|
Web Exclusive The LCWR leadership continues to voice opposition to Vatican investigations into their activities, claiming to be “misunderstood” by Rome.By Ann Carey  It is reported that some law professors give this advice to future lawyers: argue the facts when the facts are on your side, argue the law when the law is on your side, but when neither the facts nor the law are on your side, pound the table.
The latter tactic seems to have been adopted by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)—the largest leadership organization of Catholic sisters in this country—in reacting to both the Vatican’s ongoing doctrinal assessment of the group’s activities and the apostolic visitation of communities of women religious. In an August 17 press release, the LCWR did not argue the facts or the law; rather, the statement attacked the methodology of the inquiries, saying they “lacked full disclosure about the motivation and funding sources.” The LCWR also expressed displeasure that the visitation teams’ reports will not be disclosed to the orders visited.
As reported in “Post-Christian Sisters” (CWR, July 2009), the LCWR was caught by surprise on January 30 by the announcement of the Vatican’s apostolic visitation of women religious in the US and by the February 20 letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith announcing the doctrinal assessment of the LCWR. Consequently, the organization’s leadership had little to say on the topic at first. An April 23 public statement from LCWR officers stressed the solidarity of LCWR members, expressed “disappointment” over media reports that some US bishops may have requested the doctrinal assessment, and fell back on the group’s favored way of dealing with criticism: keep the critics talking until they back down. The LCWR leaders wrote in that release: “We have always been clear that we are open to dialogue with our US bishops and, during the last 12 months, have been in contact with several of them over issues of concern regarding our ongoing relationships with local and international church leaders.” Then, as the August 11-15 LCWR annual assembly—themed “Women of Spirit: Creating in Chaos”—drew closer, more hints of how the organization views the Vatican’s actions emerged. Past president Sister Mary Whited, CPPS wrote a column in the LCWR August-September 2009 newsletter, reflecting on her three-year term in the LCWR presidency (the LCWR operates with three “presidents”—past president, current president, and president-elect.) Sister Mary acknowledged the “sometimes difficult” conversation with Vatican officials and others, saying she was “deeply saddened by initiatives that do not build on common ground and indicate that the contributions of women religious are not valued by some in the church. To carry this pain has been the most difficult part of my service to the conference.” At the national assembly in New Orleans, executive sessions where members strategized about how to respond to the Vatican initiatives were closed to outsiders, but some vocal sisters had plenty to say to the press. The New Orleans Times-Picayune reported in an August 11 article that LCWR president Sister J. Lora Dambroski, OSF said: “This will be an opportunity to be who we are and to speak our truth, not to back away from that.” She added that, “In the United States, I think there is a cultural misunderstanding about how women religious participate in the church. That does not mean that we don’t respect the authority of the church.” Sister Mary Daniel Turner, SNDdeN, LCWR executive director from 1972 to 1976, echoed Sister Lora’s suggestion that Vatican officials do not understand the church in the United States. An August 12 article in the National Catholic Reporter quoted Sister Mary Daniel as saying the Vatican actions were not just about religious life. Rather, she said, “It is deeper than that. It is a difference between the church of Rome and the US church. I think we, the women religious, are asking what the laity is also asking. ‘Who are we as Catholics in a pluralistic society?’” Speakers at the LCWR assembly also revealed more about the LCWR position. The keynote speaker was reporter and commentator Cokie Roberts, a controversial choice because—a Catholic herself—she has publicly criticized the Catholic Church’s positions on abortion, contraception, and homosexuality. Roberts spent most of her talk praising the past works of women religious. She did acknowledge that there are indeed fewer “officially consecrated” women religious today, but spoke of women who are consecrated by God, making “the number of religious women who are acting on their faith to serve society…higher than ever before in human history.” In her address to the assembly, current president Sister Lora Dambroski painted an image of an “inclusive” Church in which religious life expands its boundaries. As a leader, she said she had to “struggle to identify boundaries of our life as we move to more inclusion and integration.” Members of the Catholic Church are, she said, striving to “balance traditional teachings with changing realities” and seeking “to be a more inclusive, welcoming community.” Church leaders, she continued, carry the responsibility of being “inclusive pastors to all God’s people,” and “bear the call to create structures that free the Church for the ways of God’s Spirit.” Furthermore, she claimed, religious congregations experience not only a diversity of cultures and worldviews, but also a diversity of theologies. “So much of what we are discerning is about stretching horizons and understanding the expanding boundaries of our life and missions,” Sister Lora continued. “This is not simply looking at law and limits, but at what creates the boundaries of our committed, vowed life and how and what is calling for inclusion with us…new voices and new members, new ways of ministering.” Tellingly, the LCWR press release issued at the close of the annual assembly noted that LCWR members “reclaimed their commitment to what they believe is the unique and needed role of religious life which includes serving at and speaking from the margins of the Catholic Church.” The fact that the 1,500 sisters who are members of the LCWR feel that they serve and speak “from the margins of the Catholic Church” highlights why the Vatican is so concerned about the sisters in the US. As Pope John Paul II noted in Vita Consecrata, his 1996 apostolic exhortation on religious life, the consecrated life “is not something isolated and marginal,” but rather is something belonging “at the very heart of the Church." Ann Carey is the author of Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women’s Religious Communities.
|
