The Holy See and the LCWR: What's really happening?

Writing in The Catholic World Report, Ann Carey has an excellent article in which she takes a look at The Church and the Sisters and asks What Is Really Happening?

Among her many clarifications of the erroneous media reports we find this one:

Additionally, the CDF document emphasizes that the initiative is addressed only to the LCWR, a 1,500-member organization to which many leaders of women’s religious orders belong. The initiative is not directed to the other 54,000 sisters in the United States who do not belong to the LCWR, though press reports have tended to confuse this point and characterize all sisters as members of the LCWR.

This is quite incorrect, and many sisters who are in LCWR-related orders have contacted this writer to emphasize that they have neither membership, voice or vote in the LCWR, and they do not appreciate being associated with the organization. In fact, many sisters in LCWR-related orders are quite pleased about the CDF action. As one such sister wrote in an e-mail: “I am so grateful to Pope Benedict and to all in Rome and in the USA who have contributed to this resolution. It has been a long nightmare and a severe cross for 40-plus years!”

There is also this little curiosity:

At its 1971 annual assembly, the LCWR changed its statutes, its purpose and its name without Vatican approval, thus beginning 40 years of conflict with the Vatican. The Vatican insisted on changes to the new bylaws, to acknowledge the authority of the bishops and the Holy See. The Vatican also took three years to approve the name change, and only then said the new name should be accompanied by a sentence giving the original name.

And this one:

The transformation of the superiors’ conference, which moved the organization away from Church authority and the traditional models of religious life to emphasize political, justice, and liberation issues, caused some sisters to leave the conference in the early 1970s and form their own small group of superiors. The Vatican tried for years to reconcile the women superiors, but finally concluded this was impossible, and canonically erected another group of women’s superiors in 1992, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR) for superiors of orders that have retained a more traditional style of religious life and close ties with the institutional Church...  Even though CMSWR members represent fewer sisters, CMSWR communities are receiving the majority of new vocations and have an average age in the 30s, whereas the average age in LCWR-related communities is in the 70s.

And lest we forget that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was in dialuge with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious:

Thus, while the sisters might have been “stunned” by the contents of the document, they had no reason to be surprised that it was coming. Additionally, the LCWR had been given a “doctrinal warning” by the CDF in 2001 to correct doctrinal problems. When no progress had been made in seven years, the CDF told the LCWR in 2008 that it would undertake the doctrinal assessment. Thus, eleven years passed between the first warning and the issuance of the CDF directive.

Be sure to read the entire piece.

News round-up on the LCWR

Steven Spearie of the State Journal-Register has written a good article about Bishop Paprocki's recent appointment to assist Archbishop Sartain in his task with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. 

Paprocki said he’s read many articles dealing with the fallout of the CDF report, articles often accompanied by “nuns in habits” stereotypes “that are misleading or outdated.”Paprocki said he doesn’t know how efforts to re-form LCWR will fly canonically, given that organization was set up by and is responsible to the Holy See. 

“If you took a survey of LCWR individuals, my guess is that the vast majority haven’t moved beyond Christ or they wouldn’t be nuns,” said Paprocki. “My hope is that this wouldn’t be a problem for them. 

“If it is, it says something else” [more].

Spearie has clearly done his homework on this one.

If you're curious as to what brought about this assessment of the Holy See, Father Zuhlsdorf has put together a post to help you: Nuns Gone Wild: A Trip Down Memory Lane.

Since the release of the assessment, the Get Religionistas have been doing there own good work examining the reporting concerning the new panel.  Terry Mattingly wonders if the Vatican picks a side in the nun wars and Mollie is skeptical about "stunned" sisters.

George Weigel reminds us that this assessment is not, in fact, a condemnation of nuns or their good works, nor is it a support for Obamacare:

That imagery — three men, acting on behalf of a male-dominated Curia, assuming leadership of an organization of women religious — proved irresistible to Vatican critics, eager to drive home the point that the Catholic Church doesn’t care about one half of the human race (as the proprietor of a once-great American newspaper once told his new Rome bureau chief as she was leaving the U.S). Others were eager to use the Vatican action to prop up crumbling public support for Obamacare: The good sisters of the LCWR supported Obamacare; the aging misogynists at the Vatican whacked the LCWR; see, Obamacare must be right, just, proper, and helpful toward salvation! The problem with the former criticism, of course, is that the Catholic Church is the greatest educator of women throughout the Third World and the most generous provider of women’s health care in Africa and Asia; there, the Church also works to defend women’s rights within marriage, while its teaching on the dignity of the human person challenges the traditional social and cultural taboos that disempower women. As for the notion that the Church’s Roman leadership put the clamps on the LCWR because “the Vatican” objects to Obamacare, well, that would be the first European-style welfare-state initiative to which “the Vatican” has objected in living memory.
What both these lines of critique fail to grasp is that the problem posed by many of the sisters within the religious orders that make up the LCWR, and by the LCWR as an organization, is precisely the problem noted by the Master of Trinity: “Another God, another mountaintop.” The difference is that Harold Abrahams acknowledged his unorthodox views, while the LCWR leadership, to vary the cinematic metaphors, took on the role of Captain Renault, professing itself “shocked, shocked” that anyone could imagine anything doctrinally awry in the organization or its affiliated orders [more].

The Curt Jester takes a look at the so-called Return of the Rottweiler.

The Catholic Thing's Stephen P. White takes a look at the Bad Religion of the LCWR, taking as his launching point the statement made by the scheduled speaker for the 2012 gathering of the LCWR that Jesus "did not die."  Naturally, that statement is rather problematic for a Christian.

CDF issues assessment of LCWR; Bishop Paprocki appointed to assist the Archbishop Delegate

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith today released a Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) that has, as its primary concern,

the doctrine of the faith that has been revealed by God in Jesus Christ, presented in written form in the divinely inspired Scriptures, and handed on in the Apostolic Tradition under the guidance of the Church's Magisterium.

Begun in 2008, the investigation and communications that led to today's assessment wereled by the Most Reverend Leonard Blair, Bishop of Toledo, who served as the CDF's Delegate for the Assessment.

The assessment, which is aimed at the "renewal" of the LCWR,

arises out of a sincere concern for the life of faith in some Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.  It arises as well from a conviction that the work of any conference of major superiors of women Religious can and should be a fruitful means of addressing the contemporary situation and supporting religious life in its most "radical" sense - that is, in the faith in which it is rooted [emphasis original].

Among the "serious doctrinal problems" that affect the LCWR, the assessment highlights the following:

1. Addresses at the LCWR Assemblies;
2. Policies of Corportate Dissent; and
3. Radical Feminism

Such issues are "grave and a matter of serious concern" which need to be addressed.  To this end, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith appointed His Excellency the Most Reverend Peter Sartain, Archbishop of Seatle, as the Archbishop Delegate who has been given the following mandate:

1. To revise the LCWR Statutes;
2. To review the LCWR plans and programs;
3. To create new LCWR programs for member Congregations;
4. To review and guide liturgical norms and texts; and
5. To review LCWR links with affiliated organizations

This mandate is given "for a period of up to five years."  "It will be the task of the Archbishop Delegate to work collaboratively with the officers of the LCWR to achieve the goals outlined in this document, and to report on the progress of this work to the Holy See."

To assist the Archbishop Delegate the Holy See has appointed two assisting Bishops, the Most Reverend Leonard Blair, Bishop of Toledo, and the Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki, Bishop of Springfield in Illinois.