In the small world of the Vatican, personnel is always policy. Two recent personnel moves, therefore, have fueled speculation about whether policy shifts are also under way in the fight against sex abuse and the Vatican’s relationship with American nuns. Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the Vatican’s top prosecutor on abuse cases, was named an auxiliary bishop Read more
The recently completed “Nuns on the Bus” tour garnered a great deal of publicity for the sisters involved, who claimed they were making the trip to protest proposed federal budget cuts they say would hurt the poor. However, there were many more undercurrents to the nine-state, two-week trip than most people realize. The giant banner Read more
In the view of the Vatican, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the US has espoused “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” Disagreements between American nuns and the hierarchy of the Church are part of US Church history, according to Anne M. Butler. In an article in the New York Times, Ms Read more
Some of our bishops are acting like bullies, abusing the authority of their offices in the name of enforcing orthodoxy. Dealing with U.S. women religious, these bishops’ actions appear governed more by a desire to enforce obedience than to develop fidelity in our sisters. Catholics see through this guise. They are upset, fed up with Read more
In one sense it is correct to say that the crackdown on the LCWR would seem to be “Rome vs. America”, in that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has declared that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious needs renewing. But, says John L Allen Jr in his National Catholic Reporter column, “At Read more
Both the investigation into the orthodoxy of the US’s Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and the “visitation” of active congregations of US sisters were initiated within weeks of each other in 2009. But while the latter received extensive publicity both in America and internationally throughout the entire time the process was underway, the LCWR Read more