Print friendly
As the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States heads towards its annual assembly in August, its president says she is looking for a “third way” in dialogue with the Vatican.
Last April the Vatican announced a major reform of the 1500-strong association, under which it will be supervised by three bishops.
The national assembly (under the theme of “Mystery Unfolding: Leading in the Evolutionary Now”) will be in St Louis, Missouri, from August 7 to 11.
Interviewed by National Public Radio, the LCWR president, Sister Pat Farrell, said the options include fully complying with the Vatican mandate, not complying with the mandate and seeing if the Vatican will negotiate, or “to remove ourselves [and] form a separate organisation”.
“In my mind, [I want] to see if we can somehow, in a spirited, nonviolent strategising, look for maybe a third way that refuses to define the mandate and the issues in such black and white terms,” she said.
In the interview, Sister Farrell defended the LCWR against Vatican criticisms and said these centred on the group’s unwillingness to follow the policy directions of the hierarchy, rather than active resistance.
On the issue of ordaining women, the LCWR president said the group had not advocated that since the Vatican’s definitive statement that women cannot be ordained.
She defended LCWR members’ periodic letters to the Vatican on issues of sexuality, including gay/lesbian issues, saying, “We have been in good faith raising concerns about some of the Church’s teaching on sexuality. The teaching and interpretation of the faith can’t remain static and really needs to be reformulated, rethought in light of the world we live in and new questions, new realities as they arise.”
On abortion, she described the work of women religious as “very much pro-life”. But she added: “We would question, however, any policy that is more pro-fetus than actually pro-life. You know, if the rights of the unborn trump all the rights of all those who are already born, that is a distortion, too.”
Sources:
Image: National Pubic Radio
Related Posts:
News category: World.
