Remarks of Cardinal Gerhard Müller at the Meeting of the Superiors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith with the Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) (30 April 2014)
Showing posts with label LCWR. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LCWR. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Friday, March 28, 2014
Vatican Radio gives megaphone to dissident fringe group Future Church | Fr. Z's Blog
Vatican Radio gives megaphone to dissident fringe group Future Church | Fr. Z's Blog
Vatican Radio gives megaphone to dissident fringe group Future Church | Fr. Z's Blog
MY 2 RESPONSES TO THIS ARTICLE
Vatican Radio gives megaphone to dissident fringe group Future Church | Fr. Z's Blog
I am confused about something.
The website of Vatican Radio shows that they did a piece on Future Church.
Future Church?!?
HERE Listen.
What is Future Church? HERE
This is from their site’s sidebar:
Visit their ABOUT page HERE. They want married clergy and priestesses.
An excerpt:
Advancing Women in Church Leadership
The role of women in the Church, including “leadership roles” is a matter for open discussion.
However, a group that pushes for the ordination of women is a dissident fringe group. Such a group ought to be excluded from dialogue until they give up their heretical position (cf Ordinatio sacerdotalis).
So… what’s up with Vatican Radio giving them airtime?
The website of Vatican Radio shows that they did a piece on Future Church.
Future Church?!?
HERE Listen.
What is Future Church? HERE
This is from their site’s sidebar:
Visit their ABOUT page HERE. They want married clergy and priestesses.
An excerpt:
Advancing Women in Church Leadership
We promoted women’s leadership by providing practical resources for women and men who wish to implement the far-reaching recommendations of the 1996 Benchmarks projects published by the Leadership Council of Women Religious [What a surprise.] this resource educates about the inclusive practice of Jesus and St. Paul and advocates for increased leadership roles for women in the Church right now..The project packet Contains articles written by experts about women in the Bible and lectionary and feminist theology, as well as organizing tips and prayer and faith sharing resources. Also includes expanded materials about lay ecclesial ministers (80% of whom are women), parish life coordinators, lay preaching and women officeholders in the early church. [A few weird examples do not an argument make.]Another screen shot from their “Initiatives” page:
Scores of Women in Church Leadership “anchors” have organized dialogues in various parts of the country as a result of this project. They have continued to keep the conversation about the roles of women in the church on the front burner, even as talk about the ordination of women has been officially hushed by the Vatican. [Then by all means, have them on Vatican Radio.]
The role of women in the Church, including “leadership roles” is a matter for open discussion.
However, a group that pushes for the ordination of women is a dissident fringe group. Such a group ought to be excluded from dialogue until they give up their heretical position (cf Ordinatio sacerdotalis).
So… what’s up with Vatican Radio giving them airtime?
MY 2 RESPONSES TO THIS ARTICLE
Urs says:
Yep! I knew it….It IS the purposeful hijacking of Pope Francis. I am not as nice as most people on the issues of the mistranslations at the Vatican. After the 4th or 5 th time….There is no benefit of the doubt to be had as far as I m concerned. It is purposeful at the Vatican to mistranslate his words into English. It does not matter what PopeFrancis actually says if it is different from what people are TOLD that he says…and everyone just believes the distortions that they are TOLD that he says! It seems that far too many people are sooo quick to believe the worst…. (and even to judge and condemn Pope Francis- on what they are TOLD that he has said)… or ,as in the case of the liberal antichurch, to believe the best, as in what is closer to what they WANT to hear him say !
The Vatican’s English Translator Should be Fired!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohGRtkZgdXg
Tuesday, March 11, 2014
LCWR:How Did These Good Sisters GET to Where They Are Now???
================================================
http://learningmycatholicfaith.blogspot.com/2013/10/omgomgomg-i-wanted-to-be-sister-of.html
ny comment fron the beginning of the article above
OMG!OMG!OMG! I wanted to be a Sister of Mercy for more than a decade( I was taking care of my elderly father first, though.) Thank You, Lord, that I never entered because, 'but for the grace of God, there go I'
I wish that I could say that I would not have been like them...but , alas, I cannot say that because in all honesty, I probably would have. :'(
I was so grateful to be included amongst their friends when I was out of high school and through college and they were soooo good to me after my mama died.
I remember when Teresa Kane, one of 'our' sisters, a Sister of Mercy, gave that speech about women's ordination to the pope, JPII . 'We' were all so angry at what we saw as his condescending attitude and disrespectful treatment of her.
And, led by their example , I learned a disrespect for the pope, though at the time I did not see it as disrespect. I thought that it was 'allowed'. I did not see myself as 'dissenting' from Catholic teaching. I did NOT have a clue about true Catholic teaching on the Pope, and frankly neither did these nuns that I hung around. Basically, the only thing that you had to believe the Pope on were the stated dogmas of theChurch and you were accountable to the precepts of the Church....after that it becomes more of a function of individual conscience.
Even if I had known the proper teaching, it would not have mattered, because that was BEFORE Vatican II . Vatican II had changed all of that... and not because the Church was bad or wrong before Vatican II . But because God is sooo good and leads His Church as he promised. That Church was the Church of a different time serving the needs of a different era. But now, through this great gift of God, The Catholic Church had evolved into a much freer, more beautiful, loving and enlightened Church to serve the needs of this age. As for sin...what was sin? it was a nebulous concept... there were rights and wrongs.... I do know that if it was 'love' , it was good, okay, God is love... (and that included sex of any kind if it was because of love.... and it gets confusing here and also becomes more of a function of individual conscience) . This is my interpretation of how it was....there did not seem to be much in the way of definitive dogma in my experience excepts basics...I would have been scandalized if someone had sad its ok not to think communion is the Body and Blood of Christ....but I also would have known that I had no right to judge, that was between them and God.... I don't know what I thought the Church was...but I did think that I wanted to be a nun and serve the Church....sigh...
It never occurred to me that priests and nuns might not realize what Church teaching was... because most of them truly thought that teachings had changed or were in the process of changing in this 'new' Church. And this was the pervasive, prevailing attitude throughout the Church...The documents of Vatican II were supposed to be implemented and what they contained, and what this meant, was basically passed down even through the hierarchy by word or mouth, and the same way throughout the leadership and the faithful ... There was much confusion for so long. And most have never realized that the hermeneutic of rupture is NOT the proper implementation.
It never occurred to me that priests and nuns might not be right in what they believed the Church to be and in what they believed the Church teaches . It never occurred to me that priest and nuns themselves could be led astray. So it never occurred to me that they could lead me astray.
I KNOW that they do not think that what they are doing is wrong and they do believe themselves to be authentically Catholic.
I lost contact through the years with the Sisters of Mercy as an order.... The keynote speech this year at the LCWR , was such a shock to me....It was Bolt of Lightning out of the Blue... I started looking at Mercy websites, leadership etc and I was shocked and saddened .
I do not recognize this order which was once so dear to me.. I had all the official books of what the purpose and mission of the order was...I had the life of its foundress Catherin McCauley...I KNEW this order and its mission well and I LOVED IT SO MUCH! They have loved me and done so much for me. They educated me and taught me well throughout jr high and high school. They supported me through the most difficult times of my whole life...I could never repay what they have given me and done for me. I visited the motherhouse in St Louis many times and stayed there a number of times throughout college. It was my favorite place on earth. I LOVE these nuns so much!!!! They have been so good to me...when I lost my mama at the beginning of college, the motherhouse and their arms were ALWAYS open to me, their love and support was constant and available at any moment that I might need. Even when I lost my daddy 18 years later and not seen any of them for many years, they came to support me. I could never repay what they have given me and done for me!
But I do not recognize this order today, in what it seems to me that they have become...I do not know what they think it is to be Catholic anymore or even find it on their websites. Looking at most of their websites I do not see an authentically Catholic belief system running throughout them. I DO see a good , loving community dedicated to service...but I cannot seem to find an authentically Catholic identity...I fear that they DO think they have a Catholic identity but it a much different version of Catholic than what I believe Catholic to be :( It is a 'Catholic' identity that is not aligned with the magisterium and it has no allegiance to the Pope and the magisterium. Therefore it can support 'in love and with love' various parts of LGBT agenda and even abortion. Because of 'love', this brand of Catholic identity can dissent from Church teaching on contraception and sexual 'sins' and even on the concept of sin itself....and it can do it 'in good conscience'.
I have loved and love them still so much. I cannot believe what has happened...it is so painful to me..but it does help me understand a few things that have happened with a very good and very special friend- a 'significant other' in my life . At the time I could not understand what had happened in the first incident. An incident that signaled a complete change in a lifelong relationship. I found it to be completely mind boggling. Nor could I understand her reaction when she told me that I had changed so much...I had no idea what she was talking about. But now, I am beginning see why she said that and I can understand the whole situation much better. And now I know that she is right. I HAVE changed.
Part of the story after the first incident was about abortion. I have always been against that...but for a time, I succumbed to the thinking that it was not my 'right' to force that 'opinion' on other people--the same sort of thinking that many 'Catholic' politicians espouse today. :( I finally woke up, thank God! It was at that time that I think the paths began to diverge on our ways of thinking and our perceptions of the world. And it WAS ME who left the path... And since that time, I have learned more and more about my Catholic faith and I love it sooo much. But if my thinking had not diverged I believe that I would have a very different view of what it means to be Catholic.... and I would be reading Fishwrap and all the blogs and media for the 'alternative' Catholic views...and I would admire and Love the dissenting Jesuits . I would support women's ordination,. I would not be reading Church documents and I would probably truly see the hierarchy of the Church as an outdated patriarchal dinosaur.And if I was fighting to change these things I would truly believe that I was fighting to help save Christ's Church .... sigh...
And Just How Did These Good Sisters
GET to Where They Are Now???
(These are GOOD and LOVING women some of whom I knew or know, who taught me, who were good friends and significant others, who were a HUGE part of my life growing up and in early adulthood and who were so good to me when both my mama and the later my daddy died. They are a part of the tapestry of my life. They are a part of who I am and I LOVE Them!
I lost touch with most of them over the years but that changes nothing about who they are to me and what I wrote above...
but thankfully, it does mean that I was not with them on THIS journey! It DOES mean that I have a very hard time comprehending how they got to this point. Some of the things that I have learned have shocked and even, horrified me because I take it personally, and because I simply do not understand and cannot comprehend the transformation)
What happened in between Vatican II and now
in their orders and especially in the LCWR that they could end up in THIS place?
I am doing some research to try to answer this question of what happened and this post is where I will put stuff that I find that I think may help me answer this question.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I have begun and... there IS this:
Excerpts from:
The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters
http://books.google.com/books?id=88kOXNgVdQ0C&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=Sister+Barbara+Thomas,+S.C.N.,&source=bl&ots=-A4QuVo_Wo&sig=irsdslh7E2jhlUea-sVKgkgYymA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bXR0Uo7pKYbJsQS2rILgBQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Sister%20Barbara%20Thomas%2C%20S.C.N.%2C&f=false
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and this:
A report on the social, political, and spiritual changes for Catholic nuns in the U.S. since Vatican II
The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/814_reg_right.html#sthash.1zqwK74u.dpuf
These sisters do not see or understand that there is anything wrong with what they are doing or how they see themselves. This is the result of what they thought , and many of us thought that Vatican II was saying in the 70's. This is what they STILL think that Vatican II says and what it is all about...and it was the Church that started them down this path!
===============================================
These remembrances of Sr. Barbara Thomas, SCN, one of the early leaders of the Post Vatican II sisters and of what is now the LCWR(I am not sure what the name was before that or when it changed), are 1 example of how the Sisters see themselves in relation to Vatican II and how they still see Vatican II in this same way. And wherethey have 'evolved' through to today IS the proper implementation of Vatican II. It is the Institutional Church who is resistant to this evolution. And they MUST remain in the Church and help it evolve into what they see as God's visionThis is from an SCN
publication in 2010.
Sister Barbara was not only elected with the first group of Provincials; she was also the first SCN to assume the title of “president” in 1972. She held that position for two terms, 1972–1980. She also earned her Doctorate in Ministry from Aquinas Institute. “That’s the thing I marvel at,” says Celeste Reedy, SCN, a longtime friend of Sister Barbara. Sister Barbara’s time in leadership was during a period of great change — Vatican II. Sister Barbara travelled extensively throughout the Congregation, visiting with the Sisters — Vatican II booklet in hand — to explain what it all meant and to answer the many questions it brought about. She was so successful educating the Sisters on Vatican II that she was soon asked to help educate other communities as well. She conducted numerous workshops for Religious around the country. “She was fearless in her leadership during that time and in trying to get the Sisters to embrace what Vatican II was calling religious congregations to at that time,” recalls friend and caregiver Donna Kenney. Judy Raley, SCN, Provincial of the Western Province, admires Sister Barbara as a leader. “Barbara led the Congregation in the implementation of Vatican II and the renewal of religious life. She facilitated the change in the government structure from ‘Mother and the Council’ to the Executive Committee which included the Provincials, giving
a closer connection between Provincial and Congregational leadership. Barbara served as a member of the Constitutions Committee giving new expression to SCN life rooted in our history and tradition while guided by the call of Vatican II. The writing of the Constitutions was a participative process involving the Community as a whole. Barbara was influential in setting up the Renewal Team which travelled throughout the Congregation engaging the members in corporate reflection on the meaning of our lives as SCNs. Barbara was a risk-taker in the spirit of Catherine Spalding.” While serving as president of the Congregation, Sister Barbara was also elected president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in 1975. Sister Judy points out that, “Barbara called us to greater participation in Community and to ongoing conversion in living our lives as SCNs. The phrase she often repeated was that we are called to ongoing conversion in a community of mission. This phrase found its way into our Constitutions (Article 1). Her leadership abilities were recognized nationally and internationally in her election as president of LCWR.” At the 1975 National Assembly of LCWR, Sister Barbara shared: “During these years of renewal our response to these tensions and to the issues they reflect has been, in a sense, in piecemeal fashion. This is not peculiar to our history. As women, as women religious, our charism is to approach our
mission —to respond to the needs of the Church of the world — in an integrated way. Even though our experience of the Church during this era of change may not always be that of ‘the road not taken,’ we know it is consistent with the nature of the Church to approach issues in an integrated way. It seems then that fidelity on our part to the promises we have made, the integration of our gifts as women and the use of these gifts for the good of the Church, will not only provide opportunities for us to be a source of new life for the Church, but also to assist the Church in her effort to be faithful to her history... An integrated movement will place new demands on us. It will call for understanding, patience, and largeness of heart as we stand with the Church and share responsibility for the healing of the social injustices within and outside the Church. Our ability to move together in this way will speak to the Church and to society of our courage to choose ‘the road not taken.’ The very law of the Church will be free of the patterns of social injustice to the measure that we make a personal, communal and corporate response in this regard. Our sensitivity to the need for healing where the Church, its structures, its law, its very life are concerned, could be for us a vibrant source of healing and of increased life within the Conference and within our Congregations. This sensitivity could be for us the root of fidelity the light that will lead us to ‘the road not taken,’ ‘the one less travelled by’ — to the choice that will make ‘all the difference.’” Maggie Fisher, SCN, is thankful for the freedom and responsibility that Sister Barbara gave to the SCNs following Vatican II. “She really brought us into the contemporary world,” says Sister Maggie. While President of SCNs, she and the Executive Committee of the Congregation invited Sisters to participate in the “Justice ’75 Program” in which some SCNs travelled to India, Haiti, Appalachia, and other sites to experience firsthand the lifestyle of their inhabitants and the needs of these people. One of the more obvious changes after Vatican II was the option for women religious to wear habits. Sister Celeste recalls that there was a lot of division on the issue, but people were encouraged to move with the times. “She
emphasized that SCNs be not critical of one another for their clothing choice,” says Sister Celeste. Sister Maggie remembers her as being so caring about the poor and oppressed in the world, she would give away everything she had to those in need. In 1979, Sister Barbara was invited to the White House to attend a reception for Pope John Paul II. From the most underprivileged to the White House, “she was comfortable with people from all walks of life,” says Sister Celeste. “Barbara made friends easily with her warm, outgoing personality, she wanted the best for each person and had a way of encouraging us to use our gifts and to risk new ways of being in ministry. She had a keen, inquiring mind. She made others feel comfortable in her presence,” adds Sister Judy. At the end of her term as President of LCWR, Sister Barbara received the following message from Cardinal Pironio: “I have appreciated your ideals and your untiring effort in all capabilities.” Reflecting on her memories of Sister Barbara, Sister Judy shares, “I remember travelling to Rome with Sister Barbara and Emily Nabholz, SCN, to meet with members of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life concerning our Constitutions. We stopped in Paris to visit the Church where St. Vincent’s body is. As we placed the Constitutions on the casket and prayed, I had a keen sense of Barbara’s rootedness in the charism of charity exemplified by St. Vincent and Catherine Spalding. I experienced her deep faith that by the intercession of Vincent and Catherine all would be well as we went to the meeting in Rome.” Sister Judy also recalls that Sister Barbara invited others to collaborate with SCNs and played a pivotal role in expanding the Associate program. Sister Maggie is grateful to Sister Barbara who accepted her into the SCN Community following an appointment with her early one morning to discuss her transferring from another Congregation into the Community. “I saw the booklet Living with Christ and I knew that she’d been praying before I came in. She was praying to do the right thing, I’m perfectly sure about that.”
The above excerpt is from page 15 of the pdf found at:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scnfamily.org%2Fjourney%2Fassets%2Fjourney10vol02.pdf&ei=t4B0UpftM8XgsAT6_YGABA&usg=AFQjCNEobxqDiEINS0e3DijL8CDe7s_tsA&sig2=hH-Z2iBZ2n7S87sC8Oz_LQ&bvm=bv.55819444,d.cWc
==============================================
http://learningmycatholicfaith.blogspot.com/2013/10/omgomgomg-i-wanted-to-be-sister-of.html
ny comment fron the beginning of the article above
OMG!OMG!OMG! I wanted to be a Sister of Mercy for more than a decade( I was taking care of my elderly father first, though.) Thank You, Lord, that I never entered because, 'but for the grace of God, there go I'
I wish that I could say that I would not have been like them...but , alas, I cannot say that because in all honesty, I probably would have. :'(
I was so grateful to be included amongst their friends when I was out of high school and through college and they were soooo good to me after my mama died.
I remember when Teresa Kane, one of 'our' sisters, a Sister of Mercy, gave that speech about women's ordination to the pope, JPII . 'We' were all so angry at what we saw as his condescending attitude and disrespectful treatment of her.
And, led by their example , I learned a disrespect for the pope, though at the time I did not see it as disrespect. I thought that it was 'allowed'. I did not see myself as 'dissenting' from Catholic teaching. I did NOT have a clue about true Catholic teaching on the Pope, and frankly neither did these nuns that I hung around. Basically, the only thing that you had to believe the Pope on were the stated dogmas of theChurch and you were accountable to the precepts of the Church....after that it becomes more of a function of individual conscience.
Even if I had known the proper teaching, it would not have mattered, because that was BEFORE Vatican II . Vatican II had changed all of that... and not because the Church was bad or wrong before Vatican II . But because God is sooo good and leads His Church as he promised. That Church was the Church of a different time serving the needs of a different era. But now, through this great gift of God, The Catholic Church had evolved into a much freer, more beautiful, loving and enlightened Church to serve the needs of this age. As for sin...what was sin? it was a nebulous concept... there were rights and wrongs.... I do know that if it was 'love' , it was good, okay, God is love... (and that included sex of any kind if it was because of love.... and it gets confusing here and also becomes more of a function of individual conscience) . This is my interpretation of how it was....there did not seem to be much in the way of definitive dogma in my experience excepts basics...I would have been scandalized if someone had sad its ok not to think communion is the Body and Blood of Christ....but I also would have known that I had no right to judge, that was between them and God.... I don't know what I thought the Church was...but I did think that I wanted to be a nun and serve the Church....sigh...
It never occurred to me that priests and nuns might not realize what Church teaching was... because most of them truly thought that teachings had changed or were in the process of changing in this 'new' Church. And this was the pervasive, prevailing attitude throughout the Church...The documents of Vatican II were supposed to be implemented and what they contained, and what this meant, was basically passed down even through the hierarchy by word or mouth, and the same way throughout the leadership and the faithful ... There was much confusion for so long. And most have never realized that the hermeneutic of rupture is NOT the proper implementation.
It never occurred to me that priests and nuns might not be right in what they believed the Church to be and in what they believed the Church teaches . It never occurred to me that priest and nuns themselves could be led astray. So it never occurred to me that they could lead me astray.
I KNOW that they do not think that what they are doing is wrong and they do believe themselves to be authentically Catholic.
I lost contact through the years with the Sisters of Mercy as an order.... The keynote speech this year at the LCWR , was such a shock to me....It was Bolt of Lightning out of the Blue... I started looking at Mercy websites, leadership etc and I was shocked and saddened .
I do not recognize this order which was once so dear to me.. I had all the official books of what the purpose and mission of the order was...I had the life of its foundress Catherin McCauley...I KNEW this order and its mission well and I LOVED IT SO MUCH! They have loved me and done so much for me. They educated me and taught me well throughout jr high and high school. They supported me through the most difficult times of my whole life...I could never repay what they have given me and done for me. I visited the motherhouse in St Louis many times and stayed there a number of times throughout college. It was my favorite place on earth. I LOVE these nuns so much!!!! They have been so good to me...when I lost my mama at the beginning of college, the motherhouse and their arms were ALWAYS open to me, their love and support was constant and available at any moment that I might need. Even when I lost my daddy 18 years later and not seen any of them for many years, they came to support me. I could never repay what they have given me and done for me!
But I do not recognize this order today, in what it seems to me that they have become...I do not know what they think it is to be Catholic anymore or even find it on their websites. Looking at most of their websites I do not see an authentically Catholic belief system running throughout them. I DO see a good , loving community dedicated to service...but I cannot seem to find an authentically Catholic identity...I fear that they DO think they have a Catholic identity but it a much different version of Catholic than what I believe Catholic to be :( It is a 'Catholic' identity that is not aligned with the magisterium and it has no allegiance to the Pope and the magisterium. Therefore it can support 'in love and with love' various parts of LGBT agenda and even abortion. Because of 'love', this brand of Catholic identity can dissent from Church teaching on contraception and sexual 'sins' and even on the concept of sin itself....and it can do it 'in good conscience'.
I have loved and love them still so much. I cannot believe what has happened...it is so painful to me..but it does help me understand a few things that have happened with a very good and very special friend- a 'significant other' in my life . At the time I could not understand what had happened in the first incident. An incident that signaled a complete change in a lifelong relationship. I found it to be completely mind boggling. Nor could I understand her reaction when she told me that I had changed so much...I had no idea what she was talking about. But now, I am beginning see why she said that and I can understand the whole situation much better. And now I know that she is right. I HAVE changed.
Part of the story after the first incident was about abortion. I have always been against that...but for a time, I succumbed to the thinking that it was not my 'right' to force that 'opinion' on other people--the same sort of thinking that many 'Catholic' politicians espouse today. :( I finally woke up, thank God! It was at that time that I think the paths began to diverge on our ways of thinking and our perceptions of the world. And it WAS ME who left the path... And since that time, I have learned more and more about my Catholic faith and I love it sooo much. But if my thinking had not diverged I believe that I would have a very different view of what it means to be Catholic.... and I would be reading Fishwrap and all the blogs and media for the 'alternative' Catholic views...and I would admire and Love the dissenting Jesuits . I would support women's ordination,. I would not be reading Church documents and I would probably truly see the hierarchy of the Church as an outdated patriarchal dinosaur.And if I was fighting to change these things I would truly believe that I was fighting to help save Christ's Church .... sigh...
And Just How Did These Good Sisters
GET to Where They Are Now???
(These are GOOD and LOVING women some of whom I knew or know, who taught me, who were good friends and significant others, who were a HUGE part of my life growing up and in early adulthood and who were so good to me when both my mama and the later my daddy died. They are a part of the tapestry of my life. They are a part of who I am and I LOVE Them!
I lost touch with most of them over the years but that changes nothing about who they are to me and what I wrote above...
but thankfully, it does mean that I was not with them on THIS journey! It DOES mean that I have a very hard time comprehending how they got to this point. Some of the things that I have learned have shocked and even, horrified me because I take it personally, and because I simply do not understand and cannot comprehend the transformation)
What happened in between Vatican II and now
in their orders and especially in the LCWR that they could end up in THIS place?
I am doing some research to try to answer this question of what happened and this post is where I will put stuff that I find that I think may help me answer this question.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I have begun and... there IS this:
Excerpts from:
The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters
http://books.google.com/books?id=88kOXNgVdQ0C&pg=PA52&lpg=PA52&dq=Sister+Barbara+Thomas,+S.C.N.,&source=bl&ots=-A4QuVo_Wo&sig=irsdslh7E2jhlUea-sVKgkgYymA&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bXR0Uo7pKYbJsQS2rILgBQ&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Sister%20Barbara%20Thomas%2C%20S.C.N.%2C&f=false
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
and this:
A report on the social, political, and spiritual changes for Catholic nuns in the U.S. since Vatican II
The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters
http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/814_reg_right.html#sthash.1zqwK74u.dpuf
These sisters do not see or understand that there is anything wrong with what they are doing or how they see themselves. This is the result of what they thought , and many of us thought that Vatican II was saying in the 70's. This is what they STILL think that Vatican II says and what it is all about...and it was the Church that started them down this path!
===============================================
These remembrances of Sr. Barbara Thomas, SCN, one of the early leaders of the Post Vatican II sisters and of what is now the LCWR(I am not sure what the name was before that or when it changed), are 1 example of how the Sisters see themselves in relation to Vatican II and how they still see Vatican II in this same way. And wherethey have 'evolved' through to today IS the proper implementation of Vatican II. It is the Institutional Church who is resistant to this evolution. And they MUST remain in the Church and help it evolve into what they see as God's visionThis is from an SCN
publication in 2010.
Sister Barbara was not only elected with the first group of Provincials; she was also the first SCN to assume the title of “president” in 1972. She held that position for two terms, 1972–1980. She also earned her Doctorate in Ministry from Aquinas Institute. “That’s the thing I marvel at,” says Celeste Reedy, SCN, a longtime friend of Sister Barbara. Sister Barbara’s time in leadership was during a period of great change — Vatican II. Sister Barbara travelled extensively throughout the Congregation, visiting with the Sisters — Vatican II booklet in hand — to explain what it all meant and to answer the many questions it brought about. She was so successful educating the Sisters on Vatican II that she was soon asked to help educate other communities as well. She conducted numerous workshops for Religious around the country. “She was fearless in her leadership during that time and in trying to get the Sisters to embrace what Vatican II was calling religious congregations to at that time,” recalls friend and caregiver Donna Kenney. Judy Raley, SCN, Provincial of the Western Province, admires Sister Barbara as a leader. “Barbara led the Congregation in the implementation of Vatican II and the renewal of religious life. She facilitated the change in the government structure from ‘Mother and the Council’ to the Executive Committee which included the Provincials, giving
a closer connection between Provincial and Congregational leadership. Barbara served as a member of the Constitutions Committee giving new expression to SCN life rooted in our history and tradition while guided by the call of Vatican II. The writing of the Constitutions was a participative process involving the Community as a whole. Barbara was influential in setting up the Renewal Team which travelled throughout the Congregation engaging the members in corporate reflection on the meaning of our lives as SCNs. Barbara was a risk-taker in the spirit of Catherine Spalding.” While serving as president of the Congregation, Sister Barbara was also elected president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in 1975. Sister Judy points out that, “Barbara called us to greater participation in Community and to ongoing conversion in living our lives as SCNs. The phrase she often repeated was that we are called to ongoing conversion in a community of mission. This phrase found its way into our Constitutions (Article 1). Her leadership abilities were recognized nationally and internationally in her election as president of LCWR.” At the 1975 National Assembly of LCWR, Sister Barbara shared: “During these years of renewal our response to these tensions and to the issues they reflect has been, in a sense, in piecemeal fashion. This is not peculiar to our history. As women, as women religious, our charism is to approach our
mission —to respond to the needs of the Church of the world — in an integrated way. Even though our experience of the Church during this era of change may not always be that of ‘the road not taken,’ we know it is consistent with the nature of the Church to approach issues in an integrated way. It seems then that fidelity on our part to the promises we have made, the integration of our gifts as women and the use of these gifts for the good of the Church, will not only provide opportunities for us to be a source of new life for the Church, but also to assist the Church in her effort to be faithful to her history... An integrated movement will place new demands on us. It will call for understanding, patience, and largeness of heart as we stand with the Church and share responsibility for the healing of the social injustices within and outside the Church. Our ability to move together in this way will speak to the Church and to society of our courage to choose ‘the road not taken.’ The very law of the Church will be free of the patterns of social injustice to the measure that we make a personal, communal and corporate response in this regard. Our sensitivity to the need for healing where the Church, its structures, its law, its very life are concerned, could be for us a vibrant source of healing and of increased life within the Conference and within our Congregations. This sensitivity could be for us the root of fidelity the light that will lead us to ‘the road not taken,’ ‘the one less travelled by’ — to the choice that will make ‘all the difference.’” Maggie Fisher, SCN, is thankful for the freedom and responsibility that Sister Barbara gave to the SCNs following Vatican II. “She really brought us into the contemporary world,” says Sister Maggie. While President of SCNs, she and the Executive Committee of the Congregation invited Sisters to participate in the “Justice ’75 Program” in which some SCNs travelled to India, Haiti, Appalachia, and other sites to experience firsthand the lifestyle of their inhabitants and the needs of these people. One of the more obvious changes after Vatican II was the option for women religious to wear habits. Sister Celeste recalls that there was a lot of division on the issue, but people were encouraged to move with the times. “She
emphasized that SCNs be not critical of one another for their clothing choice,” says Sister Celeste. Sister Maggie remembers her as being so caring about the poor and oppressed in the world, she would give away everything she had to those in need. In 1979, Sister Barbara was invited to the White House to attend a reception for Pope John Paul II. From the most underprivileged to the White House, “she was comfortable with people from all walks of life,” says Sister Celeste. “Barbara made friends easily with her warm, outgoing personality, she wanted the best for each person and had a way of encouraging us to use our gifts and to risk new ways of being in ministry. She had a keen, inquiring mind. She made others feel comfortable in her presence,” adds Sister Judy. At the end of her term as President of LCWR, Sister Barbara received the following message from Cardinal Pironio: “I have appreciated your ideals and your untiring effort in all capabilities.” Reflecting on her memories of Sister Barbara, Sister Judy shares, “I remember travelling to Rome with Sister Barbara and Emily Nabholz, SCN, to meet with members of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life concerning our Constitutions. We stopped in Paris to visit the Church where St. Vincent’s body is. As we placed the Constitutions on the casket and prayed, I had a keen sense of Barbara’s rootedness in the charism of charity exemplified by St. Vincent and Catherine Spalding. I experienced her deep faith that by the intercession of Vincent and Catherine all would be well as we went to the meeting in Rome.” Sister Judy also recalls that Sister Barbara invited others to collaborate with SCNs and played a pivotal role in expanding the Associate program. Sister Maggie is grateful to Sister Barbara who accepted her into the SCN Community following an appointment with her early one morning to discuss her transferring from another Congregation into the Community. “I saw the booklet Living with Christ and I knew that she’d been praying before I came in. She was praying to do the right thing, I’m perfectly sure about that.”
The above excerpt is from page 15 of the pdf found at:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&ved=0CDYQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.scnfamily.org%2Fjourney%2Fassets%2Fjourney10vol02.pdf&ei=t4B0UpftM8XgsAT6_YGABA&usg=AFQjCNEobxqDiEINS0e3DijL8CDe7s_tsA&sig2=hH-Z2iBZ2n7S87sC8Oz_LQ&bvm=bv.55819444,d.cWc
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Saturday, November 2, 2013
From 2011: Post-Christian Sisters | Catholic World Report - Global Church news and views
Post-Christian Sisters | Catholic World Report - Global Church news and views
The unprecedented decision by the Vatican to undertake an apostolic visitation to assess the quality of religious life in orders of sisters in the United States came as a big surprise to many people when it was announced in January. That surprise was doubled with the news two months later that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) will be conducting a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents most of the leaders of US women religious.
But people who have been closely watching the deterioration of many of the women’s religious orders in this country were not at all surprised that the Vatican initiated these assessments. Indeed, many sisters themselves have asked and prayed for Vatican attention to the condition of women’s religious communities. Certainly there is concern that the numbers of sisters are plunging and ecclesial properties are being converted to secular use, but even more critical problems are evident: many sisters no longer work in apostolates related to the Church and no longer live or pray in community, and sometimes sisters even openly dissent from Church teaching on matters such as women’s ordination, homosexuality, the centrality of the Eucharist, and the hierarchal nature of the Church.
Likewise, the LCWR has had a stormy relationship with the Vatican for the past 40 years, and the LCWR has been very clear about its determination to “transform” religious life as well as the Church itself.
The Vatican has said very little about the doctrinal assessment of the LCWR by the CDF, but an April 2 letter from the LCWR to its members informing them of the CDF notification was obtained by the National Catholic Reporter. That newspaper reported that the CDF was undertaking the assessment because doctrinal problems that were discussed with LCWR leadership in 2001 still remain.
Specific issues identified were acceptance of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality and women’s ordination, as well as acceptance of the doctrines reiterated in the CDF document Dominus Jesus that Christ is the savior of all humanity and that the fullness of his Church is found in the Catholic Church. The February 20, 2009, Vatican letter also reportedly said that talks given at the LCWR annual assemblies since 2001 were evidence that the doctrinal problems continue to be present.
LCWR INFLUENCE ON WOMEN RELIGIOUS
The doctrinal assessment of the LCWR is said to be unrelated to the apostolic visitation of the women’s orders, but in fact, much of the disorder in women’s communities today can be traced directly to the influence of the LCWR. The leaders of about 90 percent of the women’s religious communities in the US belong to the LCWR, which has a powerful influence on its members and their religious orders through its workshops, publications, and affiliated organizations.
Lora Ann Quinonez and Mary Daniel Turner, two sisters who were executive directors of the LCWR between 1972 and 1986, related in their 1992 tell-all book, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters, that, “The 30-plus years of the Conference’s existence coincide with a major transitional period in society, church, and religious communities. Whether one celebrates or deplores the fact, it is widely acknowledged that the LCWR has been a force in the transformation process.”
Thus, the back-to-back occurrence of the two assessments is not just a coincidence, and a look at the record of the LCWR sheds significant light on the Vatican decision to undertake both of these initiatives at this time.
Church-recognized organizations for heads of religious orders began in the early 1950s, when the Vatican encouraged superiors to form national conferences. At that pre-Internet time, the idea was to help superiors exchange information, support each other in building up religious life, and coordinate and cooperate with bishops and the Holy See. Canon law says that the Holy See alone has the power to erect superiors’ conferences and that the conferences are under the “supreme governance” of the Holy See, which must approve their statutes. Members of religious orders do not belong to these conferences or have any voting rights; only those in positions of “leadership” in religious orders belong.
In 1959, the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Women’s Institutes was canonically established, but within 10 years, varying interpretations of documents issued by the Second Vatican Council encouraged activist sisters to transform the conference from an ecclesial body into an independent organization of like-minded professionals focused on women’s liberation issues.
REMAKING THE CONFERENCE
In 1970, new by-laws were written by conference leaders and implemented before the membership could vote on them and before the Vatican approved them. These new by-laws drastically altered the nature of the conference by extending membership to entire “leadership teams,” not just the superior of an order. More progressive orders had already adopted team leadership, and thus acquired many more votes than orders maintaining the traditional, canonical model of one major superior. And this paved the way for the 1970 election of officers who were determined to re-make the conference.
Controversy over the direction of the conference, as well as the expansion and implementation of membership criteria not yet approved by the membership, caused an open rift within the LCWR. Some members complained to the leadership that the new version of statutes eliminated the ecclesial character of the organization and replaced it with a sociological and civil character, and they expressed concern about sweeping new powers given to those in charge of the LCWR.
As the leadership prepared for the September 1971 national assembly where a vote on the new statutes would occur, the Vatican asked that “particular consideration” at the assembly be given to Pope Paul VI’s new apostolic exhortation Evangelica Testificatio, which was his reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of renewal in religious orders. That request was ignored, as were concerns of members who thought the assembly program lacked a spiritual dimension. Some members also objected to the theology expressed by scheduled assembly speakers, including Father Richard McBrien and (former) Father Gregory Baum. Some superiors even boycotted the assembly because of these concerns.
The new statutes were approved at the assembly, which again allowed voting by members admitted under the expanded definition of membership that had not yet been approved by the members or the Vatican. A last-minute amendment changed the name of the organization to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, reportedly because the former name had “militaristic and hierarchic connotations.”
In a pattern that would be repeated over the years, the LCWR leadership neglected to inform its membership immediately about a critical issue: the Vatican was not happy about the new statutes. The LCWR president finally wrote members seven months later to inform them that the officers had been negotiating with the Vatican over their differences but thought it best to keep the matter quiet. The Holy See eventually insisted that the new statutes be amended to include acknowledgment of the authority of the bishops and the Vatican. Only after three years of negotiation did the Vatican agree to the new name, provided that the new title be followed by the sentence: “This title is to be interpreted as: the Conference of Leaders of Congregations of Women Religious of the United States of America.”
In the US bishops’ conference, some bishops suggested that they discontinue their liaison committee with the LCWR because the conference had changed its name, nature, membership, and statutes. One bishop even noted that the superiors’ conference was now defunct because it had dissolved itself and morphed into a different entity, but some sympathetic hierarchy smoothed over the differences. Many more disagreements with the Vatican and the bishops would occur over the years, some of which followed the pattern of a leadership that did not consult its members before taking controversial stands.
THE NEW AGENDA
The LCWR assembly in 1972 featured a canon lawyer who spoke on “Religious Communities as Providential Gift for the Liberation of Women” and suggested that women bring lawsuits against the Church in both civil and Church courts and stage economic boycotts of parish churches.
At the LCWR 1974 annual assembly, the membership approved a resolution calling for “all ministries in the church [to] be open to women and men as the Spirit calls them.” Also in 1974, the LCWR published the book Widening the Dialogue, a response to Evangelica Testificatio, the Pope’s exhortation on renewal of religious life. The LCWR book was highly critical of the Pope’s teachings and was used by the LCWR in workshops for sisters.
When the first Women’s Ordination Conference was being organized in 1975, the LCWR president appointed a sister as liaison to the group planning the event. The Vatican curial office overseeing religious subsequently directed the LCWR to dissociate itself from the ordination conference, but the LCWR officers refused, and the sister went on to become coordinator of the organizing task force for the event.
At the 1977 assembly, the new LCWR president, Sister Joan Doyle, BVM, related that sisters were moving into “socio-political ministries” in or out of Church institutions, and she called for women’s involvement in decision-making at every level of the Church, as well as “active participation in all aspects of the church’s ministry.” It was during the 1970s that the LCWR board voted to join the National Organization for Women’s boycott of convention sites in states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, and the board obtained NGO status for the LCWR at the United Nations.
The 1978 LCWR publication Patterns in Obedience and Authority reported tensions both within religious congregations and between congregations and the US hierarchy: “US women religious and bishops often appear to have significantly different awarenesses, interpretations, and acceptance of new insights deriving from recent church teaching and the human sciences. There are differing concepts and expectations of authority, of the structures and processes of decision-making; differing images of religious life; differing ideas of ministry and minister.”
As president of the LCWR in 1979, Sister Theresa Kane, RSM, was selected to represent US women religious in greeting Pope John Paul II on his first visit to this country. Even though the Pope had recently reiterated the Church teaching that ordination is reserved to men, Sister Theresa included in her public greeting a demand for including women in all ministries in the Church. Her action caused a further rift within the LCWR, and even more members quit the conference.
As Pope John Paul II became increasingly concerned about religious life in the US, in 1983 he appointed a commission to evaluate American religious life, and he approved a document of guidelines titled Essential Elements in Church Teaching on Religious Life. It broke no new ground, but simply summarized some key elements of religious life. Nevertheless, the LCWR was very vocal in repudiating the document.
For the 1985 LCWR assembly, Mercy Sister Margaret Farley, RSM, was invited to be a featured speaker. She was one of 40 religious who had signed a 1984 statement published in the New York Times that claimed more than one legitimate Catholic position on abortion, and she had not yet resolved her situation with the Vatican, which had directed the religious signers to recant. The US bishops’ conference and the Vatican asked the LCWR to withdraw the invitation to Sister Margaret, but the leaders refused to do so. Consequently, both Archbishop John Quinn and the apostolic delegate, Archbishop Pio Laghi, also scheduled to speak at the assembly, cancelled their appearances.
LOYAL DISSENT?
The 1988 LCWR publication Claiming Our Truth further revealed the LCWR’s socio/political agenda and highlighted the LCWR concept of religious life, declaring that sisters are “moving from maintaining existing structures to creating alternatives,” are seeking “new patterns of relating to church hierarchy,” including working for “patterns of mutual accountability with structures for responsible dissent,” and laboring for “the ongoing conversion and continual transformation of our society and our church.” This activity, the book states, may often put sisters “in conflict with established centers of power in society and church,” and “fidelity to society and church may, at times, mean loyal dissent.”
This view of religious life was reflected in the five-year goals and objectives of the LCWR for 1989-1994, which included the goal, “To develop structures of solidarity with women in order to work for the liberation of women through the transformation of social and ecclesial structures and relationships.”
Further transformation was urged in a document developed at the joint LCWR-Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) assembly in 1989 and published in a brochure titled “Transformative Elements for Religious Life in the Future.” The elements were never voted on by the membership, but the LCWR has continued to encourage their discussion within religious communities. Among the more startling “elements” is one predicting that by 2010, religious communities will be ecumenical and open to married couples and people of different genders and sexual orientation, and vows will be optional.
In an unprecedented move, in 1992 the Vatican canonically erected an alternate superiors’ conference for US women superiors who were increasingly reluctant to maintain any formal connection with the LCWR. The LCWR was quite unhappy about approval of the new Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, and complained to the Vatican that approving the alternate conference was “contrary to a primary function of leadership—to promote unity and understanding.” (Superiors from about 10 percent of the women’s orders now belong to the alternate conference.)
Speakers at the 1993 LCWR assembly continued to distance women religious from the Church. Sister Mary Ann Donovan, SC, noted that “women find their efforts to live the varying forms of religious life complicated both by the view of women proper to a given society, and by the conservative nature of ecclesiastical law and custom.” Sister Margaret Brennan, IHM, a former LCWR president, said in her address that “Religious are a global movement, not just a religious phenomenon; they have a message and mission from and for the world and not merely an agenda from or for any one church.”
THE HOMOSEXUALITY ISSUE
Also in 1993, the national board of the LCWR issued a statement, “Concerning the Rights of Gay and Lesbian Persons.” That statement charged, “Recent Church documents invoke religious principles to justify discrimination against homosexual persons.” This no doubt referred to a 1992 background paper from the CDF intended for bishops but leaked to the press and misinterpreted. Also ongoing at the time was a Vatican-commissioned evaluation of public statements and activities of Father Robert Nugent, SDS, and Sister Jeannine Gramick, SND, co-founders of New Ways Ministry, an outreach to homosexual persons that had been banned in some dioceses because of its flawed philosophies.
After an 11-year study of the work of these two religious, the Vatican in 1999 permanently prohibited them from any further pastoral work involving homosexuals because: “The ambiguities and errors of the approach of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church.” Father Nugent accepted this disciplinary decision, but Sister Jeannine did not, and the LCWR rushed to her defense.
At the 1999 assembly, where the theme was “Change at the heart of it all,” the LCWR passed a special resolution regarding the Gramick case, complaining about “a pattern in the exercise of ecclesiastical authority experienced as a source of suffering and division by many within the Catholic community.” The LCWR leadership then laid out a one-year plan to engage the bishops and the Vatican on the issue.
LCWR past president Sister Camille D’Arienzo, RSM wrote in the LCWR 2000 annual report that, in speaking to Vatican officials, the LCWR leadership found it necessary to interpret cultural differences in their discussion about Sister Jeannine’s notification. “Homosexuality is often a subject of conversation in the US, but not necessarily in other countries or the Vatican,” she explained. Similarly, “questioning and disagreement are acceptable interactions in our society, but in other settings they may be seen as disloyalty.” And referring to the visit to the Vatican, she further opined: “There are times when we question the significance of supporting a structure that is so foreign to our commitment to right relationships, to our expression of a living faith and to our desire for an inclusive Church.”
The year of lobbying and “dialogue” with the hierarchy about the Vatican’s discipline of Sister Jeannine Gramick culminated in the LCWR August 2000 assembly. In her presidential address, Sister Nancy Sylvester talked about LCWR’s “tension and conflict” with the Vatican, stating, “We believe in the power to change unjust structures and laws. We respect loyal dissent.” She continued that the sisters had been “disappointed, frustrated, angered, and deeply saddened by official responses that seem authoritarian, punitive, disrespectful of our legitimate authority as elected leaders, and disrespectful of our capacity to be moral agents.” She then presented what she called a “casualty list” sustained from dealings with Church officials. That list of injuries included: sisters who had signed the New York Times 1984 abortion statement; the 1995 Vatican letter on the ordination of women; theologians and scholars who had been silenced by the Church; the canonical approval of the alternate superiors’ conference; and the CDF discipline of Sister Jeannine Gramick. In conclusion, Sister Nancy observed: “I do believe that we are at an impasse with the official church that we love,” and she speculated about whether the Vatican would de-legitimize the LCWR.
THE CDF AND LCWR
The events of the previous few years no doubt set the stage for the CDF to give the LCWR leadership a doctrinal warning in 2001. No public indication was given then that the CDF met with LCWR leaders about doctrinal concerns, but the LCWR leaders’ determination to reform the institutional Church through “loyal dissent” remained very public. In fact, the 2009 CDF notification reportedly indicated that the tenor and doctrinal content of addresses given at LCWR annual assemblies since the 2001 CDF-LCWR meeting were evidence that the doctrinal problems continue.
In the LCWR 2001 annual report, Sister Mary Mollisson, CSA, LCWR president, reiterated the long-held conference strategy to keep “dialoging” with Church authorities to keep the issues open. She wrote: “In keeping with our desire for right relationships among church officials and members of the Conference, the Presidency continues a dialogue with bishops and Vatican officials. We approach this dialogue with a sense of urgency and with a passion to stay in conversations that will decrease the tension between doctrinal adherence and the pastoral needs of marginalized people. We also continue to express our desire for women to be involved in more decision-making within church structures. The risk of this part of our journey is being misunderstood and being perceived as unfaithful to the Magisterium of the church.” And she characterized Church officials as just not comprehending the sisters’ message: “Understanding of authority, obedience, communal discernment, and the prophetic nature of religious need further conversations.”
The LCWR national board agreed in 2002 to write letters of support to New Ways Ministry and chose as the theme for that year’s assembly “Leadership in Dynamic Tension.” In her presidential address to the assembly, Sister Kathleen Pruitt, CSJP continued the LCWR mantra that the Church needed to be reformed, and that LCWR sisters were the very people to do it: “The challenge to us, how best to speak clearly, to act effectively to bring about necessary change, reform, renewal, and healing within our wounded world, our nation, among ourselves, and particularly in our church.… Call for change or reform of structures, modes, and methods of acting that perpetuate exclusivity, secrecy, lack of honesty and openness, all of which foster inappropriate exercise of power, is tension-filled.”
A LCWR press release after the 2003 assembly reported that “LCWR president Sister Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM challenged the [LCWR] leaders to maximize the potential to create change that is inherent in religious life. ‘We have uncovered within ourselves the power most necessary for the creation, salvation, and resurrection of our church, our world, and our earth. It is the power of relationship, of our sisterhood with all that is. This power is prophetic; it is the most radical act of dissent.’”
In 2004, the LCWR assembly was held jointly with the Conference of Major Superiors of Men. At that event, Father Michael H. Crosby, OFMCap. spoke on “Religious: A Prophetic Voice in the Midst of a Violent World.” He expanded the definition of violence to include “the sinful, structural, and systemic violence that has come to be canonized in a certain understanding of holiness that is increasingly promoted by the highest clerics and their house prophets in our own church.” And he noted that many of the religious at the assembly consider some of the teachings of the Magisterium to be “unjust, violent, and sinful.” He told the group: “We have not been public enough in our protest of patriarchy,” and he accused the “‘official’ patriarchal” Church of “unjustifiable violence against women, and, I would also say, against gays.”
Also in 2004, the LCWR published An Invitation to Systems Thinking: An Opportunity to Act for Systemic Change, a handbook for religious orders. One of the issues addressed in that booklet is the fact that some sisters, schooled in “a holistic, organic view of the world” and in “process, liberationist, and feminist theologies…believe that the celebration of Eucharist is so bound up with a church structure caught in negative aspects of the Western mind they can no longer participate with a sense of integrity.” The views of these sisters, the booklet advises, must be respected.
At the 2005 assembly, LCWR President Sister Christine Vladimiroff, OSB declared: “The future of religious life is in our hands to shape for those who will follow us.” Sister Christine showed similar independence from the Church in 2001 when, as prioress of her order, she refused a directive from the Vatican to tell one of her sisters, Sister Joan Chittister, to decline an invitation to give a talk at the Women’s Ordination Worldwide conference in Dublin, Ireland.
The same Sister Joan Chittister, a former president of the LCWR, gave the keynote address at the 2006 LCWR assembly, telling the sisters: “If we proclaim ourselves to be ecclesial women we must ask if what we mean by that is that we will do what the men of the church tell us to do or that we will do what the people of the church need to have us do.”
The presidential address at that 2006 meeting was given by LCWR president Sister Beatrice Eichten, OSF, who noted: “We religious have shifted from being ‘obedient daughters’ and a religious work force to being adult educated women with a mature identity who believe we have something to say about our church, its teaching and its practice. This shift has strained our relationship with the hierarchical church, where we experience the pain of often being invisible, relegated to third class status, and absent at the table of decision.
“…We are challenged to keep open the door of dialogue with the hierarchical church, as we continue to ‘claim responsibility for determining [our] own identity and the meaning of religious life.’”
In accepting the LCWR 2007 Outstanding Leadership Award, Sister Joan Chittister again repeated her complaint that “women leaders have been kept out of leadership in church and state for no good reason for far too long.” And she repeated the LCWR goal of transforming religious life: “…we ourselves are now the new small groups of women leaders who must come from one kind of religious life to begin another kind in a new and different world.”
“GROWN BEYOND” RELIGION
Perhaps the most startling talk at that 2007 LCWR assembly was the keynote address by Sister Laurie Brink, OP. Sister Laurie said that some religious communities were “sojourning,” and such a group is “no longer ecclesiastical,” having “grown beyond the bounds of institutional religion.… Religious titles, institutional limitations, ecclesiastical authorities no longer fit this congregation, which in most respects is Post-Christian.” And she went on to observe about this kind of community: “Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God?”
Sister Laurie also predicted a “coming conflagration” for the American Catholic Church because of a hierarchy out of touch with the faithful: “Lay ecclesial ministers are feeling disenfranchised. Catholic theologians are denied academic freedom. Religious and lay women feel scrutinized simply because of their biology. Gays and lesbians desire to participate as fully human, fully sexual Catholics within their parishes.”
A keynote speaker for the joint LCWR-CMSM 2008 assembly was Sister Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, who complained about “patriarchal values that, by any objective measure, relegate women to second-class status governed by male-dominated structures, law, and ritual.” And she went on to compare the Church hierarchy to the prodigal son, saying that Church officials should apologize to dissident members who reject the teachings and authority of the Catholic Church.
In her presidential address at that assembly, LCWR President Sister Mary Whited, CPPS compared the institutional Church to the Old Testament Pharaoh who enslaved the people and led an oppressive regime. And she compared the LCWR to Old Testament midwives, who refused to act on Pharaoh’s orders so that they could bring new life and hope to the people.
The Vatican obviously took note of these public declarations, and the LCWR leadership reportedly received the letter from the CDF notifying them of the doctrinal assessment on March 10, 2009. Yet the LCWR leadership did not inform their members until April 2. In a public statement later in April, the leadership indicated surprise and disappointment with the Vatican decision, and insisted they want to continue to “dialogue.”
However, with sisters openly saying that some religious orders are post-Christian, with some sisters boycotting the Eucharist, and with LCWR leaders insisting that they have a role in determining Church teaching, the marathon dialogue may be reaching the finish line.
Post-Christian Sisters
May 12, 2011
The Vatican’s investigation of women religious in the US was a long time coming.
But people who have been closely watching the deterioration of many of the women’s religious orders in this country were not at all surprised that the Vatican initiated these assessments. Indeed, many sisters themselves have asked and prayed for Vatican attention to the condition of women’s religious communities. Certainly there is concern that the numbers of sisters are plunging and ecclesial properties are being converted to secular use, but even more critical problems are evident: many sisters no longer work in apostolates related to the Church and no longer live or pray in community, and sometimes sisters even openly dissent from Church teaching on matters such as women’s ordination, homosexuality, the centrality of the Eucharist, and the hierarchal nature of the Church.
Likewise, the LCWR has had a stormy relationship with the Vatican for the past 40 years, and the LCWR has been very clear about its determination to “transform” religious life as well as the Church itself.
The Vatican has said very little about the doctrinal assessment of the LCWR by the CDF, but an April 2 letter from the LCWR to its members informing them of the CDF notification was obtained by the National Catholic Reporter. That newspaper reported that the CDF was undertaking the assessment because doctrinal problems that were discussed with LCWR leadership in 2001 still remain.
Specific issues identified were acceptance of the Church’s teaching on homosexuality and women’s ordination, as well as acceptance of the doctrines reiterated in the CDF document Dominus Jesus that Christ is the savior of all humanity and that the fullness of his Church is found in the Catholic Church. The February 20, 2009, Vatican letter also reportedly said that talks given at the LCWR annual assemblies since 2001 were evidence that the doctrinal problems continue to be present.
LCWR INFLUENCE ON WOMEN RELIGIOUS
The doctrinal assessment of the LCWR is said to be unrelated to the apostolic visitation of the women’s orders, but in fact, much of the disorder in women’s communities today can be traced directly to the influence of the LCWR. The leaders of about 90 percent of the women’s religious communities in the US belong to the LCWR, which has a powerful influence on its members and their religious orders through its workshops, publications, and affiliated organizations.
Lora Ann Quinonez and Mary Daniel Turner, two sisters who were executive directors of the LCWR between 1972 and 1986, related in their 1992 tell-all book, The Transformation of American Catholic Sisters, that, “The 30-plus years of the Conference’s existence coincide with a major transitional period in society, church, and religious communities. Whether one celebrates or deplores the fact, it is widely acknowledged that the LCWR has been a force in the transformation process.”
Thus, the back-to-back occurrence of the two assessments is not just a coincidence, and a look at the record of the LCWR sheds significant light on the Vatican decision to undertake both of these initiatives at this time.
Church-recognized organizations for heads of religious orders began in the early 1950s, when the Vatican encouraged superiors to form national conferences. At that pre-Internet time, the idea was to help superiors exchange information, support each other in building up religious life, and coordinate and cooperate with bishops and the Holy See. Canon law says that the Holy See alone has the power to erect superiors’ conferences and that the conferences are under the “supreme governance” of the Holy See, which must approve their statutes. Members of religious orders do not belong to these conferences or have any voting rights; only those in positions of “leadership” in religious orders belong.
In 1959, the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Women’s Institutes was canonically established, but within 10 years, varying interpretations of documents issued by the Second Vatican Council encouraged activist sisters to transform the conference from an ecclesial body into an independent organization of like-minded professionals focused on women’s liberation issues.
REMAKING THE CONFERENCE
In 1970, new by-laws were written by conference leaders and implemented before the membership could vote on them and before the Vatican approved them. These new by-laws drastically altered the nature of the conference by extending membership to entire “leadership teams,” not just the superior of an order. More progressive orders had already adopted team leadership, and thus acquired many more votes than orders maintaining the traditional, canonical model of one major superior. And this paved the way for the 1970 election of officers who were determined to re-make the conference.
Controversy over the direction of the conference, as well as the expansion and implementation of membership criteria not yet approved by the membership, caused an open rift within the LCWR. Some members complained to the leadership that the new version of statutes eliminated the ecclesial character of the organization and replaced it with a sociological and civil character, and they expressed concern about sweeping new powers given to those in charge of the LCWR.
As the leadership prepared for the September 1971 national assembly where a vote on the new statutes would occur, the Vatican asked that “particular consideration” at the assembly be given to Pope Paul VI’s new apostolic exhortation Evangelica Testificatio, which was his reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of renewal in religious orders. That request was ignored, as were concerns of members who thought the assembly program lacked a spiritual dimension. Some members also objected to the theology expressed by scheduled assembly speakers, including Father Richard McBrien and (former) Father Gregory Baum. Some superiors even boycotted the assembly because of these concerns.
The new statutes were approved at the assembly, which again allowed voting by members admitted under the expanded definition of membership that had not yet been approved by the members or the Vatican. A last-minute amendment changed the name of the organization to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, reportedly because the former name had “militaristic and hierarchic connotations.”
In a pattern that would be repeated over the years, the LCWR leadership neglected to inform its membership immediately about a critical issue: the Vatican was not happy about the new statutes. The LCWR president finally wrote members seven months later to inform them that the officers had been negotiating with the Vatican over their differences but thought it best to keep the matter quiet. The Holy See eventually insisted that the new statutes be amended to include acknowledgment of the authority of the bishops and the Vatican. Only after three years of negotiation did the Vatican agree to the new name, provided that the new title be followed by the sentence: “This title is to be interpreted as: the Conference of Leaders of Congregations of Women Religious of the United States of America.”
In the US bishops’ conference, some bishops suggested that they discontinue their liaison committee with the LCWR because the conference had changed its name, nature, membership, and statutes. One bishop even noted that the superiors’ conference was now defunct because it had dissolved itself and morphed into a different entity, but some sympathetic hierarchy smoothed over the differences. Many more disagreements with the Vatican and the bishops would occur over the years, some of which followed the pattern of a leadership that did not consult its members before taking controversial stands.
THE NEW AGENDA
The LCWR assembly in 1972 featured a canon lawyer who spoke on “Religious Communities as Providential Gift for the Liberation of Women” and suggested that women bring lawsuits against the Church in both civil and Church courts and stage economic boycotts of parish churches.
At the LCWR 1974 annual assembly, the membership approved a resolution calling for “all ministries in the church [to] be open to women and men as the Spirit calls them.” Also in 1974, the LCWR published the book Widening the Dialogue, a response to Evangelica Testificatio, the Pope’s exhortation on renewal of religious life. The LCWR book was highly critical of the Pope’s teachings and was used by the LCWR in workshops for sisters.
At the 1977 assembly, the new LCWR president, Sister Joan Doyle, BVM, related that sisters were moving into “socio-political ministries” in or out of Church institutions, and she called for women’s involvement in decision-making at every level of the Church, as well as “active participation in all aspects of the church’s ministry.” It was during the 1970s that the LCWR board voted to join the National Organization for Women’s boycott of convention sites in states that had not ratified the Equal Rights Amendment, and the board obtained NGO status for the LCWR at the United Nations.
The 1978 LCWR publication Patterns in Obedience and Authority reported tensions both within religious congregations and between congregations and the US hierarchy: “US women religious and bishops often appear to have significantly different awarenesses, interpretations, and acceptance of new insights deriving from recent church teaching and the human sciences. There are differing concepts and expectations of authority, of the structures and processes of decision-making; differing images of religious life; differing ideas of ministry and minister.”
As president of the LCWR in 1979, Sister Theresa Kane, RSM, was selected to represent US women religious in greeting Pope John Paul II on his first visit to this country. Even though the Pope had recently reiterated the Church teaching that ordination is reserved to men, Sister Theresa included in her public greeting a demand for including women in all ministries in the Church. Her action caused a further rift within the LCWR, and even more members quit the conference.
As Pope John Paul II became increasingly concerned about religious life in the US, in 1983 he appointed a commission to evaluate American religious life, and he approved a document of guidelines titled Essential Elements in Church Teaching on Religious Life. It broke no new ground, but simply summarized some key elements of religious life. Nevertheless, the LCWR was very vocal in repudiating the document.
For the 1985 LCWR assembly, Mercy Sister Margaret Farley, RSM, was invited to be a featured speaker. She was one of 40 religious who had signed a 1984 statement published in the New York Times that claimed more than one legitimate Catholic position on abortion, and she had not yet resolved her situation with the Vatican, which had directed the religious signers to recant. The US bishops’ conference and the Vatican asked the LCWR to withdraw the invitation to Sister Margaret, but the leaders refused to do so. Consequently, both Archbishop John Quinn and the apostolic delegate, Archbishop Pio Laghi, also scheduled to speak at the assembly, cancelled their appearances.
LOYAL DISSENT?
The 1988 LCWR publication Claiming Our Truth further revealed the LCWR’s socio/political agenda and highlighted the LCWR concept of religious life, declaring that sisters are “moving from maintaining existing structures to creating alternatives,” are seeking “new patterns of relating to church hierarchy,” including working for “patterns of mutual accountability with structures for responsible dissent,” and laboring for “the ongoing conversion and continual transformation of our society and our church.” This activity, the book states, may often put sisters “in conflict with established centers of power in society and church,” and “fidelity to society and church may, at times, mean loyal dissent.”
This view of religious life was reflected in the five-year goals and objectives of the LCWR for 1989-1994, which included the goal, “To develop structures of solidarity with women in order to work for the liberation of women through the transformation of social and ecclesial structures and relationships.”
Further transformation was urged in a document developed at the joint LCWR-Conference of Major Superiors of Men (CMSM) assembly in 1989 and published in a brochure titled “Transformative Elements for Religious Life in the Future.” The elements were never voted on by the membership, but the LCWR has continued to encourage their discussion within religious communities. Among the more startling “elements” is one predicting that by 2010, religious communities will be ecumenical and open to married couples and people of different genders and sexual orientation, and vows will be optional.
In an unprecedented move, in 1992 the Vatican canonically erected an alternate superiors’ conference for US women superiors who were increasingly reluctant to maintain any formal connection with the LCWR. The LCWR was quite unhappy about approval of the new Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, and complained to the Vatican that approving the alternate conference was “contrary to a primary function of leadership—to promote unity and understanding.” (Superiors from about 10 percent of the women’s orders now belong to the alternate conference.)
Speakers at the 1993 LCWR assembly continued to distance women religious from the Church. Sister Mary Ann Donovan, SC, noted that “women find their efforts to live the varying forms of religious life complicated both by the view of women proper to a given society, and by the conservative nature of ecclesiastical law and custom.” Sister Margaret Brennan, IHM, a former LCWR president, said in her address that “Religious are a global movement, not just a religious phenomenon; they have a message and mission from and for the world and not merely an agenda from or for any one church.”
THE HOMOSEXUALITY ISSUE
Also in 1993, the national board of the LCWR issued a statement, “Concerning the Rights of Gay and Lesbian Persons.” That statement charged, “Recent Church documents invoke religious principles to justify discrimination against homosexual persons.” This no doubt referred to a 1992 background paper from the CDF intended for bishops but leaked to the press and misinterpreted. Also ongoing at the time was a Vatican-commissioned evaluation of public statements and activities of Father Robert Nugent, SDS, and Sister Jeannine Gramick, SND, co-founders of New Ways Ministry, an outreach to homosexual persons that had been banned in some dioceses because of its flawed philosophies.
After an 11-year study of the work of these two religious, the Vatican in 1999 permanently prohibited them from any further pastoral work involving homosexuals because: “The ambiguities and errors of the approach of Father Nugent and Sister Gramick have caused confusion among the Catholic people and have harmed the community of the Church.” Father Nugent accepted this disciplinary decision, but Sister Jeannine did not, and the LCWR rushed to her defense.
At the 1999 assembly, where the theme was “Change at the heart of it all,” the LCWR passed a special resolution regarding the Gramick case, complaining about “a pattern in the exercise of ecclesiastical authority experienced as a source of suffering and division by many within the Catholic community.” The LCWR leadership then laid out a one-year plan to engage the bishops and the Vatican on the issue.
LCWR past president Sister Camille D’Arienzo, RSM wrote in the LCWR 2000 annual report that, in speaking to Vatican officials, the LCWR leadership found it necessary to interpret cultural differences in their discussion about Sister Jeannine’s notification. “Homosexuality is often a subject of conversation in the US, but not necessarily in other countries or the Vatican,” she explained. Similarly, “questioning and disagreement are acceptable interactions in our society, but in other settings they may be seen as disloyalty.” And referring to the visit to the Vatican, she further opined: “There are times when we question the significance of supporting a structure that is so foreign to our commitment to right relationships, to our expression of a living faith and to our desire for an inclusive Church.”
The year of lobbying and “dialogue” with the hierarchy about the Vatican’s discipline of Sister Jeannine Gramick culminated in the LCWR August 2000 assembly. In her presidential address, Sister Nancy Sylvester talked about LCWR’s “tension and conflict” with the Vatican, stating, “We believe in the power to change unjust structures and laws. We respect loyal dissent.” She continued that the sisters had been “disappointed, frustrated, angered, and deeply saddened by official responses that seem authoritarian, punitive, disrespectful of our legitimate authority as elected leaders, and disrespectful of our capacity to be moral agents.” She then presented what she called a “casualty list” sustained from dealings with Church officials. That list of injuries included: sisters who had signed the New York Times 1984 abortion statement; the 1995 Vatican letter on the ordination of women; theologians and scholars who had been silenced by the Church; the canonical approval of the alternate superiors’ conference; and the CDF discipline of Sister Jeannine Gramick. In conclusion, Sister Nancy observed: “I do believe that we are at an impasse with the official church that we love,” and she speculated about whether the Vatican would de-legitimize the LCWR.
THE CDF AND LCWR
The events of the previous few years no doubt set the stage for the CDF to give the LCWR leadership a doctrinal warning in 2001. No public indication was given then that the CDF met with LCWR leaders about doctrinal concerns, but the LCWR leaders’ determination to reform the institutional Church through “loyal dissent” remained very public. In fact, the 2009 CDF notification reportedly indicated that the tenor and doctrinal content of addresses given at LCWR annual assemblies since the 2001 CDF-LCWR meeting were evidence that the doctrinal problems continue.
In the LCWR 2001 annual report, Sister Mary Mollisson, CSA, LCWR president, reiterated the long-held conference strategy to keep “dialoging” with Church authorities to keep the issues open. She wrote: “In keeping with our desire for right relationships among church officials and members of the Conference, the Presidency continues a dialogue with bishops and Vatican officials. We approach this dialogue with a sense of urgency and with a passion to stay in conversations that will decrease the tension between doctrinal adherence and the pastoral needs of marginalized people. We also continue to express our desire for women to be involved in more decision-making within church structures. The risk of this part of our journey is being misunderstood and being perceived as unfaithful to the Magisterium of the church.” And she characterized Church officials as just not comprehending the sisters’ message: “Understanding of authority, obedience, communal discernment, and the prophetic nature of religious need further conversations.”
The LCWR national board agreed in 2002 to write letters of support to New Ways Ministry and chose as the theme for that year’s assembly “Leadership in Dynamic Tension.” In her presidential address to the assembly, Sister Kathleen Pruitt, CSJP continued the LCWR mantra that the Church needed to be reformed, and that LCWR sisters were the very people to do it: “The challenge to us, how best to speak clearly, to act effectively to bring about necessary change, reform, renewal, and healing within our wounded world, our nation, among ourselves, and particularly in our church.… Call for change or reform of structures, modes, and methods of acting that perpetuate exclusivity, secrecy, lack of honesty and openness, all of which foster inappropriate exercise of power, is tension-filled.”
A LCWR press release after the 2003 assembly reported that “LCWR president Sister Mary Ann Zollmann, BVM challenged the [LCWR] leaders to maximize the potential to create change that is inherent in religious life. ‘We have uncovered within ourselves the power most necessary for the creation, salvation, and resurrection of our church, our world, and our earth. It is the power of relationship, of our sisterhood with all that is. This power is prophetic; it is the most radical act of dissent.’”
Also in 2004, the LCWR published An Invitation to Systems Thinking: An Opportunity to Act for Systemic Change, a handbook for religious orders. One of the issues addressed in that booklet is the fact that some sisters, schooled in “a holistic, organic view of the world” and in “process, liberationist, and feminist theologies…believe that the celebration of Eucharist is so bound up with a church structure caught in negative aspects of the Western mind they can no longer participate with a sense of integrity.” The views of these sisters, the booklet advises, must be respected.
At the 2005 assembly, LCWR President Sister Christine Vladimiroff, OSB declared: “The future of religious life is in our hands to shape for those who will follow us.” Sister Christine showed similar independence from the Church in 2001 when, as prioress of her order, she refused a directive from the Vatican to tell one of her sisters, Sister Joan Chittister, to decline an invitation to give a talk at the Women’s Ordination Worldwide conference in Dublin, Ireland.
The same Sister Joan Chittister, a former president of the LCWR, gave the keynote address at the 2006 LCWR assembly, telling the sisters: “If we proclaim ourselves to be ecclesial women we must ask if what we mean by that is that we will do what the men of the church tell us to do or that we will do what the people of the church need to have us do.”
The presidential address at that 2006 meeting was given by LCWR president Sister Beatrice Eichten, OSF, who noted: “We religious have shifted from being ‘obedient daughters’ and a religious work force to being adult educated women with a mature identity who believe we have something to say about our church, its teaching and its practice. This shift has strained our relationship with the hierarchical church, where we experience the pain of often being invisible, relegated to third class status, and absent at the table of decision.
“…We are challenged to keep open the door of dialogue with the hierarchical church, as we continue to ‘claim responsibility for determining [our] own identity and the meaning of religious life.’”
In accepting the LCWR 2007 Outstanding Leadership Award, Sister Joan Chittister again repeated her complaint that “women leaders have been kept out of leadership in church and state for no good reason for far too long.” And she repeated the LCWR goal of transforming religious life: “…we ourselves are now the new small groups of women leaders who must come from one kind of religious life to begin another kind in a new and different world.”
“GROWN BEYOND” RELIGION
Perhaps the most startling talk at that 2007 LCWR assembly was the keynote address by Sister Laurie Brink, OP. Sister Laurie said that some religious communities were “sojourning,” and such a group is “no longer ecclesiastical,” having “grown beyond the bounds of institutional religion.… Religious titles, institutional limitations, ecclesiastical authorities no longer fit this congregation, which in most respects is Post-Christian.” And she went on to observe about this kind of community: “Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God?”
Sister Laurie also predicted a “coming conflagration” for the American Catholic Church because of a hierarchy out of touch with the faithful: “Lay ecclesial ministers are feeling disenfranchised. Catholic theologians are denied academic freedom. Religious and lay women feel scrutinized simply because of their biology. Gays and lesbians desire to participate as fully human, fully sexual Catholics within their parishes.”
A keynote speaker for the joint LCWR-CMSM 2008 assembly was Sister Elizabeth Johnson, CSJ, who complained about “patriarchal values that, by any objective measure, relegate women to second-class status governed by male-dominated structures, law, and ritual.” And she went on to compare the Church hierarchy to the prodigal son, saying that Church officials should apologize to dissident members who reject the teachings and authority of the Catholic Church.
In her presidential address at that assembly, LCWR President Sister Mary Whited, CPPS compared the institutional Church to the Old Testament Pharaoh who enslaved the people and led an oppressive regime. And she compared the LCWR to Old Testament midwives, who refused to act on Pharaoh’s orders so that they could bring new life and hope to the people.
The Vatican obviously took note of these public declarations, and the LCWR leadership reportedly received the letter from the CDF notifying them of the doctrinal assessment on March 10, 2009. Yet the LCWR leadership did not inform their members until April 2. In a public statement later in April, the leadership indicated surprise and disappointment with the Vatican decision, and insisted they want to continue to “dialogue.”
However, with sisters openly saying that some religious orders are post-Christian, with some sisters boycotting the Eucharist, and with LCWR leaders insisting that they have a role in determining Church teaching, the marathon dialogue may be reaching the finish line.
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Future Church supports Women’s Ordination, the LCWR and the reform of the Church in line with their Vatican II vision that misinterprets the Council with a complete hermeneutic of rupture using the ‘Spirit of Vatican II’ ideology.
! I believe that this IS the great apostasy …as we go forward, they may seem to win but we must not give up. We must not become discouraged and quit.
We must remember our basic weapons;
Prayer, Fasting, Penance… the Rosary…and TRUST in the promises of the Lord…
I truly believe that this is what John Paul II warned us about. The ‘reform’ that these groups work for and the beliefs formed by this way of thinking IS the antiChurch , spreading the antiGospel , preaching and teaching an antiChrist….
Lord have mercy on us and protect us and guide us!
I truly hate seeing the fighting, arrogance and judgmental condemnations on many traditionalists blogs. They seem to have become their own magesteriums. Often, I can see little difference between them and Pharisees. Oftentimes it seem that many have lost sight of the difference between judging words, ideas or actions and judging a person….and it is hard for me to see any charity in what I am reading.They believe that they are fighting FOR the Church but as I see it, in reality, they are often fighting AGAINST Her.
Thank You Fr, Z for your blog… and for your insights. You are one of the few blogs with traditional values and the beliefs that I hold dear that I can still read. I really appreciate that…and YOU!
For most of us it is easy to see how the deceived ‘Spirit of Vatican II’ crowd is fighting against the Church. But they also truly believe that they are fighting FOR her. It is harder for many us to see it as fighting against the Church if it is from a traditionalist point of view.
The deception is great in these times that we live! I believe that it is a grave mistake to think that we are immune to being deceived.. I pray every day for protection against deception and for guidance. Again, this is how I see it…
The Church needs us all to fight FOR her!