Apr 18, 2012 -- 10:43PM, ted08721 wrote:

Vatican says leadership group for US nuns doesn’t adhere to church teaching; orders reform.
Is this the final straw?
I hope the Good Sisters stand their ground.


www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith...

In some ways the women religious in the US did an end run around the hierarchy and especially Rome. Now Rome wants to penalyse them, but mostly they are old now. And Rome can't recall the messages these sisters imparted to generations. I was taught by brilliant Sisters of St. Joseph of Carodelet in college--hot and cold running Phds. My major professor in English lit wrote her dissertation at Cambridge, England. That old saying held true--we were taught how to think not what to think. I graduated from college in 1960.

This discouraging news is one of a series of reasons why I regretfully left the RC Church. The more things change, the more they get worse. This is the latest example.

Years ago I used to walk on Saturday  afternoons year round with a priest that was universally highly thought of both in his parish as well as the larger community. We discussed many things. One thing that he was adament about when we would discuss the church was that "religion is something that should never get you down"

Given the total mishandling of the child abuse scandal and now this nonsense, he is probably turning over in his grave.

Apr 19, 2012 -- 5:49AM, quandampaupere wrote:

This discouraging news is one of a series of reasons why I regretfully left the RC Church. The more things change, the more they get worse. This is the latest example.

 

Where you see discouragement I see hope, things must get worse before they get better, I thought the Sex Abuse Scandal and Cover Up was going to be the tipping point, but now I realise it was just part of or the beginning of the tipping point.

We have seen more and more lately large groups of priests in countries around the world standing up and saying enough is enough, now we see the hierarchy with an all out assault on women religious.
In my last post I included several quotes from Sister Joan and commented that those were fighting words.

I think the battle lines have been drawn, this will lead to either reform within the Church or an all out schism with Rome; at least then we can get on with the business of the reforms of Vaican II.

At this point either or will do, and if it happens to be the later it won't be  us leaving Catholicism, it is more of Rome leaving Catholicism, and they can take their American bishops with them.

Apr 19, 2012 -- 12:08AM, ted08721 wrote:

"In attempting to take such control of people's thinking," she [Chittister] said, "You make a mockery of the search for God, of the whole notion of keeping eyes on the signs of the times and of providing the people with the best possible spiritual guidance and presence you can give"

And therein lies the paradox for any organized revolution, because without a wholehearted commitment to groupthink, the whole venture is liable to internal dissent and fragmentation. What keeps all this from becoming Animal Farm (oops, I almost said VOTF) revisited?

There is nothing at all surprising about this "news."  The LCWR was tried, judged and convicted before the "visitation" was announced. The "visitation" was a charade, meant to make it look like the men in Rome hadn't already concluded that these women were a bit too uppity and independent to suit them. So they wasted a lot of time and money to create the appearance of an objectivity that never existed.

Perhaps this is, as Ted notes, simply part of the birthing pains of a new model of church - one that truly reflects Vatican II and is focused on the people instead of on the hierarchy, with its love of power, prestige and possessions - a love that is rooted in the sin of pride.

The sisters have models - the Immaculate Heart sisters who broke away from the institutional church and reincorporated independently  in the 1970s, when they rightly refused to "submit" to the patriarchal "authority" of Cardinal McIntyre.  The Beguines provide another model, one that the sisters could adapt and update for the 21st century and beyond. One that goes beyond the oblate or third orders.

mariannedorman.homestead.com/Beguines.ht...

Then a strange phenomenon happened in parts of Europe, ...Some women in the late 12th C. through to the early part of the 14thC. defied the pattern that all women called to a life of prayer and holiness and charity had to be cloistered. These women very much committed to the message of the Gospel became known as beguines and their abodes became known as beguinages. It would seem that these women responded spontaneously to the work of the Holy Spirit to live a simple communal life of prayer, to care for the poor, the sick, lepers and orphaned, to teach, make lace, garden and anything else which enables them to be economically free in their respective communities. They also read and taught the Scriptures in the vernacular. The beguines had a very special devotion to the Eucharist and to the Passion of Christ....

Women who became known as beguines were in some way like the women in the Apostolic Church who believed that in Christ, men and women were equal. They too could be an effective witness to the Gospel by the way they lived whilst adhering to the teaching of the Church without having to live the life of an cloistered nun. These women came from all classes, and lived either singularly or in small groups. At first, they were warmly received by pope, royalty and common folk alike, and admired for their piety and service. But their situation was ever a precarious one. It would seem that the Church could not cope with these "independent women" and the only way it could cope was to brand such women as "heretics", and to enforce all women who had a "religious" vocation into convents.