The Vatican is up to its old tricks, investigating US women religious. Its “divide and conquer” technique pits the nuns who conform to male clerical expectations against those who assert their own moral and spiritual agency. But at the heart of the matter is the power to be “publicly” Catholic, something the men have long reserved for themselves. Now that Catholic women, including nuns, are saying “this is what Catholic looks like,” there is trouble in Vatican City and a new day for Catholicism.
Expected outcomes are predictable, and not pretty, as this latest round of intra-Catholic struggle unfolds. I think Roman Catholic Church officials have gone one step too far this time in their efforts to rein in the very women who make the Church look good in the wake of priest pedophilia crimes and episcopal cover-ups. They could save a lot of time and money by simply sitting down with some of these women and listening—yes, listening—to their experiences. I daresay they would come away edified by choices the women have made and inspired to live their own religious commitments with an ounce more integrity.
Three Nuns, or Three Million; It’s Not the Point
Two separate but interrelated Vatican investigations are in process this year. The first is an Apostolic Visitation to assess the “quality of religious life” of the roughly 59,000 women in canonical communities in the United States. Contemplative groups are not part of the exercise. The original intent was to figure out why the vast majority of the communities have far fewer members than they had in their heyday in the 1960s. (The median age for members is now over 70; only several hundred sisters are in their 30s.)
The concern for numbers is really, as subsequent materials from the investigators have shown, an entrée to looking at the lives, beliefs, and practices of women who strive to live coherently, melding their religious convictions with the needs of the world. Whether there are three nuns or three million is not the issue. What has changed (and the Vatican wishes hadn’t) is the fact that Catholic women, including nuns, think and act on their own without relying on male authorities to tell them how.
A second investigation is underway to look specifically at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. LCWR is an association of the heads of the various communities that “assists its members to collaboratively carry out their service of leadership to further the mission of the Gospel in today’s world.” The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith initiated this study. That body is where the current Pope, then Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, engineered much of the decades-long rightward movement of the Catholic Church. Now an American, William Cardinal Levada, is at the helm. He appointed Bishop Leonard P. Blair of Toledo, Ohio, to initiate a “doctrinal assessment” of the group. Of course I would suggest that the women consider a similar assessment of the curia—but that awaits a better day.
Areas of concern are the group’s views on homosexuality, the ordination of women, and the Vatican declaration Dominus Iesus, which asserts that Jesus is the unique and only road to salvation. The Cardinal’s assumption is that American nuns are accepting of same-sex love, supportive of feminist ministry (including ordination of women), and embracing of persons of many and no faiths. I only hope he is as right about their views as he is wrong about how to evaluate them.
An investigation of this sort is an unusual move against a group that is extremely diverse in its makeup. The mind boggles at just how one would assess such matters, given that American religious communities whose leadership populates LCWR are very diverse in their views. With war, economic inequality, ecological concerns, immigration, the well-being of women and dependent children, anti-racism work, and health care (to name just a few concerns occupying the vast majority of active nuns), this narrow agenda of Vatican concern is morally embarrassing.
It appears that the intention of the investigation is to maintain control over women and to preserve the Vatican’s Catholic view of the world via the hot-button issues that are contested in the Church at large. Though on Dominus Iesus, I wonder whether most members of LCWR have given it little more than passing notice. How these men flatter themselves to think that most of us read what they write, especially when it flies in the face of our experience and theological judgment. Maybe that’s the problem: they are losing ground and face by the day. Few people pay them much attention any more. Perhaps in intimate Vatican circles, officials do not even realize how limited their influence has become. Other Catholics speak, as in the case of the nuns, often making more sense with their lives than the documents do. In any case, the Vatican is under pressure from the Catholic religious right to enforce their version of orthodoxy and they appear intent to do so.
I am not a nun, never have been, and have no privileged information. But, as they say, “some of my best friends” are members of communities. I respect the choices they have made to cast their lots with one another. I also appreciate the dilemma many face as they seek to maintain fidelity to their God, their sisters, their church, their work, and themselves. As in any relationship personal or communal, life changes over time. The trick to a long-term one seems to be that all parties agree to keep growing together, a dynamic the Vatican shows few signs of embracing. That said, it is a mistake to analyze the nuns’ problems in a vacuum. They are part of the shifting power structure that has, for millennia, allowed a few clerical men to define and control the message and organization of Catholicism. Those days are over. Women and lay men consider ourselves just as Catholic as the Pope.
I have watched the kyriarchal Catholic Church long enough to know that process and product are deeply interwoven. In this case, the process of investigating women religious, many of them of retirement age and beyond, is one more effort to solidify the fractured clerical base; a last-ditch effort to reassert the monarchy’s will in the face of greatly diminished credibility. Chances of its success in the long run are slim even if there are some seeming “victories” for the right wing. What pains me this time is to see women pitted against one another, some doing the dirty work of the men who make decisions for them. I don’t understand why such women don’t understand that the same men who will promote them over their progressive sisters can just as easily promote others over them. It is the power dynamic, not just the people, that is at issue here.
Postmodern Catholicism is a different animal than its pre-Vatican II cousin. Catholics (women and men, lay and clerical, secular and religious) think for themselves, forming new syntheses of faith and solidarity. Nuns, perhaps more than many other Catholics, took the mandates of Vatican II seriously to rethink and reground their communities in the charisms of their founders, and to develop ways of living out those values in contemporary society. Their many ways of doing so have given rise to a variety of communities, ranging from very traditional to interreligious groups that serve as models for how the rest of us can live. This variety is emblematic of the whole Church, which has changed from being “Catholic” in the strictly identifiable Roman-focused way, to something closer to the original Greek sense of “catholic,” meaning universal, broad, and inclusive. It is this tension that is at play in the investigations.
The Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (at the behest of Franc Cardinal Rode in December 2008) initiated the probe into the more than 350 US congregations of women. Mother Mary Clare Millea, leader of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, carries the awkward title of “Apostolic Visitator.” She was deputized by Rome to lead the four-step process that culminates in her confidential (the nuns will not see it) report to headquarters.
The initial step of meeting with leaders of the various communities has been followed by the recent publication of an Instrumentum Laboris that details the kinds of issues to be probed in the second phase; a questionnaire that leaders will be asked to answer for their groups. Then some groups (the ones whose answers may diverge from the Vatican’s norms, we may presume) will get a personal visit from a Vatican-approved investigator who has signed a loyalty oath to assure orthodoxy. The results of the whole study will be reported by Mother Millea to the Cardinal. After that, it is anyone’s guess. Oh, and the communities being investigated are asked to provide hospitality for the visitors they have not invited, and if possible, pay for their travel. Yes, something is radically wrong with this picture.
At first blush, one might be duped into thinking that the Vatican really wants the progressive religious communities to thrive and grow so that their work with migrants and other poor people, their ministries in hospitals and education, their work in parishes and base communities, their courageous efforts to support women who need reproductive health care, their work on farms and in retreat centers might flourish. Guess again.
The questions on the table include, for example, whether daily mass is a priority for the members and whether they “participate in the Eucharistic Liturgy according to approved liturgical norms.” Read: no feminist liturgies allowed.
The queries include how groups deal with “sisters who dissent publicly or privately from the authoritative teaching of the Church.” That classic “when did you stop beating your wife” question is really a warning to keep a short leash on those who might think for themselves. There are questions about the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience: what they mean and how they are lived out. There are questions about finances and care of the elderly, but there is no inquiry into how the sisters love one another and how that love propels their ministry. There is no concern for how a community supports a nun who does civil disobedience and goes to jail to help stop war or nuclear weapons. A number of the questions are clearly designed to elicit answers the Vatican knows full well it won’t like.
The data will provide the pretext for concluding that the decline in numbers in progressive groups is a result of their lack of obedience and conformity to the men’s rules. Solution: tighten up the ranks. Enter the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, the alternative to LCWR; a group of conservative nuns who are dedicated “to foster the progress and welfare of religious life in the United States.”
This group now comprises the Vatican’s favored daughters, the good girls in veils whose model of religious life conforms to the dictates of Rome. For the record: the International Union of Superiors General, the highest-ranking such organization, threw its weight behind the American communities, calling their renewal work “a great gift, not only to the pluralistic society in which they live, but also to the universal Church.” Perhaps they envision more such investigations popping up around the globe.
LCWR has its roots in the Vatican-requested Conference of Major Superiors of Women (CMSW) in 1956 (beware the similar names). The women gradually developed their own democratic ways of operating; their three-stage presidency and their regional approach stood in sharp contrast to the increasingly more verticalist Vatican. Many of the women had served in Latin America, as per a 1960s Vatican request that each US community send 10% of their people South.
That experience, both direct and via other community members, served as one form of motivation (like anti-racism work, the women’s movements, and other social changes) for women religious to put less emphasis on conformity to rules and strict obedience and more on communal efforts to love well and do justice as adult moral agents responsible for their own well-being. By 1971, the CMSW voted itself a name change to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious with an ambitious agenda to provide education, networking, and other resources to facilitate and amplify the life and work of the communities.
There were women religious who feared that the shifts in name and focus would lead them away from what they considered the “essentials” of religious life. They formed the Consortium Perfectae Caritatis (CPC) to support their views. These include the centrality of the spousal bond (nuns as “Brides of Christ”), the three vows understood as narrowly as possible, and strict conformity to top-down community governance. Their views are now advanced by the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (which it seems the Vatican has in the wings to eclipse LCWR when the doctrinal probe is completed).
CMSWR recently published a book of essays, The Foundations of Religious Life: Revisiting the Vision. Complete with Nihil Obstat and Imprimatur, the five essays read like a blueprint for a 19th-century way of living. The premise is that a religious community, just as each member of it, is part of a “hierarchically-structured reality” in which obedience to higher authority is the norm.
Contra the theologians expressing more egalitarian views of religious life (notably Sandra Schneiders, IHM, Margaret Farley, RSM, and other highly respected scholars), the essay authors reject democratic governance and attention to inclusive process as inappropriate for religious communities. The devil is in the footnotes, where the conservative authors decry the progressive scholars’ “feminist overload and polarization,” and “artificial understanding of vows.” The point that they miss is that the more progressive nuns are not demanding everyone does it their way. The conservatives, on the other hand, take the Roman “my way or the highway” approach.
Coincidentally, or perhaps not-so, the book was launched at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington DC, on the very day (May 16, 2009) that LCWR opened its impressive exhibit of the history of US women’s religious communities at a museum in Cincinnati. “Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America” is a carefully researched, well funded, expertly mounted exhibit of the proud and stunning history of American nuns. The Vatican could save itself a lot of trouble by simply sending its staff to the Cincinnati History Museum where the exhibit is currently on display or to the Women’s Museum in Dallas, Texas, the Smithsonian in Washington DC, or the Mississippi River Museum in Dubuque, Iowa, where it will travel.
On exhibit, they would see the artifacts and read the stories of amazing women who are every bit as much the public face of American Catholicism as any bishop. They would learn about everything from the nurses who staffed a Navy medical ship in the Civil War to the sisters who raised seven million dollars and supported their colleagues working in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf region. They would read about the women who established this country’s largest private school system and built some of its largest health care corporations. They would have the chance to be inspired by the nine sisters who have been killed in the last two decades in their efforts to bring about peace and justice abroad; most recently Sister of Notre Dame Dorothy Stang who took a stand in the Amazon that cost her her life. Without putting too fine a point on it, the research is all done and on the record to show the momentous achievements of American women religious. Any other investigation is superfluous.
That does not deter the Vatican from its tactic to divide and conquer women in what I predict is a futile effort to consolidate its waning power. The apostolic visitation will unfold as communities put in writing who they are and what they do. I anticipate that most will reject any sense of intimidation that might lead to self-censorship. The chips will fall where they may. Likewise, I expect that the investigation of LCWR will turn up just what their Summer 2009 meeting in New Orleans shows: namely, that they are about the work of love and justice with a preferential option for those who are in need. That will clearly not placate the Vatican on same-sex love, women’s priestly ministry, or whether Buddhism is a road to salvation. But it will demonstrate once again that Catholic women are not going away.
There is talk of dire consequences if the Vatican is displeased. Much of it is like the hype around health care; worst-case scenarios that are the creation of those who oppose change. My own guess is that the Vatican is not prepared to intervene much, if at all, in the everyday lives of the nuns. I believe those officials are banking that the fear instilled by its veiled threats (all puns intended) will be sufficient to bring the progressive nuns into conformity.
I submit that the progressive women have only to look at their own histories and realize that their ancestors in the orders paved the way for new, creative, communal ways of living their commitments as postmodern Catholics. Pioneer American nuns of three centuries ago made their way from Europe through dangerous seas; they headed West in covered wagons to found institutions that would serve the needs of poor and marginalized people. Surely their heirs, this generation of nuns, has the wherewithal to care for their elderly, act as responsible stewards of their resources, carry out their ministries, and explain firmly but collegially to the Roman men that they are an integral part of what American Catholicism looks like. That will be their legacy, enhanced by finding common cause with all of their sisters.
Note: Image is from “Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America,” a traveling American history exhibit opening May 16 at the Cincinnati Museum Center, documenting the sisters’ contributions to shaping America’s health care, educational and social justice institutions. Sr. Hilary Ross (pictured) was an outstanding scientist and award-winning medical photographer who authored over 40 scientific papers on the biochemistry of leprosy. (Photo courtesy Daughters of Charity.)
Tags: catholic nuns, catholicism, history, social justice, vatican
Hei, if you are not a Nun , and even not to be considering be a Nun, why do you talk so much against the Vatican's auothority. Please mind your own buiseness. you have nothing to do with this. American Nun's are too far from their roots. they have to come back in its roots. Nun's are not called to live alone and do what they want. Nuns make three Vowes to live their life according to God's will and Charism of the founder or Foundress. they have to be recognized as a religious among the laity, so that they have to have their religious Habit. there are more things to say , but i don't know you want it know everything. you and me and every one have to obey the Pope. he is a leader. Jesus Himself didn't entrust any power to women,rather He entrust His Apostles to lead the Church. The Bible says women should be subordinate to Men. I hope you understand me. Be a good Catholic, anyway way the Pope knows what he is doing better than you . be in peace.
I'm fairly certain from the spelling, grammer and content of this comment that the author is not a theologian.
So.........
Should I presume that you are a Nun, or Sister? If not, should you be minding your own "buiseness" as you advise others to do? I think the very dynamic and dedicated women who live in Religious Communities are quite capable of knowing how to live their lives in faithfulness to God. Maybe we should just let them get on with their ministries instead of wasting their time with frivilous "examinations".
Hei man? Are you a person with little common sense? who gave the authority of life and death of any catholic to pope? Did pope create anyone? could pope give any vocation to any person? does the catholic church speak of dogma and faith today, about limbo and purgatory too? Did not Jesus send Samaritan woman to speak about Jesus to people? was not she the first disciple? Why did Jesus appear to Mary Magdaline after he resurrected instead of his "loving disciples"? Who are you to judge the nuns who commit themselves to serve the humanity whether they are far or near to their roots? Its a call directly and personally to every person to have a vocation to serve the humanity. I am not a nun, nor a priest but a human being who believe in God's gift to every person 'human dignity' and `human respect' which are inalienable and inseparable from any human life. If pope can control peoples' life, why can't the people speak freely and decide for their life freely by the gift they got from God at their birth free of cost? Is pope beyond God or more powerful than God?
Who wrote the bible? Not God? For whose benefit? Of course for the main interest behind was to control and keep down the women? Every religion did the same because they are afraid of women who have natural power given by God which is much more than a man? Are you also of the same category like those men who not even respect his mother when he grows up? Otherwise you would never ask the nuns to obey the pope blindly and silently. You would believe and respect God's call.
Well written, Mary. Last week, I blogged about the same issue. I'm glad to see that a Catholic theologian is not afraid to write what needs to be written rather than parrot Catholic rote coming from the Vatican. As for "anonymous," his/her head-in-the-sand, never-question-the-Vatican thinking will probably never be able to be changed but suffice it to say that blind allegiance to the Pope is just plain ridiculous. The current Pope and previous Popes have shown time after time that an overreaching goal is to maintain control of the "flock" through its patriarchal ways. And, obviously, the fact that the Bible says women should be subordinate to men is contrary to what any open minded person whould be able to see.
And finally, my understanding is that the investigations are of the "sisters" rather than the cloistered nuns.
...you don't have a single clue do you? Those who are supporting abnormal sex, carting girls to abortion clinics, and worshiping some sort of weird she-god, are the undermining of the Church that Christ left us through the Apostles. Yeah - I have friends in community as well - and they are HOLY women, who love and support our Church, just as it is, just as it was left to us. Thank God (the real one by the way) for these good and holy women, who are beautiful examples of Christian womanhood - not some strange sexually ambiguous morphs.
These interviews are a wonderful and welcome event!! If a community is living according to the Magisterium of the Church, then they have nothing to fear. It is those who worship in the "church of self" who should be shaking in their boots. I can only hope there is some way the Vatican can distance itself from these heretical and harmful communities.
That's really dishearening. I honestly wonder whether this level of hostility (expressed as homophobic rage) shouldn't be classified on the spectrum of mental illness, since there is so much pain and woundedness here.
As one who was so thoroughly and wonderfully influenced by the Sisters of yesteryear, I agree whole heartily with this person's comments. The scriptures say: "By their fruits you shall know them." Fidelity to the magisterium and to the Church's understanding of religious life is what is key to a religious community thriving or dying. I was taught by the SSJs whose congregation numbered over 3000 members. There are now fewer than 900 and the median age is 75! I remember the nuns in the 1970s saying that they got rid of their habits in order to attract the young women to their congregations. How ironic that the only congregations which are experiencing growth are the traditional orders which have kept the common life, prayer and religious habit!
I have a convent full of elderly sisters who rarely pray together (and when they do it is some feminist bastardization of the psalms), work together or eat together. The convent has turned into a hotel of sorts!
The Apostolic Visitation is a blessing. Those communities which accept it with an open heart will find the resources they need to renew themselves. The others will simply continue on the path to death and destruction. My heart breaks at the sight of it all!
Father Pastor, you are ready to be put out to Pasture....along with you Bully Boys in Rome. You boys just cannot handle not having POWER over women.
Perhaps it is a matter of Rome focusing on the(earthly) business of the growing Church in the Southern Hemisphere. Rome knows the postive statistical impact the US Sisters "work force" allowed immediately following WWII and before some of the more recent post-Vatican II decisions of more diverse career choices per Order, etc. From a business perspective, run this outsourcing model using the "low cost" Sisters work force option of the pre-Vatican II business model regarding local parishes, school & hospitals, etc - and (male) Rome has potential to win big again!
Does a "non-male" Rome even exist???!!!!!!!!
Well, MBA you may understand basic business principles but do you honestly believe that the Holy Roman Empire of the Crusades will not disguise this latest business endeavor? Perhaps a brush up in Church history is warranted?
"I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men with a favourable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption, it is the other way, against the holders of power, increasing as the power increases. Historic responsibility has to make up for the want of legal responsibility. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than the fact that the office sanctifies the holder of it. "
Dalberg-Acton, John Emerich Edward (1949), Essays on Freedom and Power, Boston:The Becon Press, p. 364
John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton was a Catholic!
Rome is certainly not a democracy and this campaign (along with numerous predecessors) is indeed about power and money!
The comments entitled "Nuns" and "So very sad..." are comments by kinds of conservatives that make the rest of us look bad. I try to be a reponsible, truth seeking, MATURE conservative but the town-hall-meeting-shouting, patronizing, condescending, and immature tones used by my fellow conservatives make my life more difficult! I also do not agree with the article wholeheartedly but let's have a decent discussion... PLEASE!!!!
I'm sorry, but I refuse to sit idly by and drink coffee and "fellowship" over what is right and what is wrong when there are women out there who are systematically setting out to redesign the Church in some liberal feminist image. If that's immature to you, then I'm proud to be THAT. Show me one single sentence in my first comment that is not true, and I will show you volumes to show you that it is. These "communities" need to go away. If they don't want to live like Catholics, then they should not be Catholics. If they don't want to live according to the Magisterium, then they can find another place to go. Yes - I want them ALL to go to heaven. But what some of them are teaching is not going to get anyone there, much less themselves.
If any good and faithful Catholic is not willing to go out and shout this from the rooftops to stop the destruction of the Church by these liberal feminists, then shame on them. As I said, they clearly do not have a clue, of what it means to be truly and authentically Catholic.
When there were supporters for slavery in the US, they claimed, "If you don't want to live like Americans, then you should not live in America. If they don't want to live according to a slave supporting government, they can find another place to go." If one disagreed with slavery, he or she was still an American. In fact, now they are considered MORE American. I think Mary E. Hunt is MORE Catholic.
...and I think that person that you are responding to is referring to phrases like "you don't have a single clue do you?" as "immature."
Mary Hunt MORE Catholic??!!! That nearly made me gag. She supports the women-church, or whatever it's called. That is NOT Catholic. Never has been, never will be.
And as for "don't have a clue" - well, she doesn't have a clue about what it means to be truly and authentically Catholic. If she did she would not be pushing this twisted feminist agenda.
Seriously, get therapy for your self-hating misogyny. It's not good for you.
Again, back then, they said, "Americans always had slavey. America was never slave-free and it never will be." But look at the country now.
I guess since you did not comment on it, I assume that you don't see a way out of my earlier comment on slavery. I think that is ok. A good opportunity to learn, right? Thanks, ;)
The reason I did not comment is because it is a ridiculous notion to compare the Truth of the Catholic Church with a social issue like slavery. The Truth is eternal - it can not and will not ever change. The liberal left can bang the drum all they want about having women-priests, gay priests, gay "marriage", you name it - it is NOT going to happen. These people are NOT Catholic, and why they continue to wish to associate themselves with a Faith that has absolutely nothing in common with what THEY think is right is beyond me. The Church will not bend to this idiocy - she is the Bride of Christ, and will not soil herself with such nonsense.
The problem is NOT with the Church - it is with those who wish to live a life according to "the church of me" - they need to be the one to change, not the other way around.
The problem is NOT with the Church - it is with those who wish to live a life according to "the church of me" - they need to be the one to change, not the other way around.
This commenter is exactly right; These "conservative" Catholics do not want anything that might give women an equal voice in their religious order, and the leadership has gone out of it's way to prove how hostile it is to women's issues, much less anything resembling advancement, so why would anyone want to be a part of that authoritarian men's club?
Because that authoritarian men's club is NOT the true Church. I frankly think that it is the "conservative" Catholics who are the ones actually guilty of demanding a "church of me." Their resistance to change is a selfish and unpastoral refusal to recognize the needs of the faithful and a frankly heretical rejection of the sensus fidei. It is the calling of thinking Catholics to take on the often painful task of fraternal (and sororal) correction within the Church in order to save it. I think of those monastic saints who suffered to reform corrupted and decadent religious orders and the Church as a whole as models for progressive Catholics, and especially for faithful religious facing persecution both from a backwards curia and an anachronistically ultramontaine fringe of the laity. It's not going to be pleasant, but it is clearly God's will.
You may be proud to be a conservative, but I am equally proud to be a progressive Catholic and neither you nor anyone else will drive me out of my Church. Instead of casting bile at other Catholics, you might better spend your time following the Way of Jesus, who did, by the way, include women among his disciples, who did speak to women and outcasts, who did give His love to everyone.
Could you possibly provide me with the research that shows the liberal left supports gay nuns and gay priests? I am interested in seeing this as I did not know this situation is now taking place in the Catholic Church.
The Vatican and it's leaders have long since forfeited their authority when they allowed Roman Catholic Priests, Brothers, Deacons and (YES) even some Bishops to Rape and Sodomize Children, Young People and Vulnerable Adults; as though these innocent victims were some sort of, "Sacrifice" to the health and well being of a Perverted Catholic Clergy. The Leaders of the Catholic Church have proven themselves to be Graceless Traitors to the Church, to the Faithful and, most of all, To Our Crucified Lord. And this is the corrupt organization the Church demands OUR Women Religious to swear allegiance and swear loyalty.
All this hysteria about a visit!? A fellow Sisier is coming out to visit and a well orchestrated campaign of irrational fear is being whipped up. If a sister is living according to the vows she took as a nun she has nothing to fear .I have read the Oath the nuns are being asked to take and it is not markedly different to the Creed we all say at mass. It simply adds on a statement of loyalty to the magisterium of the Church.This poses no problem for any sister faithful to her vows and may help clarify for others that they need to take stock of their vocation.There are no locks on the door If any person lay or religious no longer believes the Church remains Christ's Church and no longer feel able to obey they can do what many have done before them throughout history-people like Henry the 8th, Martin Luther etcetera.They too were furious when the Church did not see things their way and began to fashion a Church according to their own desires.
Wow so much hatred.... why? I thought Christianity... Catholicism... was about love, no? This comment sounds pretty un-friendly, un-loving, and hateful...
What is so un-loving about desiring the best for someone? The best is not living in a state of mortal sin, the best is not bending the Faith to suit someone's own twisted opinion of morality, the best is not allowing someone to continue to drag the Church into the depths of schism. Loving is wanting all souls to go to heaven. THAT is why it is necessary for the spirituality and morality of these women to be properly ordered. That is all the Vatican is asking - live according to the Magisterium!!! Is that REALLY so difficult to do? This is not an exercise in interpretation - this is ensuring that those who are representing themselves as Catholics, actually ARE living and serving as Catholics!! Not some whacked out personal interpretation of what THEY think Catholic should be. That's not how it works.
When are folks going to realize that Truth is not a majority decision.
You sound like Fred Phelps.
Given how the Vatican has used its visits to weed out celibate gay priests, I think distrust of this visit is well founded.
I only have a remark about one comment that refers to the sisters versus the pedophile priests. Mary, you may not know this but there are literally hundreds of men and women who were sexually abused by SISTERS, not priests. I am one, and have personally met a couple hundred myself. Each of us has a unique story. I was a young sister sexually abused almost nightly for a period of two years by my superior. I know a man who was sexually abused by his teacher - a sister - from grades 4 through 6. I know several women who were sexually abused by sisters when they were high school students. One sister said to a 12-year-old boy, "Let's run away and make a life together," after she had sex with him. So, there is an ugly underbelly in the lives of vowed religious women, too. I only wish the Vatican would investigate that!
This should come as no surprise.Both sexes are equally vulnerable to temptations to impurity which is the basis of sexual abuse.Every person who gives way to such temptation is serving Satan not Christ.To every person who has ever been the victim of such abuse and feels hurt angry and/or embittered because their actions were never exposed and/ot they appear to have escaped earthly justice keep in mind that eventually each and every one of us will have to face Divine Justice and remember what Jesus said
"Woe to those who scandalise my little ones.."
If your abuser never faces the truly ugly nature of their sin and the profound damage they have done and they do not seek forgiveness and do pennance they will face a just God and then they will be meeted out the justice and punishment they escaped on earth and hell is a destination I would not want to reach.
Sex abuse is not about "temptations to impurity." Like the crime of rape, it is about the abuse of power.
Sexual temptation yielded to results in masturbation, or consensual extramarital sex. Guilt about sexuality repressed and denied produces a dissociative state and a disordered assessment of boundaries and behavior. In other words, when sexuality itself is already evil and inappropriate, it blends in with the true evil of sexual abuse.
The important factor that needs to be taught, believed and preached in order to prevent abuse is that sexuality is not the sin. Sin comes from the inappropriate use of sexuality. Voluntary celibacy is itself an expression of healthy sexuality. Back in seminary, we used to distinguish healthily emotionally integrated celibacy from those who were "celibate from the neck down." I early on learned how to recognize which men were potential abusers, and it coincided with the men who were most sexually repressed and viewed sexuality, the body and sex as inherently shameful, dirty and sinful.
Sexuality, the body and sex are gifts from God. The vocation to forgo sexual activity is not a denial of the body of or sexuality.
To envision sexual abuse in terms of individually sinful sexual expression is to minimize the trauma of the victims that stems from the betrayal of authority as well as to overlook the broader institutional role that our hierarchy and theology has in perpetuating and preventing such abuse.
Well, "BlownOut" Look at what "They" did to Mother Angelica, when she spoke critically of Cardinal Mahony on air. She had to go back on the air and apologize. Imagine a Living Saint like Mother Angelica, having to apologize to someone like Roger Mahony?
Mother Angelica is the perfect role model for any nun. She spoke out eloquently and fiercely while remaining loyally obedient to the Magisterium.
For those who are not aware of it she needs prayers because ill health has confined her to bed.
She kinda reminded me of the "mean nun" archetype when I saw her on TV but I can't claim to know much about her, or Cardinal Mahony. However, I imagine I'd probably like her, given the fact that you called Mother Angelica a "living saint." ;-)
I have read a comment, where the commentator made a decison about where that sister would go after this life. Since when does man/woman have the ability to determine what God alone can?
Our sisters have gone a bit far. I have experienced this; however, I doubt whether I can know where they will go when they die.
Thank you once again Mary for your thoughts, scholarship and willingness to bring more to the table. I appreciate the opportunity to consider various viewpoints using the brain God created in me, my own theological formation, and years of ministerial experience. Many of these good, holy women taught me that thoughtful, respectful, truthful and meaningful dialogue was an avenue to spiritual and personal growth. I will forever be grateful for that and their faithful witness to the Gospel message which inspires me day by day. It is so disheartening to see a preference arising for loyalty oaths and mindless obedience over the fruit of their good works. I do wonder what Jesus would think...
Mary, thank you for the excellent article about the "Witch Hunt" by the RAT POPE, and his non-thinking, conservative nuns who act like Stepford Wives. I am was a nun from 1967 until 1983, until I finally found the courage to be WHO I am, a woman who loves women. I lived the vow of celibacy with the harm of Repression, that lead to Depression. I am now a Therapist, I have always given much to those less fortunate than myself, providing sliding scale therapy, then while working for Child Protective Services, I would buy clothing for the children in Foster Care, because the Foster Parents did not use the money given to them to buy the children clothing and shoes each school year. Supervisors would not allow me to hold those foster families accountable for the money they would get each month, because, "we need the foster homes". Many of my friends who remained nuns who are now in their 60's, 70's and 80's have often visited me and my partner over the years and stayed in our home and rejoiced I had a loving relationship. I have a loving community of 100 + Lesbians where I live, and I have many lesbian friends across the USA and Canada as well. Yes, my friends who have remained nuns, march against war, accept homosexuality, and live lives of Integrity, living simplicity, and caring for the poor, the sick and the dying and the mentally ill, and hold feminist liturgy that is very beautiful and meaningful and the only I will attend. They are not hypocrites like the male clergy who are emotionally castrated by Rome and then act out by being pedophiles. Or the Stepford Wives of Rome.
May God have mercy on your soul. The "rat pope"? You will have much to answer for on your last day. I hope you are ready for it.
Read papal history. There is such a thing as a bad pope.
Another one who doesn't get it.
First - there is nothing wrong with the pope, he is a good and holy man, trying to protect and preserve the Faith in the face of liberal feminist insanity.
Second - that person's issues run far deeper than just being disrespectful to our Holy Father.
Just because I don't agree with you doesn't mean I don't get it.
First - Assertion is not argument.
Second - You seem like the last person to be talking about deeper issues.
I suspect I am more ready to meet my God and Jesus than you can even begin to comprehend. I do not live our of FEAR, I live out of LOVE.
I am not a Roman Catholic though I grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood with a lapsed RC father, but I know that nuns were the ones who brought Catholicism to the East of the US and through their hard, and often unappreciated work (by many of the clergy) establishing parochial schools throughout the country, they gave birth to generations of devout and sincere Catholics. During Pope John XXIII's reign, my town saw a wonderful expansion of ecumenical understanding and cooperation. Living next to a convent I saw many nuns leave to become lay Catholics, but they continued doing the work they felt the church should be doing. These RC women, religious or laic, are strong, faithful Christians and the Pope could learn much from them if he would just stop and listen.
When Vatican II came to my parish, my parents were confused because, ultimately, "everything" changed - didn't have to bother with fish on Fridays, fasting, abstinence, hats, gloves...and the Mass was in English with guitar playing kids on the altar. "What's left?" they asked. "Those things were what made us Catholic." Several years later, we were still having discussions; my mother, however, had figured out that the Church wanted us to act with sincerity, as an adult, not because we were told to, or because it was "tradition."
In my postgraduate studies, I found that in early churches, Christian symbols were mixed with what we might call "pagan"; Jesus was the New Apollo or Orpheus; there were serpents and fish and symbols all becoming part of a new way of thinking about God and the people you were living on earth with. This catholicism is open, welcoming, loving.
It has very little to do with the above practitioners of "real Catholic" business, who somehow never seem to have any love in their words, only hatred, fear, and anger. You're not helping the church; you don't represent authentic catholocism. It's too bad you don't understand why. It's to be pitied. Whatever it is that strikes fear into your heart at the words "liberal" or "feminist" -- well, yes, you are to be pitied. But the rest of us can be just as rigid, and I hope that in the years to come, there can be a real conversation about the Catholic tradition - but you know, since "church" is supposed to comfort people and not change or make one think - I doubt it will happen inside church. But that's just me.
There is no question this is a hit against the very women that taught many of us to think and seek answers that were beyond the obvious pabulum provided by church teachings. The chances of a similar visitation of the priests from the Vatican are less than zero. Of the $2 billion paid out to the victims of abuse the male religious would extract 99.9% of the claims. Anyone that still follows the church and its teachings are probably very elderly or without cognitive thinking. The evil that has been exposed is only the tip of the iceberg. The behavior of the bishops and priests are beyond the pale. Ask Frank Keating how he was treated by the church after they asked him to look into the abuses. We have more gays in the church than lobbyists in Washington.
...he's the Dick Cheney of the Vatican. Meaning he's very bright, and very sinister. Cheney was Darth Vader, and Ratzinger is the emperor of the dark side. It would be so wonderful if The Roman Catholic church would actually abide by its own Vatican II Council decisions.
By the way, I'm a cradle Catholic, and more than once seriously wanted to become a priest.
Very well stated.
I don't know if you're aware, but the clergy in Portland and San Francisco (where Leveda served as Archbishop) have for years referred to him as "Darth Leveda." It makes your Ratzinger as Sith Lord analogy work rather nicely. And to preempt objections: Darth Leveda is among the more polite things I've heard said about his excellency within rectory walls.
Jesus is about love. Anything outside of that is not Jesus.
Y'all are being too nasty to each other.
The commenter above who says there will NEVER be woman priests sounds like the woman who told me in the 1960s that the Catholic Church would NEVER celebrate the mass in English. Whatever happened to Latin?
The fact is that most Catholic theologians see no theological objection to woman priests. A careful reading of the New Testament makes it plain that women were part of the leadership of the earliest church. Some, Junia for one, were called apostles.
Indeed, many priests and some bishops support the ordination of women. For the moment it's a minority view. But one day we'll wake up and find that Rome has changed its mind. That's the way change comes to pass in the Catholic Church. One day the word is "never." The next day what was forbidden is permitted.
My hunch is that the change is inevitable, and probably will come sooner than later, along with permitting married priests.
Latin is alive and well at my parish, and the desire for it is growing daily! It all depends on what sort of parish you belong to - it the priest is pushing the liberal feminist movement, then I doubt you are going to see much Latin there.
"Most Catholic theologians" are NOT the Magisterium of the Church! "Most Catholic theologians" can say and think whatever they like, it doesn't mean it's true.
The priest acts In Persona Christi - in the person of Christ - Christ was a man. I can't honestly see how anyone can't figure out that there can NOT be womenpriests. It's just not possible. It's like asking a pig to fly - it can't happen. Not just because I don't want to see it happen, but because a woman is not a man, and a man is not a woman - regardless of what some may think.
This is not a matter of opinion. This is not a matter of choice. This is not a matter of interpretation. A woman can not ever be a priest. I am a woman, and I don't have a problem in the world with this!
Rome can't change it's mind about the fact that Christ was a man.
Seriously. GET HELP NOW! The human psyche is not designed to function under this kind of self hatred. Your fixation on Latin and other externals, and on your naively universalized "Truth" is a fetish, plain and simple. There would be ample space for healing and grace in your life if you could be open to it. Mindless reaction is idolatrous.
"It's like asking a pig to fly - it can't happen. Not just because I don't want to see it happen, but because a woman is not a man, and a man is not a woman - regardless of what some may think."
Yes, that one infallible truth: the most important part of the clerical state derives from the genitals of the second person of the Trinity (you know: One God, Three Divine Persons with two Testicles).
We already have a Sunday on the calendar for the Sacred Heart and not one, but TWO Solemnities for the Incarnation in general in order to remind us of the sacred mystery of the Word made Flesh, but I think we need a feast day to remind us that some flesh is more like Jesus than other flesh is. We need to begin celebrating the Feast of the Sacred Cock and Balls in order to put those damnable feminists in their place (not to mention self-mutilating perverts). On the Octave of the Feast of the Sacred Cock and Balls, we can have the lesser Memorial of the Functional Vas Deferens in case anyone forgot that vasectomies are also mortal sins and to make the point that a little snip cuts a man off from his physical likeness to Jesus.
"Latin is alive and well at my parish, and the desire for it is growing daily! It all depends on what sort of parish you belong to - it the priest is pushing the liberal feminist movement, then I doubt you are going to see much Latin there."
Enthusiasm for a classical language is lovely, and Latin is wonderfully evocative. But has anyone mentioned to these people who fight over it that Latin was not the first language that the Bible's material was recorded in (or orally passed on by)? Aramaic and Greek for starters are fascinating - they should look into them.
Listening to the bitterness vented on this forum by people from various sides, it boggles the mind to think that anyone could possibly think that the Roman Catholic Church of today is the community that Jesus had in mind when he prayed to the Father that "they may be one."
Jesus you will recall was an Essene Jew, who did not approve of the Jews of his day who were hypocrites. Jesus came to preach LOVE and not POWER & CONTROL. He believed that in loving one another that was all that was needed. To live in community, celebrate Eucharist in LOVE. Rome founded the Catholic Church not Jesus. And Rome continues to RULE like the Roman Emperors of the past. It is about POWER and GREED, much like the USA's Republicans who belong to the C Street, THE FAMILY.
My childrens' father (my ex husband) is Catholic... Given the vitriol and hatred abounding in these comments from those considering themselves to be the "good Catholics", I am thrilled that I refused to allow my children to be baptised into that cult.
Yes, with a heavy heart, I said cult. A cult relies on leadership that refuses the members the right to think and reason for themselves. A cult sets firm "us against them" lines, causing such hatred and disgust toward "The Other" to be ingrained.
Last time I checked the Christ said, "Love One Another". He taught that we ought love each other, care for each other and forgive each other. These Nuns being investigated are doing just that: Loving humanity, just as their role-model the Christ did. They are sacrificing their lives to care for the people, the Church and their communities... just like your Christ did.
I'm not even a Christian, and I try to live like that: loving other people. However, I see that if I don't agree with someone and their interpretation of a shared theology I should be hateful and poisonous... Thank you, "good catholics" for pointing that out for me, the little witch down the lane.
"Are you a good Catholic or a bad Catholic?" "Why I'm not a Catholic at all." Fret not. The haters are very bad Catholics indeed (if at all) and little witches who live down the lane are always welcome in the rest of our homes.
They are the least of the Church's problems. I believe I watched one of them skillfully avoid character assasination at the hands of Raymond Arroyo Friday on his televised World Over Weekly Inquisition. Two things the Church resisted but finally adopted from the Protestant Reformation: Conscience and Modern Language, both of which Vatican II acknowledged were Catholic. The more reactionary members of the Church just can't absorb these things, their initial indoctrination was utterly effective, and they are immune to Modernism, just as much as Pius X ever was, and did they not form a Society in his name that Pope Benedict recently re-communicated?
After Vatican II, everyone realized that Rome had become many things, but one of them was not the Jerusalem of the first century. Today's Sisters would be welcome in old Jerusalem, Antioch, Corinth, as well as the Hippo of Augustine's time, one feels, where they would not be expected to think as Slaves, would not be expected to repudiate God's gift of reason, nor spend their lives on their knees praying forgiveness for sins never committed. Oath? Like in the Mafia? Is there really that much heat coming down from the FBI?
Thank you for the most thorough response yet, Mary
Thank you for the responses to my article. It is obvious that Catholic themes such as this generate a lot of emotion. I urge us to keep it to the tone we want for the future--civil and generous.
I abhor abuse of any sort--physical, sexual, spiritual. I work toward a day when perpetrators are stopped and survivors find justice.
Thank you, Mary E. Hunt
Mary, your euphemisms, adjectives, and verbal distortions more than betray a pathological hatred and incredible contempt for the Catholic Faith. It does not take much effort to see straight through the uncharitable, smug jabs hurled against your leaders. The resentment that oozes from your crude sneers is shocking, even for a non-Catholic such as myself. You leave everyone wondering: What is your real agenda? Why do you remain in an organization that you so openly loathe, belittle, and disdain? Where is your sense of shame? I would have moved on to a religious group or denomination that would not cause me to stew in the bile of my contempt for it. I would think that spewing so much venom and hate on the rest of humanity is not the Christian way. I pray you cease these irrational attacks. Please know that you are in my prayers.
Did you and I read the same article? The only spew I've seen in this is the venomous righties who've been attacking.
As a woman that lived and walked the path of Catholic hierarchy for almost 8 years with a religious community in the US, I applaud such bold comments. I hope that everyone that commented so negatively could stay open to the spirit. For the spirit of our creator cannot be boxed or kept down... it is forever in motion embracing all expressions of love, and hope in our world. Women religious deserve a heck of alot more respect from the male hierarchy in crisis. I agree, there is seriously something "radically wrong with this picture." Thanks Mary for your always "cut-to-the-chaste theological comments. My mind and heart are open to the spirit---invite others to join.
If a person who has spent over 55 years in Holy Orders in the Episcopal Church may comment, I would like to offer two points.
1. As opposed to patriarchy as I am, I have to say that the investigation, at its source, is motivated by the Roman Catholic principle that the Church's teachings and practice and worship are the same everywhere in the world. As long as patriarchy and the feudal system was basically the understanding of the world everywhere, that worked pretty well. Now, however, with parts of the world still teaching and living the idea that women are somehow less fully human than men, and that every woman is a thing that belongs to some man - father, brother, husband, or whatever, the idea that a woman might have the freedom to think for herself and even to seek to pursue a felt call to ordained ministry is simply unthinkable in those areas. The structure of the Roman Catholic Church simply cannot do one thing in the USA and something else in an area where women are not considered to be fully human beings. The Anglican Communion, which is supposed to be able to do somewhat different things in different areas of the world, is being severely tested today by people who cannot imagine being in the same Communion with people who ordain women and GLBT persons.
2. The solution to the problem, if it is ever truly looked at, is to be found in the Blessed Virgin Mary. Not, that is, in the view of Mary that the patriarchal early Church saw - a woman who was "properly submissive" to God, but in the reality of a woman making a decision about her future without first obtaining permission from the man or men who owned her. Maybe the Vatican Bible has a verse in it that mine doesn't have, in which Mary asks the angel to wait a few minutes, while she goes to ask permission from her father and Joseph, before she accepts her call to bear the Christ child. At the core of the Gospel we have a proclamation that God thinks women can make decisions for themselves.
I have a little campaign going on in the Episcopal Church to change the title of the feast day on March 25 from the Annunciation (an announcement to Mary concerning what God was about to do in her) to the Feast of the Call of Mary of Nazareth, putting her call on the same level as the calls of men - Isaiah, Jeremiah, Saul of Tarsus, etc.
Love and prayers for the American Roman Catholic nuns, both conservative and radical, and for the Roman Catholic Church throughout the world. Please pray for us in the Anglican Communion who are supposed to be able to do things differently in different places, but who are struggling with those who want a Roman Catholic uniformity, rather than a Christian unity.
Bill Fleener, Sr.
Priest of the Episcopal Diocese of Western Michigan
Are you just showing off because none of those in the Roman Catholic uniformity can put Sr. after their name?
(bows to a voice of practical reason)
I think it'll be the people who are willing to examine the factual obstacles and the on-the-ground cause & effect, and try to play fair in the process, that will do the most good here.
Greetings, Mary,
I have smiled, gasped, laughed out loud, hung my head in dismay, skimming through these comments to your terrific essay. You and Sandra Schneider ought to go on a roadshow together. I smile sadly to myself most especially over the childish need of so many to cling to an orthodoxy and obedience to authority which right now plagues so many religions and political belief systems -- not unlike what we see at some of these so-called "town hall meetings" on health care -- that always present fear of change, unsettling, world-rattling change.
Wherever we are in our post-modern journey at the moment, the chaos and confusion that will come inevitably with the collapse of western belief systems that are bringing this planet into a crisis unlike anything in the past millions of years, and with the 'new knowledge' that science and discovery have brought us about our true place in the universe, are going to cause many people to cling all the harder to certainty, authority, whatever helps them feel safe and secure in the midst of the unraveling.
God help us if we have to think for ourselves or carve our own paths to see ourselves through the crisis.
I ask myself who is attracted to a church moving steadily towards a pre-Vatican II institution, priests' backs to the congregation, everyone kneeling towards him as some arbiter of God, pious submission and exclusive possession of truth.
I know what Jesus had to say about such structures and about this kind of authority. We are moving towards a clearer chasm between Jesus and the church, between the gospels and the institution.
Like you, I have been inspired all my life by the good sisters who ventured out into the real world and brought the gospel there in the context of the unique expressions of their renewed charisms. The dying of a particular model of vowed religious life is not a tragedy but an opening to something new, a new way of being religious in this suffering world. Going back into the enclosed walls, whether habits, communion on the tongue, or submission to male authority expresses only fear of change, not the direction of change.
So, I pray each day for the courage of LCWR and women religious to stay true to who they are, faithful to the only thing that really matters in terms of Christian faith and identity -- the witness of gospel love in the world.
I constantly amazes me that women, those who are nothing but the extra rib of Adam, forever the second class gender, blamed for all our sin, and forever kept beneath the boot of the Male, continues to believe in the dogma that makes her a lesser being in the eyes of a childish god. You Catholic men have a fine racket going here, second only to the Taliban in it's evil sexual bigotry having more to do with political power than with any incarnation of deity.
I understand that being a free thinker makes me a pawn of satan in the eyes of you hopeless sheep, but at least I will die with the peace that comes from the logical conclusion that there is nothing so silly as hell waiting for me, simply because I dared to wonder just what kind of pot you people must be smoking in your closets.
Isn't it weird, the things people do when they feel threatened that someone else might be doing a better job than they are? Sounds to me like somebody's just jealous and insecure ("Sniff . . . but I thought God liked US best!").
Rome's Authority should re-read the Bible, and then ask itself which of them Jesus would sit down to dinner with, and which he would call a "whited sepulcher" today. Did Christ tell the Samaritan woman to be quiet, or the Marys and Joanna to go home, that He was busy waiting for the men to show up at the tomb? Did He tell Lazarus' sister Mary to get in the kitchen where she belonged? No. He dealt with them as people capable of inspiration and discernment, and not as if they were only able to gain such through a man's dictation either. Show me a Biblical figure who gave God 100% by being a robot parrot to the human authority of the day. There may be some, but Christ Himself won't be on that list.
I'm a Pagan hedge witch. I am not called to serve Christ, but I know a larger number of Mary's kind of Sisters whose calling and inspiration I do not doubt, than I do the higher ups of Rome. The ones I know show others that Jesus is worthy of respect, and I think Christ would happily sit at their tables.
Every person has got a very special and very personal call from God and has also got freedom to choose or reject the call. God wants our happiness. Nobody can be a hindrance between a person and her/his relation with God. some church hierarchy seems to be very materialistic and commercial in following their 'so-called vocation' as priest or cardinal or even pope. We should remember that the Holy Spirit speaks to every person individually and very personally. Each person has her/his own choice of life by following the gift of freedom that God has given to each and every person when we are still in the womb of our mother. We should all learn to respect God's gift to every one and believe that the Holy Spirit speaks to every one individually and not only to men - but to men and women. Both have same spirit of God in her/him.
There is a fear in the world among men (who is born in the womb of a woman who gives birth to him and which the man is incapable)about men for their most important role they play in bringing, nurturing, caring and loving the new life. Men lack this capacity and that is the fear of every man that women now a days are trying to answer the call to priesthood, equal right, treatment and role in the catholic church. Christ did that during his lifetime without fearing anyone and that is why he had to die on the cross. No a woman was involved in killing Jesus on the cross but men, even the one who was with Jesus. Peter also denied Jesus even after warning given by Jesus himself. How dare to speak against the nuns!
Thinking
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.