mercy. I knew all the adminstrators. Uum, I was also a fave because I did a lot of work and my mother had graduated as an RN from that Nursing School.
Another truth is, those who have not known the best of women religious in the US may not get what's going on. To boot, Rome still seems to think the Church in the US is either totally wayward or still a mission Church: it's neither.
This isn't a thread about Mel Gibson, billionaire, etc. It's about something far more insidious and petty at the same time. Rome really can't "do" anything to these women religious. You haven't contributed to the discussion about any points the rest of us have made. I don't know where this thread will go, but I also don't want to see it derailed just because someone wants to toss something in.
I'm not as angry as your posts seem to make you. I am inquisitive about why things happen within the Church.
Almost time for Leno. Wonder what he will say about the new "first dog"; I think Bo is adorable and a handful: a Kennedy dog, too. Senator Kennedy's illustrated book about his Portie sits on one of my end-tables. I still remember Caroline and her pony Macaroni.
My insight is that B16 is relying on old-fashoined male intimidation of women--
--not realizing that women don't fall for that crap anymore.
How many words are needed to say that?
He's got his head and his heart in the 19th century and he will look like a fool if he tries--through the "Holy" Office of the Inquistion--to mess with these nuns.
Even some of his current sycophants might see through that.
The Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has initiated a doctrinal investigation of the largest U.S. women's religious leadership organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
The Vatican already announced a separate study last December to assess the "quality of life" in apostolic women's religious communities throughout the United States.
Apparently Levada and associates are going after supposed "doctrinal" errors being perpetrated by communities who contribute leadership to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the US, who represent about 68,000 women religious.
Talk about a witch-hunt and disrespect for women.......................I'm not sure the hunters know whom they are confronting, though. Goes back to that pet peeve of mine: Rome cannot deal with the independence of thought in much of American Catholicism.
Most of the women religious are of the Vatican II era--they are old ladies. I'm not sure what the old men in Rome are afraid of, except that they cannot control the world.
Crikey, this is rich ... coming from Levada, who disciplined a priest in his diocese for reporting an instance of suspected clergy abuse to the police. (The priest sued and won; Archdiocese of San Francisco members, ask again how the archdiocese has spent your hard-earned collection money.) And how many cases of confirmed child-abusing priests ready to be stripped of their orders are still on Rome's back burner?
It appears that the LCWR is exhibiting something of an anti-Party attitude, inasmuch as the inquisitors believe the women are failing to fulfill their roles as cheerleaders for two of the Church's most insidiously misogynistic and homophobic doctrines. It also appears the inquisitors find the good sisters insufficiently exclusive when it comes to the notion of "defective" churches -- i.e., all those outside of Catholicism.
The foregoing is essentially the point that Fox makes in his article. He notes that, according to Levada, the "doctrinal assessment" (Levada's words) has become necessary because -- at the 2001 Rome meeting between the LCWR and the CDF -- the LCWR was invited "to report on the initiatives taken or planned" to promote the reception of three areas of Vatican doctrinal concern: Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (male-only priesthood), Dominus Jesus (non-Catholic defective churches), and "the problem" of homosexuality.
Sounds to me as though the boys are bent out of shape because the girls aren't out there in the vociferous vanguard of those avidly advocating the male-only priesthood. Maybe they think the girls are fag hags, as well. Of course, the boys are also PO'd that so many of the women ordained in recent years are former religious.
And here's what I don't get: At one point John Paul had effectively instituted a gag order on even discussing the notion of the ordination of women as anything other than that which the Church was powerless to institute. In 2001, people were taking that seriously -- including a number of women religious writers and theologians; yet, in 2001 the boys also expected the girls to somehow speak out?
Interestingly, I think the vast number of women religious in the US are happy being just that and secure in their vocations as such. Most of them don't want to be priests. And Sandra Schneiders has really made the case (in her Finding the Treasure) for women religious as an independently significant vocation and strain of monasticism as distinct from the priesthood.
And speaking of homosexuality ... there seem to be a lot more sexually active gay priests out there than there are sexually active gay women religious.
I'm wondering about the Dominus Jesus "initiatives" that are expected of the LCWR, and why such is expected. Is there still an ecumenical community of Benedictines that has retained its ties to the Church? The community in Wisconsin severed its ties with the Church in 2006, but are there others? Is this what the CDF objects to?
I agree that it is a gender-based witch hunt, and I think wavering has nailed that quite succinctly. We could all do worse than revisit Arthur Miller's The Crucible at this juncture.
I also suspect Obama's presidency has something to do with the timing, as well, in that a conservative religious ideologue is no longer in the White House.
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"At one point John Paul had effectively instituted a gag order on even discussing the notion of the ordination of women as anything other than that which the Church was powerless to institute. In 2001, people were taking that seriously -- including a number of women religious writers and theologians; yet, in 2001 the boys also expected the girls to somehow speak out?"
You're expecting logic from these guys?
So much easier to go after "weak" women than to finally bring to moral and social justice those worm-eaten souls who aided and abetted the Child Sexual Abuse by--Male--Priests.
Btw--this whole topic is reminding me of those creepy "Auto da Fe" paintings so popular in--you guessed it--Spain--during their "finest" moments as Cradle of the Inquisition.
