The
resignation of Pope Benedict XVI has prompted a wave of euphoria for people who
long for the Catholic Church to change its teachings, particularly those
relating to sexual morality, priestly ordination and so-called “reproductive
rights.” And many media outlets have been only too happy to provide a platform
for outlandish comments about the pope and the hierarchy, with many of these
folks implying that a new pope could change church teaching on his own whim.
Much of this recent criticism has
focused on the Vatican’s apostolic visitation of women religious and the
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s mandate to reform the Leadership
Conference of Women Religious, both approved by Pope Benedict. Little to no
effort is made in most of these articles to provide space for the other side of
the argument, so here are some of my own thoughts:
• A CNN Feb. 27 Newsroom program
about Benedict’s resignation and the upcoming conclave included an interview
with Dominican Sister Donna Quinn. Sister Donna told host Carol Costello that
“We women are calling this papal election invalid. It has to be declared
fraudulent because it has no women included in the process.” She went on to
declare that young women today “don’t respect the church.”
Guess what, Sister Donna? You don’t
speak for me, and you don’t speak for many other Catholic women, and you
certainly don’t speak for the thousands of sisters who respect and support the
hierarchal model that Jesus established for His church. Of course, Sister Donna
had no facts to back up her pronouncement, but she still was given an
international platform to express an inaccurate image of Catholic women and
sisters. As a Catholic lay woman and as a friend of countless sisters, I take
great offense at her audacity.
To her credit, interviewer Costello
did interrupt Sister Donna, observing that she had “a very liberal view” and
that not all sisters shared that viewpoint. What troubles me is the fact that
CNN chose to interview Sister Donna about the papacy, for she has been open about
dissenting from church teaching for years, and her point of view was
predictable. In fact, Sister Donna probably is best known for proudly sporting
her “Nuns for Choice” sweat
shirt and for her work escorting
women into an abortion clinic.
• Jason Berry, who long ago had done some responsible
reporting on the clergy sexual abuse crisis, has apparently taken up the cause
of the LCWR and the religious sisters who resisted the apostolic visitation. In
two rambling new essays published on the online news site Global Post Feb.
27 and 28, Berry asserted that both Benedict and John Paul II
“dispensed of Vatican II’s collaborative model of dialogue and exchange on
matters of doctrine and policy and instead imposed loyalty tests on prospective
bishops on matters like celibacy and women’s ordination.”
He also charged that “a generation
of bishops and cardinals” have “become more rigid and reactionary, while
disaffected communities of nuns have challenged the male authority of the
church by ignoring it or going around it, fusing theology and action as
Catholic witnesses on their own terms.”
Berry suggested that the
questionnaire from the Vatican’s apostolic visitation of women religious was
designed to identify property owned by women religious for possible
confiscation by male church authorities to pay off deficits from the clergy sex
abuse crisis, even though canon law prevents such seizure.
“If the Vatican got all the
financial information on each motherhouse, convent or community,” Berry wrote,
“particularly that of a religious order in its twilight—the information could
be used by a given bishop to state a claim on any assets, legitimately or not.”
Mr. Berry’s wild conjecture makes
for sensational reading, but he offers not one shred of evidence for his
claims. Instead he applauds the two remaining Benedictine Sisters of Madison,
Wisc., who quietly transferred the order’s ownership of their monastery and
100-plus acres to a civil corporation they formed. Then they gave up their vows
as Catholic sisters, tore down the monastery and built an ecumenical center
where the women offer Sunday “Eucharist” to anyone who shows up.
As Berry put it: “Their message,
though never formally stated, was sledgehammer blunt: the male hierarchy has
gone backwards and we’re moving forward. They quite literally held their
ground.”
• In his Feb. 27 blog,
National Catholic Reporter’s publisher
Thomas Fox, was absolute giddy at the prospect of going for a couple of weeks
without a pope in the chair of Peter.
“We all become adults again, at
least until we have a new ‘Holy Father’,” he crowed. Fox also wished for a new
pope who would move “away from repeated judgments on what constitutes Catholic
orthodoxy.” Hmmm. I thought it was the pope’s responsibility to uphold Church
teaching.
Fox seemed most jubilant that “The
old guard, those Vatican prelates who colluded to force an outrageous
investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and who ordered
LCWR into a receivership until it mends its ways, are out.” (Well, not really:
See canon lawyer Dr. Ed Peters here.) He continued: “At a minimum, it seems, LCWR’s receivership
ends tomorrow—either temporarily, or permanently.”
Well, this is wishful thinking by
Mr. Fox, for Canon 335 declares that “When the Roman See is vacant or entirely
impeded nothing is to be innovated in the governance of the universal Church.”
That simply means that everything remains in place until a new pope is elected,
a protection against folks who would like to undo the work of the Pope Benedict
XVI and change Church moral teaching to accommodate a secular culture that
rejects timeless moral truths.