Former executive director Sr Janet Mock emphasised the need for inter-congregational ministries.

The St Joseph Sister said there could be no "superstars" in religious life.

Sr Mock discussed the need for current leadership to ensure that younger sisters are prepared intellectually, spiritually and psychologically for the world.

Sr Mock said there are about 1200 women in the United States in initial formation.

"What if we addressed these needs across congregations together?" Sr Mock asked the audience.

"Because, after all, these women are ours."

One group discussion explored the idea of having inter-congregational small groups of women in initial formation that could engage, grow and even fail together.

Continue reading

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has accepted a final report of a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

The LCWR represents 80 per cent of US religious sisters.

Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain was appointed three years ago to oversee a programme of reform for the LCWR.

But on April 16, the Vatican "mandate" ended at a meeting between LCWR and CDF representatives and Archbishop Sartain.

The archbishop and the LCWR officers presented a joint report on the implementation of the mandate, which the doctrinal congregation approved.

The report addresses two main issues: updating the organisational statutes of LCWR and the process by which the group chooses speakers and writers for its annual conferences and publications.

The report stresses the need for LCWR speakers and writers "to have due regard for the Church's faith".

The report also stated that LCWR publications "need a sound doctrinal foundation".

"Measures are being taken to promote a scholarly rigour that will ensure theological accuracy and help avoid statements that are ambiguous with regard to Church doctrine or could be read as contrary to it," the report continued.

The report also stated that LCWR manuscripts "will be reviewed by competent theologians, as a means of safeguarding the theological integrity of the conference".

The report says that "a revised process" for choosing the winner of the group's annual Outstanding Leadership Award "has been articulated".

LCWR president Sr Sharon Holland said in a statement that the oversight process brought the sisters and the Vatican to "deeper understandings of one another's experiences, roles, responsibilities, and hopes for the Church and the people it serves".

"We learned that what we hold in common is much greater than any of our differences," she said.

Former LCWR president Sr Joan Chittister said the most important thing was that the LCWR has not lost its ability to operate freely.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• National Catholic Reporter
• The Tablet
• Vatican Radio
• Image: New Ways Ministry

The report on the apostolic visitation of religious women in the United States, released Wednesday, thanks them for their selfless work caring for the poor and promising to value more their "feminine genius".

Going out of its way to mend fences with the nuns, the Vatican report is remarkable for what it does not say.

No criticism of the nuns, no demands they shift their social justice focus, no condemnation of the previously highlighted secular mentality and feminist agendas.

While offering a sobering assessment of the state of religious women in the US, the report acknowledges the sisters' positive contribution to the Church.

Women religious responded with gratitude.

The report is "not a document of blame... One can read the text and feel appreciated and trusted to carry on" said Sr Sharon Holland, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, (LCWR).

"There is an encouraging and realistic tone in this report", she said.

The report however saves some mild criticism for the sisters for not wearing a habit, saying some wish to be externally recognisable as consecrated, and asks them to further self-assess and "evaluate their actual practice of liturgical and common prayer".

It also sounds a "caution to be taken not to displace Christ from the centre of creation".

Writing in Religion News, David Gibson says there are three "takeaways" from the sisters report.

1. Rome's war on women is over - dialogue is preferred rather than confrontation
2. The battle continues - there is another LCWR investigation being run by the very conservative Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the faith
3. The church's conservative echo chamber is broken - the conservative Cardinal Franc Rode was replaced by progressive Cardinal Braz de Aviz.

The change of leadership at the Vatican is clearly reflected in a different tone.

Two years after the visitation began, 2011, Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz was named prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Society of Apostolic life.

"We are putting more of an accent on going to them, not to identify mistakes or judge situations, but to listen to the sufferings, see the difficulties, listen to what they are going through," the cardinal said.

The congregation wants "more of the climate of a family - I'm not saying this didn't exist before - but we are emphasizing it more."

Sources

• Crux
• CBS News
• Global Sisters Report
• Religion News Service
• Image: Global Sisters Report

In an interview in L'Osservatore Romano, Cardinal Gerhard Müller said the number of women will be rising from two to "five or six", following new nominations by Pope Francis.

The commission, which assists the Holy See and especially the CDF, currently has 30 members, who are appointed for five year terms.

The two current women members are Barbara Hallensleben (professor of Dogmatic Theology and Ecumenism at the Faculty of Theology in Fribourg, Switzerland) from Germany and Sr Sara Butler (professor of Dogmatic Theology at the University of Saint Mary of the Lake in Chicago).

During the interview, Cardinal Müller stated that the female presence in the Church needed to be recognised within its own specific context, it should not be an imitation of the male model.

He stressed that the Church needs to be like a mother, not an institution, because an institution cannot love, but a mother can.

Cardinal Müller also referred to ongoing strife between the Vatican and the American Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

"We have received many distressed letters from other nuns belonging to the same congregations, who are suffering a great deal because of the direction in which the LCWR is steering their mission," he said.

Earlier this year, Cardinal Müller strongly criticised the theological directions the LCWR favoured, especially the concept of conscious evolution, which he likened to the ancient heresy of Gnosticism.

Meanwhile, writing the Guardian, UK academic Tina Beattie called on Pope Francis to create a space where issues like Church teaching on contraception and abortion can be discussed, if he is serious about wanting a poor church of the poor.

"Pope Francis has a tendency towards romanticism when speaking about motherhood," Dr Beattie wrote.

"This is a dangerous fantasy when it occludes the harsh realities and struggles of women's reproductive lives," she added.

Dr Beattie wanted more focus on the issue of maternal mortality around the world, which she said is often a "direct consequence of poverty".

Yet, it is hardly mentioned in papal encyclicals, she noted.

Dr Beattie said that while a change in the Church's teaching on contraception may be long overdue, "this must not translate into an uncritical endorsement of contraceptive programmes inflicted on the world's poor".

Sources

• Vatican Insider
• Patheos
• The Guardian
• Image: Catholic Herald

Fordham University theologian Sr Elizabeth Johnson told an assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in Nashville that tension between the Vatican and women religious has historical, sociological and ecclesiastical roots.

But a solution could be found, she said told the sisters, who had honoured her with an Outstanding Leadership Award.

Sr Johnson said there have always been tensions between religious communities and the hierarchy.

This is because one is based on a radical living of the Gospel and the other is based on administration, which requires order.

The issue is also sociological, she said, according to the National Catholic Reporter.

"The Church did not start out this way, but as an institution, it has evolved a patriarchal structure where authority is executed in a top-down fashion and obedience and loyalty to the system are the greatest of virtues," Sr Johnson said.

Finally, she said, the tensions are ecclesiastical because women religious have undergone the renewal called for by the Second Vatican Council and the hierarchy has not.

"Certainly, the LCWR and the sisters they lead are far from perfect, but they have got the smell of the sheep on them," she said.

"Post-Vatican II renewal has not taken place at the [Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith]."

The decision to honour Sr Johnson led CDF prefect Cardinal Gerhard Muller in April to order that future speakers at LWCR assemblies be approved by a Vatican representative.

Cardinal Muller had noted the US Bishops' conference criticisms of Sr Johnson's writings because of the "gravity of the doctrinal errors".

But Sr Johnson said Cardinal Muller's comments showed he had not read her writings and simply reiterated the US bishops' criticisms.

She said the latter were deficient and unworthy of the teaching office of bishops.

Investigating women's orders was unconscionable when there were grave issues like covering up abuse and financial mismanagement in the Church, she added.

The LCWR has been undergoing a Vatican-ordered doctrinal investigation since 2009.

In 2012, the CDF ordered the group to reform its statutes and appointed an archbishop to oversee changes.

Sr Johnson praised the sisters for their commitment to "meaningful, honest dialogue" and urged them to stay the course.

Sources

• National Catholic Reporter
• Religion News Service
• Image: National Catholic Reporter

Rapped knuckles belonged to LCWR, to Fordham theologian Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, and to any other American woman walking around with letters after her name.

Even Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, charged with keeping LCWR in order, took a hit for not controlling those uppity females.

To be sure, the main target of CDF's latest document is Barbara Marx Hubbard and her "conscious evolution," which admittedly has spread its bubbles across the websites and newsletters of many institutes of women religious.

Hubbard, a Jewish agnostic, is the 84-year-old "futurist" who was the featured speaker at LCWR's 2012 assembly. She was, to put it kindly, rather different. (She told me at the assembly she did not like all that sin and redemption business in Christianity.)

However, to lump the serious theological work of Elizabeth Johnson in with obviously gnostic claptrap is not only intellectually dishonest — it is a huge public relations mistake.

That is what CDF did. Has CDF ever heard of the Internet? How about television? Statements like this always backfire.

Score: LCWR 2, CDF 0. When will they ever learn? Continue reading.

Phyllis Zagano is a Catholic scholar and lecturer on contemporary spirituality and women's issues in the church.

Source: National Catholic Reporter

Image: Hofstra University

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

The Pope's view was conveyed to representatives of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, led by president Sister Florence Deacon, by the prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Gerhard Müller, at a meeting in Rome.

A statement from the congregation said Archbishop Müller, who was meeting the group for the first time, expressed his gratitude for the great contribution of women religious to the Church in the United States.

"The prefect then highlighted the teaching of the Second Vatican Council regarding the important mission of religious to promote a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the magisterium," the statement said.

"He also emphasised that a conference of major superiors, such as the LCWR, exists in order to promote common efforts among its member institutes as well as co-operation with the local conference of bishops and with individual bishops. For this reason, such conferences are constituted by and remain under the direction of the Holy See."

The statement concluded: "It is the sincere desire of the Holy See that this meeting may help to promote the integral witness of women religious, based on a firm foundation of faith and Christian love, so as to preserve and strengthen it for the enrichment of the Church and society for generations to come."

In a brief statement after the April 15 meeting, the LCWR said the talks were "open and frank". It added: "We pray that these conversations may bear fruit for the good of the Church."

Sources:

Catholic News Agency

National Catholic Reporter

Image: Journal Sentinel

The LCWR national assembly had instructed its board to approach the discussion with Archbishop Peter Sartain "from a stance of mutual respect, careful listening and open dialogue".

Continue reading

The decision to enter into a "conversation" with Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle was announced at the end of the LCWR's annual assembly in St Louis.

Outgoing president Sister Pat Farrell told reporters that "we are charged to enter into a process of dialogue", but matters of doctrine would not be the LCWR's starting point.

Rather, the dialogue would start with "our own lives and our understanding of religious life". She also said the LCWR would reconsider if it was forced to "compromise the integrity of its mission".

An assessment by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in April said a reform of LCWR was needed to ensure its fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas including abortion, euthanasia, women's ordination and homosexuality.

Sister Farrell said the LCWR members hoped its leaders would have "open and honest dialogue" that would lead to greater understanding and to greater opportunities for women to have a voice in the Church.

She said members of the LCWR wanted to be "recognised as equal in the Church", to have their style of religious life "respected and affirmed", and to help create a climate in which everyone in the Church could talk about "issues that are very complicated".

Sister Sandra Schneiders, professor emeritus of New Testament studies at the Jesuit School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California, said: "There is definitely a desire to de-escalate the conflict, because fighting is not what we're about."

But she said there were also "non-negotiables", including the belief that God speaks through many people, not just through the bishops.

Archbishop Sartain praised the sisters, saying: "We must also work toward clearing up any misunderstandings, and I remain truly hopeful that we will work together without compromising Church teaching or the important role of the LCWR."

Sources:

St Louis Review

New York Times

Image: St Louis Review

To be sure, Farrell has spoken publicly and with quiet clarity about why the organization she heads.

But it is Farrell's own life — a vocation that has taken her from the Iowa heartland to ministry in Pinochet's Chile and war-ravaged El Salvador and back again to Iowa — that may be the best way to understand the root of Rome's clash with the nuns, and why it may not be going away anytime soon, much as Farrell wishes it would.

"I've had a dramatic life, I really have. But the drama of it is not what's important," says Farrell, a soft-spoken, 65-year-old Franciscan who eventually, if hesitatingly, agreed to discuss her more than two decades in Latin America. "The best of what we do is not about high drama."

Indeed, behind the drama is a story of service to the poor, advocacy for the marginalized, and a radical spirituality that has profoundly shaped Farrell and many nuns like her — as well as shaped the identity of the LCWR. Viewed in this context, the standoff is not a political struggle or power play as much as a contrast of complementary roles and experiences in the church. Continue reading

Image: CathNews USA

Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell was addressing the 900-strong assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in St Louis, Missouri.

The LCWR's 1500 members represent about 80 per cent of US congregations of female religious.

The assembly is the first since the Vatican's doctrinal assessment, which said reform was needed to ensure fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas that include abortion, euthanasia, women's ordination and homosexuality.

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, who is to supervise the reform, is not attending the assembly. Mercy Sister Mary Ann Walsh, director of media relations for the US bishops' conference, said he offered to come, but was told his presence "would not be helpful".

In a telephone media conference before the assembly, Sister Farrell said it would work on normal business as its response to the Vatican. "We don't want to allow this doctrinal assessment to really take over the mission and the entire agenda of our organisation because we do have other important things to be about," she said.

Asked if a democratic vote of the membership would be taken, she said "a sense of the membership" would be determined. "Our process of discernment is typically not taking a vote," she explained.

In a welcoming address, Archbishop Robert Carlson of St Louis praised the work of the sisters and their influence on his own life. Referring briefly to the standoff with Rome, he cited as a model the conflicts between apostles Peter and Paul in the early days of the Church. "They managed to work things out then, and I pray that you will work things out now," he said.

In a blog post on the eve of the assembly, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the US bishops' conference, wrote "We Catholics love the Sisters!" and voiced confidence that they would survive the "examination by Rome".

Sources:

Catholic News Service

Catholic News Agency

National Catholic Register

Image: New York Times

The giant banner on their bus proclaimed, "Sisters driving for faith, family and fairness," and a gushing media noted that the sisters' fans along the way greeted them like rock stars.

However, it turns out that the sisters who organized the June 18-July 2 tour — from the sisters' lobbying group Network — also were driving for their own agenda.

As a Washington Post headline put it: "The Nuns on the Bus tour promotes social justice and turns a deaf ear to the Vatican."

The Nuns on the Bus tour did treat issues of poverty. But the tour also was designed to respond to the doctrinal assessment by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that found numerous doctrinal errors in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). The LCWR is a superiors' organization of about 1,500 sisters who lead orders that include 80% of the sisters in the country. Read more

Sources

• Ann Carey in National Catholic Register
• Image: PR Watch

Ann Carey is the author of Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities.

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:

National Public Radio

National Catholic Reporter

Image: National Pubic Radio

Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), insists neither he, nor the Vatican is picking on the nuns.

"We're sad if people somehow think that these guys in Rome are trying to bring the hammer down on our nuns, or don't appreciate them. The assessment is actually effusive in its praise of the work nuns have done over the years," Levada told NCR's John Allen.

In an open and frank conversation, Levada, tried to set the record straight.

"I could say that some of my best friends are nuns," he said.

It's "not about the sisters in the United States. It's about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious".

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is a co-ordinating body for about 80% of the religious women in the United States.

According to Levada, the basic issue is LCWR exists because of a Church law that provides the Holy Father to invite them to do this co-ordinating work, and because their position exists at the invitation of the Pope, what they say has to be in sync with Church teachings.

Rejecting criticism of Bishop Blair's investigative assessment Levada said he did not accept the accusations of a lack of transparency or 'unsubstantiated accusations' in the process.

"This is not about people accusing LCWR of anything, it's about observing what happens in their assemblies, what's on their website, what they do or don't do," he said.

Levada said he is concerned that this process has been going on for four years and during that time not much has changed.

"It seems to me like a dialogue of the deaf," he said.

"Sometimes people have different images of dialogue. For some, dialogue is an end in itself, while for some of us it's a means to an end."

"People who have a representative role as spokesperson in and for the church also have a higher responsibility," the said CDF Head.

Calling the Church a "broad umbrella" Levada said its not just a question of different views, but also behaviour.

"It's about keeping faith with Jesus," said Levada.

"Ultimately this is about a group that represents the church doing so in a way that is accountable to the teaching and tradition of the Church."

Sources

• NCR
• Image Idle Speculations

Bishop Blair says that since the assessment has been completed he "can only marvel at what is now being said, both within and outside the Church, regarding the process and the recent steps taken by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to remedy significant and longstanding doctrinal problems connected with the activities and programs of the LCWR".

He concludes, though, that he is "confident ... that if the serious concerns of the CDF are accurately represented and discussed among all the sisters of our country, there will indeed be an opening to a new and positive relationship between women religious and the Church's pastors in doctrinal matters ..."

• Read Bishop Leonard Blair's article
• Image: Southern Fried Catholicism

That instinct seemed to be the principal subtext to Benedict XVI's June 1-3 outing to Milan.

Formally, Benedict made the short trip north to attend the seventh "World Meeting of Families," a Vatican-organized event held every three years to celebrate marriage, youth and the family. In context, however, the trip also offered an opportunity for the Catholic rank and file to embrace Benedict amid one of the greatest trials of his papacy, the mushrooming Vatileaks scandal.

That, at any rate, is how Vatican officials have touted what happened. In an interview with Italian TV, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Secretary of State (and, according to many analysts, the principal target of the leaks), referred to the "extraordinary display of love for the pope and ... support for him and his magisterium" witnessed in the streets of Milan, as well as among the more than 1 million people who turned out for Sunday Mass at Bresso Park.

Bertone said it was significant that such affection, including "frenetic" applause for the pope wherever he went, poured out "in this particular moment" — and by that, of course, he meant the current atmosphere of scandal. Continue reading

Sources

• John L Allen Jr in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: thestar.com

In his column in NCR, Bill Tammeus, a Presbyterian elder, writes:

"Those of us outside of Catholicism find it unfathomable that the church ... would exploit or disdain the women who have committed their lives to doing ministry in Christ's sacred name. But that's what the current controversy over the Vatican's action says to many of us".

• Read the article by Bill Tammeus
• Image: LCWR

Bill Tammeus writes the daily "Faith Matters" blog for The Kansas City Star‘s website and a monthly column for The Presbyterian Outlook.

In his column in NCR, Eugene Cullen Kennedy writes that "While the great achievements for the church of women religious are ignored, as are their lives of personal sacrifice, and they are presumed guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors for such things as allowing speakers at their assemblies to speak of cultural realities that everyone can see, such as feminism, those who claim to see things that nobody else can see, and that, in fact, might not be there at all, are treated far more respectfully."

• Read Eugene Cullen Kennedy's article
• Image: Fr Paul Johnson

She says that according to the CDF, the "women religious of the United States were spending too much time on social issues and not enough on defending doctrine", and that the "US Catholic bishops, who have no moral credibility ... can't get their own job done and so are taking the sisters into receivership".

• Read Phyllis Zagano's article
• Image: CathNews USA

Phyllis Zagano is a lecturer on contemporary spirituality and women's issues in the church.