In the context of the witterings in the IRISH CATHOLIC and IRISH TIMES about the poor persecuted Sisters of the LCWR, this piece is noteworthy. On the CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT blog, Carl Olson calls attention to a piece by a Catholic feminist in THE NATION, a prominent American leftie magazine, which argues that the LCWR are guilty as charged (in the sense that they do hold views which are heterodox by most definitions of Christianity) even though the author goes on to argue that they are in fact justified in holding those views:
www.catholicworldreport.com/Blog/1371/catholic_feminist_admits_the_cdf_is_right_about_wayward_sisters.aspxHERE is the feminist piece mentioned in the blog . I will post extracts in case it disappears or becomes inaccessible hereafter:
www.thenation.com/article/167986/american-nuns-guilty-chargedEXTRACT
...This led to an enormous outpouring of support to the sisters. But to anyone who has been watching the nuns closely, an unsettling observation emerges: these charges appear, in some measure, to be true. But that is not because, as the Assessment insists, LCWR has rejected “communion” with the church. Instead, it is evidence of a theological conflict that is raging in the Catholic Church, a conflict that most of us only notice when it spills over into American politics.
Liberal voices in the Church have been under attack ever since Vatican II. A number of vocal Catholic women, including nuns, have been among the most persistent and influential leaders of the fight to save the church from what they see as soul-crushing conservatism. This has galled the hierarchy, which has responded with silencings, firings, excommunications and public denunciations. Seeing that picking their targets off one by one wasn’t working, the Vatican, in taking on LCWR, decided to go for broke.
To understand what is behind the Vatican’s crackdown, go back to the 1970s, when feminism was seeping into the bones of American nuns. In 1971, the vast majority of the nuns who belonged to the Conference of Major Superiors of Women, which had been founded at the Vatican’s behest in the 1950s, moved to change the name of their organization to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious to reflect a commitment to women’s leadership and a more democratic spirit. Nuns were major participants in the first women’s ordination conference in 1975, and in the second, even larger one, three years later. By 1979, LCWR had become so spirited that its president, Sister Theresa Kane, challenged Pope John Paul II from the podium at Washington, DC’s Shrine of the Immaculate Conception to include women “in all ministries of our Church.” She did this while nearly fifty sisters wearing blue armbands, symbolizing women’s ordination, stood in silent protest.
Sister Elizabeth Johnson, who attended the second women’s ordination conference and whose order belongs to LCWR, found feminism too, but she also found theology, becoming the first woman to earn a PhD at Catholic University's Department of Theology, which had previously granted degrees only to priests. (Catholic University is the only US university under Vatican control.) Upon graduation, Johnson became the first woman to join Catholic University’s theology faculty. She slipped the occasional feminist reading into her course on Christology, inviting forty male seminaries to wrestle with the question of whether a male savior could save women, originally posed by the grandmother of Catholic feminist theology, Rosemary Radford Ruether. In time Johnson became the first woman eligible for tenure in CUA’s theology department. But that’s when her meteoric rise ended. In 1986, her bruising tenure battle began.
In addition to being female and not ordained, Johnson faced opposition for having publicly supported Father Charles Curran, who was eventually fired from Catholic University for defending birth control, and having authored a single article on Jesus’ mother, Mary, in which Johnson quoted “some pretty vicious things” said about Mary by feminists—that she was sexless, passive and not a good role model. While Johnson understood the criticisms, she attempted to counter them. “If we went back to Scripture, you wouldn’t see her that way,” she told me when I interviewed her for my book Good Catholic Girls. “I was trying to defend Mary! I was on the good side, but they couldn’t see that.”
An opponent of her tenure, then-Chancellor James Hickey sent Johnson’s case to the CDF, the same group that is now disciplining the nuns. At the time, the CDF was headed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI. The CDF required Johnson to respond to forty “dubia” (doubtful things) regarding her beliefs about Mary. When her answers failed to allay their fears, they ordered Johnson to appear before the six American cardinals to be interrogated about her theology. As that tense session drew to a close, an angry Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, who would later resign in disgrace for having failed to protect children from pedophile priests, slammed shut the binder before him that contained Johnson’s sixteen articles. “Well, you mostly write in Christology,” he snapped. “You’re not going to do any of that feminist stuff anyway.”
“Oh,” thought Johnson, “you wait and see.”
Johnson got tenure, but she soon left Catholic University for Fordham. She went on to write a blockbuster, theologically speaking; She Who Is is a brilliant, moving and utterly convincing exploration of the Biblical evidence for a female face of God.
Johnson’s next confrontation came in 1995, when she was incoming president of the Catholic Theological Society of America. She and the Society battled Cardinal Ratzinger and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith over just how definitive Pope John Paul II’s 1994 teaching against women’s ordination was. Observing the resistance of many Catholics to the teaching, the CDF issued a document declaring that the teaching was infallible—despite the fact that the pope himself had not used that crucial word.
“The head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had never come out before and said ‘I'm declaring this to be infallible,’ ” Johnson told me. Reflecting a growing fear among Catholic theologians of “creeping infallibility,” the society publicly refuted the CDF’s contention. “There are serious doubts regarding the nature of the authority of this teaching and its grounds in tradition, [and] widespread disagreement…not only among theologians, but also within the larger community of the Church,” their statement read. It added that not all traditions are “legitimate,” particularly those based on women’s “inferiority” and “divinely intended” subordination. They called for study, discussion and prayer “by all the members of the Church.”..
Much work by Catholic feminist theologians has undermined the hierarchy’s claim to absolute authority in matters of faith and morals. Feminist theologians have re-envisioned God. They reject the one-time, one-place, men-only view of revelation [IN OTHER WORDS, THEY DON'T SEE JESUS AS THE DEFINITIVE REVELATION AND WHO SAID REVELATION WAS "MEN-ONLY?]. Like Johnson, they see Mary as assertive, autonomous, and strong, her decision to bear the Messiah between her and God [THERE WOULD ACTUALLY BE NO OBJECTION TO THIS IF IT WERE DEFINED PROPERLY - IF MARY WERE NOT AUTONOMOUS THE ANNUNCIATION WOULD NOT BE IMPORTANT]. They claim Eve as human, not evil, and hold Adam responsible for his own Fall [WHO SAID HE WASN'T? AND ARE THEY IMPLYING EVE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HERS?]. They demand an inclusive church and liturgy. They work across faith lines toward a truly ecumenical world. [DEPENDS HOW YOU DEFINE ECUMENISM]
They claim women’s moral authority, clinging to the fundamental belief in the primacy of conscience. “God gave us free will,” explained the late Sister Margaret Ellen Traxler, a signer of Catholics for a Free Choice's 1984 petition, published in the New York Times, calling for dialogue in the church on abortion. “Free will is guided by conscience…. A woman will answer to God for one thing: Has she followed her conscience?… It’s nobody’s right to tell her what her conscience said to her.”
[THIS MUST BE A CONSOLING THOUGHT IF YOUR CONSCIENCE LEADS YOU TO BECOME A PROFESSIONAL HITMAN]
How many of the women affiliated with LCWR, NETWORK or the Catholic Health Association accept these and other tenets of feminist theology is unknown. But the groups’ joint efforts to push policies that they believe represent Catholic social teaching, as well as their individual interactions, indicate mutual respect. [INDEED] LCWR gave Keehan their 2011 Outstanding Leadership Award for her “significant role in working for US healthcare reform.” They gave the same award in 2007 to one of the world’s leading Catholic feminist authors, former LCWR president Sister Joan Chittister, who, in 2001, with the support of Benedictine sisters nationwide, refused a Vatican order not to speak at the first international conference on women’s ordination. Sister Elizabeth Johnson spoke at an LCWR event in 2008, a year after she published Quest for the Living God, a book the US bishops last year publicly denounced.
It is no accident that the women condemned for their failures in the Assessment are “especially those involved in theological research, teaching, publishing, catechesis and the use of the means of social communication.” And it’s no surprise that the LCWR speaker singled out by the CDF as a purveyor of “serious theological, even doctrinal errors”—Sister Laurie Brink, an assistant professor at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union—ventured into what some Christians, perhaps many, see as the most frightening frontier of feminist theology.
In exploring the divergent paths being taken by women religious, Brink in her 2007 LCWR keynote address described the “sojourning congregation,” which “has grown beyond the bounds of institutional religion.” She noted, “The Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative for these women,” and that while “they still hold up and reverence the values of the Gospel,” they also recognize that those values are not the sole province of Christianity. Seeing these women as both courageous and potentially prescient, Brink wonders if they are providing “a glimpse into the new thing that God is bringing about in our midst.” Most provocatively, she asks: “ Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God?”...
END OF EXTRACTS
Here is an older CATHOLIC WORLD REPORT blogpiece summing up the antics of the LCWR (note that one of the critics cited, Donna Steichen, is a WOMAN, which rather complicates the "evil male hierarchs in frocks crack down on fearless wymyn" line being pushed by the IRISH TIMES and the ACP). It would be nice if the sad line-pushers could be as honest as Rosemary Bentivoglia (author of the NATION piece).
EXTRACT
Transparency, Creativity, and Heresy
From an August 17, 2009, Associated Press report:
An association of U.S. Roman Catholic sisters raised questions Monday about why they are the target of, and who is paying for, a Vatican investigation that is shaping up to be a tough review of whether sisters have strayed from church teaching.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, representing about 800 heads of religious orders, said there was a "lack of full disclosure about the motivation and funding sources" for the inquiry. The group also said it objects to the Vatican plan to keep private the reports that will be submitted to the Holy See.
"There's no transparency there," said Sister Annmarie Sanders, a conference spokeswoman.
The investigation, announced earlier this year, will examine the practices of the roughly 59,000 Catholic sisters working in the United States. Some sisters have privately expressed anger over the assessment, which they say unfairly questions their commitment to church teaching. However, in public they have remained largely circumspect in their comments.
At the conference's assembly last week in New Orleans, the outgoing president of the group, Sister J. Lora Dambroski, described the investigation as a challenge to creatively live out the Gospel and said it could be "another definining moment" for Catholic sisters.
Ah, yes, the challenge to "creatively live out the Gospel..." That would hold a bit more water if the LCWR, which was established in 1970 and represents the majority of women religious in the U.S., actually demonstrated some sincere interest in the Gospel as it has been taught by the Church for 2,000 years. But, alas, that has never really been the case. As Donna Steichen summarily states in Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism (Ignatius Press, 1991): "Stressing autonomy and self-realization instead of corporate identity and self-sacrifice, LCWR encouraged the exodus from traditional apostolates, and initiated or supported many of the organizations and coalitions formed to hasten the radical 'renewal' of its members" (p. 286).
In a booklet titled, "Feminism and the Catholic Church" (Association of Catholic Women, 1992; available online in PDF format), Steichen flatly stated, "Most North American women’s religious communities are corrupt. That is why they are dying; why the average age of nuns is 66; why, unless God sends new St. Teresas to reform them, major U.S. women’s communities will cease to exist within 20 years." Whether or not the in progress Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious in the United States will prove to be that reforming moment, it is long overdue.
The AP article notes, in muted understatement, "But the nature of some questions seems to validate concerns that they are suspected of being unfaithful to the church." It's hardly a secret that the LCWR has been in a perpetual state of defiance toward the Magisterium and has consistently, and often openly, supported beliefs and statements directly opposed to Catholic doctrine and dogma. In a detailed special report, "Post-Christian Sisters," for the July 2009 edition of Catholic World Report, Ann Carey (author of Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities [Our Sunday Visitor, 1997]), wrote, "Specific issues identified [by the CDF] were acceptance of the Church's teachings 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."
An perfect example of these issues is found in "A Marginal Life: Pursuing Holiness in the 21st Century" (PDF format), the 2007 LCWR Keynote Address, given by Laurie Brink, O.P., in Kansas City on August 2, 2007:
The dynamic option for Religious Life, which I am calling, Sojourning, is much more difficult to discuss, since it involves moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus. A sojourning congregation is no longer ecclesiastical. It has grown beyond the bounds of institutional religion. Its search for the Holy may have begun rooted in Jesus as the Christ, but deep reflection, study and prayer have opened it up to the spirit of the Holy in all of creation. Religious titles, institutional limitations, ecclesiastical authorities no longer fit this congregation, which in most respects is Post-Christian.
When religious communities embraced the spirit of renewal in the 1970s, they took seriously that the world was no longer the enemy, that a sense of ecumenism required encountering the holy “other,” and that the God of Jesus might well be the God of Moses and the God of Mohammed. The works of Thomas Merton encouraged an exploration of the nexus between Eastern and Western religious practices. The emergence of the women’s movement with is concomitant critique of religion invited women everywhere to use a hermeneutical lens of suspicion when reading the androcentric Scriptures and the texts of the Tradition. With a new lens, women also began to see the divine within nature, the value and importance of the cosmos, and that the emerging new cosmology encouraged their spirituality and fed their souls.
As one sister described it, “I was rooted in the story of Jesus, and it remains at my core, but I’ve also moved beyond Jesus.” The Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative for these women. They still hold up and reverence the values of the Gospel, but they also recognize that these same values are not solely the property of Christianity. Buddhism, Native American spirituality, Judaism, Islam and others hold similar tenets for right behavior within the community, right relationship with the earth and right relationship with the Divine. With these insights come a shattering or freeing realization—depending on where you stand. Jesus is not the only son of God. Salvation is not limited to Christians. Wisdom is found in the traditions of the Church as well as beyond it.
Sojourners have left the religious home of their fathers and mothers and are traveling in a foreign land, mapping their way as they go. They are courageous women among us. And very well may provide a glimpse into the new thing that God is bringing about in our midst. Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God? A movement the ecclesiastical system would not recognize. A wholly new way of being holy that is integrative, non-dominating, and inclusive. But a whole new way that is also not Catholic Religious Life. The Benedictine Women of Madison are the most current example I can name. Their commitment to ecumenism lead them beyond the exclusivity of the Catholic Church into a new inclusivity, where all manner of seeking God is welcomed. They are certainly religious women, but they are no longer women religious as it is defined by the Roman Catholic Church. They choose as a congregation to step outside the Church in order to step into a greater sense of holiness. Theirs was a choice of integrity, insight and courage.
Toward the end of her address, Brink states, "We may not avail ourselves of the Sacraments, because we are angry—not about the Eucharist itself—but about the ecclesial deafness that refuses to hear the call of the Spirit summoning not only celibate males, but married men and women to serve at the Table of the Lord. We are on the verge of extinction, not because of some cataclysmic event, but because for the last thirty years or so, we have slowly removed ourselves from Church circles, and have failed to recognize when we were no longer needed as a work force, that perhaps the Spirit had a new call for us." If this isn't the language of heresy and schism, I'm not sure what is.
The document Instrumentum Laboris (PDF format), among many other things, states:
Because the mandate for this Apostolic Visitation directly concerns “the quality of the life” of the sisters themselves, major superiors are to provide a copy of this entire Instrumentum Laboris for each of their sisters in the United States and are to invite all the sisters to reflect, personally and/or communally, on the topics included here in Part B.
Instrumentum Laboris also states:
If any sister wishes to express her opinion about some aspect of her religious institute, she may do so freely and briefly, in writing and with signature, specifically identifying her institute by title and location. In order to respect each sister’s freedom of conscience, any sister may send her written comments directly and confidentially to Mother Mary Clare Millea at the Apostolic Visitation Office (PO Box 4328, Hamden, CT, 06514); or by fax: (203-287-5467) by November 1, 2009.
One of the concerns that Carey and others have is whether or not this information is being acknowledged and the directives followed by each superior. Carey wrote, in a recent e-mail, that "it occurs to me that the sisters could use some help from us in the media in getting the word out about the instrumentum, and I think we can play a role in helping the visitation be meaningful and not just a repeat whitewash of the problems in religious life, as the 1980s Quinn Commission was. I think it would be a real service to the church and to sisters in communities that are not supportive of the visitation to know what is in the instrumentum and to realize that they, as individuals, are invited to send their thoughts and/or concerns about the quality of religious life to the visitation office."
Please pass along this information to anyone, especially women religious, who might benefit from it.
• Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious in the United States (Official Website)
• The document Instrumentum Laboris (PDF format)
Posted by Carl Olson on Tuesday, August 18, 2009 at 12:10 PM | Permalink
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