DON VINCENZO writes:

In January, 2009, the Vatican announced that an Apostolic Visitation would be made to inquire about the state of “women religious” in the U.S. What this generally means is that Vatican clerics or their representatives are directed by members of papal “dicastries” or departments to investigate charges of serious and on-going irregularities in any Catholic organizational structure. The Vatican’s rationale for this particular visit was that for decades the traditional idea of “sisters religious” (the term “nun” is usually applied only to cloistered sisters, but often the words are used interchangeably) were arbitrarily discarding their religious duties for what they called their “social ministry.”

Two months after the announcement, Sister (Sr.) Sandra M. Schneiders (center photo), Professor of New Testament Studies and Christ Spirituality at the Jesuit School in Berkeley, California, in a comment to The National Catholic Reporter said that: Nuns should receive the representative of Rome politely and kindly for what they are, uninvited guests, who should be received in the parlor, but not given the run of the house.

Welcome to the new world of women religious!

Two weeks ago, the results of that investigation were announced and in an eight-page statement, the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ordered disciplinary measures against the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the umbrella organization of most orders of American nuns. “The current doctrinal and pastoral situation of the LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern, also given the influence the LCWR exercises on religious congregations in other parts of the world,” the statement said.

On April 23, George Weigel, in an article in National Review Online, wrote of the new Vatican attempt to deal with this issue:

Yes, many sisters continue to do many good works. On the other hand almost none of them in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) wear religious habits; most have long since abandoned convent life for apartments and other domestic arrangements; their spiritual life is more likely to be influenced by the Enneagran and Deepak Chopra than by Teresa of Avila and Edith Stein; their notions of orthodoxy are, to put it gently, innovative; and their relationship to Church authority is best described as one of barely concealed contempt.

Welcome – again — to the new world of women religious.

Weigel recognizes that the problem with women religious rests not only on the consequences of Vatican II, but the inaction of his idol (George was guilty, one commentator wrote, of “papadolatry”), John Paul II, who could, and should have acted to deal with the issue.

Far too many sisters religious have abandoned their faith for entry into the modern world, a phenomenon that has been aided and abetted by the Vatican’s unwillingness to deal with doctrinal violations. Weigel notes that “some communities of LCWR sisters no longer participate regularly in the Eucharist, because they cannot abide the patriarchy of a male priest-celebrant…” These are not the women religious portrayed in the The Bells of St. Mary’s. It is unlikely that Sister Benedict, played by Ingrid Bergman in the movie, would have supported the Obama healthcare measure requiring the dispensing of abortion inducing pills to those who requested them. A LCWR leader in health care matters, Sister Carol Keehan (photo right), saw no apparent contradiction between supporting Obama’s bill and her religious duties. And she is not alone.

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, will serve as the Vatican’s representative, assisted by Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, in overseeing the LCWR’s activities, along with Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo. I wish them well, but it would be delusional to believe that the LCWR will actively assist these clerics. Sister Joan Chittister (photo left), a leading feminist of LCWR, has already issued a clarion call for her confreres to regroup and resist, even to the point of disbanding their canonical organization and regroup as a lobby or interest group.

I cannot claim that all of problems facing the Church came about as a direct result of Vatican II, but for far too long the Catholic Church hierarchy, extending to Rome, has sat idly by while feminists have gained control of the levers of power amongst the women religious. It is noteworthy that the current pope is at least willing to confront the situation; his immediate predecessors were not. But it may be too late in the game to effect serious change, for too many of the LCWR are long in the tooth, and one does not normally teach old dogs new tricks.

The Vatican may someday realize that they are in a war with modernity, and in war, there is no such thing as a runner up. Perhaps the best solution for all concerned would be that, seeing their future outside the Church, the women in LCWR formally disavow their religious affiliation and pass silently into the night. This process, albeit a draconian one, may be aided by the fact that “vocations,” or new candidates for sisters religious are very few, and the current members are greying to a point where they may become an endangered species within one generation. The number of women religious has declined from about 180,000 in 1965 to 55,000 today.

But if the night is darkest before the first appearance of light, then my hope is that there is possibility of a “renaissance” amongst women entering this vital part of church life. This new “light” is already present amongst the traditional sisters of St. Mary’s Kansas, or the Dominican Sisters of Post Falls, Idaho, or Massena, New York, who have returned not only to affirm their primary purpose, but to wear the habit as well. Sister Benedict would be very proud. St. Edmund Campion clearly was on to something when he wrote in, “The Brag:” The expense is reckoned, the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood.

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