Pope Francis has told leaders of women’s religious orders that their vocation — to be spiritual “mothers not spinsters” — can be fulfilled only in harmony with the faith and teachings of the Church.
“Your vocation is a fundamental charism for the Church’s journey and it isn’t possible that a consecrated woman or man might ‘feel’ themselves not to be with the Church,” he told around 800 members of the International Union of Superiors General.
“It is an absurd dichotomy to think of living with Jesus but without the Church, of following Jesus outside of the Church, of loving Jesus without loving the Church,” he said.
Pope Francis did not specifically refer to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States, which was last year required to undergo reform. But one of the Vatican’s concerns about the LCWR was a convention speaker who said that some women’s religious orders were “moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus”.
The Pope rejected the idea that religious obedience does not necessarily require deference to the hierarchy. He said: “Obedience is listening to God’s will, in the interior motion of the Holy Spirit authenticated by the Church, accepting that obedience also passes through human mediations.”
He also spoke about the vows of poverty and chastity, saying: “Theoretical poverty doesn’t do anything. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ in the humble, the poor, the sick, and in children.”
On chastity, the Pope urged women religious to practise “a ‘fertile’ chastity, which generates spiritual children in the Church. The consecrated are mothers: they must be mothers and not ‘spinsters’!”
He added: “What would the Church be without you? It would be missing maternity, affection, tenderness and a mother’s intuition.”
Pope Francis also cautioned the religious superiors against ecclesiastical careerism.
He said: “The men and women of the Church who are careerists and social climbers, who ‘use’ people, the Church, their brothers and sisters — whom they should be serving — as a springboard for their own personal interests and ambitions … are doing great harm to the Church.”
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Image: National Catholic Reporter