This comes after the 2014 final report on a Vatican apostolic visitation of US orders of religious women.

Last week, it was reported that the superior of the Sisters of Loretto had been summoned to Rome.

Now, another order being asked to provide the Vatican with further clarifications has been identified.

Sr Teri Hadro, president of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, said her community received a letter from the Vatican in early April asking for a written response to continued concern over the order's "public dissent of Church teaching".

Sr Hadro said the letter was friendly.

"It's just that I think they tend to interpret things as dissent that really aren't dissent," she said.

She noted that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has spent the last decade making abortion its primary cause.

Meanwhile, US women religious have focused on issues like food, water and shelter for marginalised populations.

"Because we focus on those issues and not on right to life from conception forward, our silence is being interpreted as dissent," Sr Hadro said.

"I don't think that's the understanding that women religious have. We probably have the same top 10 values and priorities as the bishops, but in different order.

"And it seems to me that there's some beauty in that, because our role in the Church is different from that of the bishops."

Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, the prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said the conversations with the orders involve "listening to what they say in a transparent way, without fear, without judging".

"What I have liked most is that the climate of this dialogue is very serene," Cardinal Braz de Aviz said.

"There is listening on both sides. There is a rapport."

Sources

• Global Sisters Report
• National Catholic Reporter
• Catholic Herald
• Image: Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Brazilian Cardinal João Braz de Aviz said this to a conference of religious formation directors in Rome last week, according to an article in the National Catholic Reporter.

"Do not distance yourself from the great lines of the Second Vatican Council," said the cardinal, who is prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.

"In fact, those that are distancing themselves from the council to make another path are killing themselves - sooner or later, they will die," he said.

"They will not have sense. They will be outside the Church.

"We need to build, using the Gospel and the council as a departure point."

Cardinal Braz de Aviz told the formation directors that they must know that the needs of people considering religious life in today's age "are not the same" as when the founders of their orders first received their charisms.

"These contexts have changed," the cardinal said.

"And the council reminds us that consecrated life must be Christian discipleship . . . must be discipleship of the founders that we remember, but also must be open to the culture of the present moment.

"When we look only to the past and are not perceiving this moment that we are passing through, we run the risk of not being understood," he continued.

"Also, [we risk] having [kept] inside ourselves a unique treasure like the consecrated life."

Developing his thoughts later on the role of discernment in community life, Braz de Aviz told the formation directors: "We must not be closed to new things."

"God is not static," the cardinal said.

"God is always new movement - of light, of heat, of demonstration. He speaks in every time to men and women with the true language of that time."

The Rome conference was one of several events the Vatican congregations will hold to mark the Year of Consecrated Life.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Image: CathNews USA

Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, prefect of the Congregation for Religious, said the lack of discussion over the action against the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) caused him "much pain".

"We have to change this way of doing things," the cardinal said during an open dialogue session with some 800 leaders of sisters' communities at the triennial assembly of the International Union of Superiors General in Rome.

"Cardinals can't be mistrustful of each other. This is not the way the Church should function."

Cardinal Braz de Aviz referred several times to tensions between sisters and bishops on Church authority, questions of obedience, and the future of religious life.

At one point he even called for a wide-ranging review of structures of Church power.

"We are in a moment of needing to review and revision some things," he said. "Obedience and authority must be renewed, re-visioned.

"Authority that commands, kills. Obedience that becomes a copy of what the other person says, infantilises."

Cardinal Braz de Aviz said his congregation first learned of the move against the LCWR in a meeting with the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith after the formal report on the matter had been completed.

At that meeting, he said, he told Cardinal William Levada, who has since retired as head of the doctrinal congregation, that the matter should have been discussed between the Vatican offices.

"We will obey what the Holy Father wants and what will be decided through you," Cardinal Braz de Aviz told the sisters he had said to Levada. "But we must say that this material which should be discussed together has not been discussed together."

"I obeyed," Cardinal Braz de Aviz told the sisters. "But I had so much pain within me."

He also said it was the first time he was discussing the lack of consultation publicly, saying he previously "didn't have the courage to speak."

Sources:

National Catholic Reporter

National Catholic Reporter

Image: National Catholic Reporter