Vatican orders crackdown on U.S. nun group

CBS/istockphoto.comcom

(AP) The Vatican orthodoxy watchdog announced Wednesday a full-scale overhaul of the largest umbrella group for nuns in the United States, accusing the group of taking positions that undermine Roman Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

An American archbishop was appointed to oversee reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which will include rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs — including approving speakers — and ensuring the organization properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual.

The Leadership Conference, based in Silver Spring, Md., represents about 57,000 religious sisters and offers programs ranging from leadership training for women's religious orders to advocacy on social justice issues. Representatives of the Leadership Conference did not respond to requests for comment.

The report from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the organization faced a "grave" doctrinal crisis, in which issues of "crucial importance" to the church, such as abortion and euthanasia, have been ignored. Vatican officials also castigated the group for making some public statements that "disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops, who are the church's authentic teachers of faith and morals."

Church officials did not cite a specific example of those public statements, but said the reform would include a review of ties between the Leadership Conference and NETWORK, a Catholic social justice lobby. NETWORK played a key role in supporting the Obama administration's health care overhaul despite the bishops' objections that the bill would provide government funding for abortion. The Leadership Conference disagreed with the bishops' analysis of the law and also supported President Barack Obama's plan.

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of NETWORK, said in a phone interview that the timing of the report suggested a link between their health care stand and the Vatican crackdown. The review began in 2009 and ran through June 2010, a few months after the health care law was approved. The report does not cite Obama or the bill.

"I can only infer that there was strong feeling about the health care position that we had taken," Campbell said. "Our position on health care was application of the one faith to a political document that we read differently than the bishops."

When the Vatican-ordered inquiry was initially announced, many religious sisters and their supporters said the investigation reflected church officials' misogyny and was an insult to religious sisters, who run hospitals, teach, and play other vital service roles in the church. Conservative Catholics, however, have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching.

Around the same time of the doctrinal review of the Leadership Conference, the Vatican ordered an Apostolic Visitation, or investigation, of all American congregations for religious sisters, looking at quality of life, the response to dissent and "the soundness of doctrine held and taught" by the women. The results of that inquiry have not been released.

The report released Wednesday paints a scathing portrait of the Leadership Conference of Women's Religious as consistently violating Catholic teaching.

Investigators cited a speech by Sister Laurie Brink at an annual assembly that argued that religious sisters were "`moving beyond the church' or even beyond Jesus." Brink is a professor at the Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. She did not respond to an email request for comment.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the Leadership Conference had submitted letters that suggest that sisters in leadership teams "collectively take a position not in agreement with the church's teaching on human sexuality."

In programs and presentations, investigators noted "a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

"Some commentaries on `patriarchy' distort the way in which Jesus has structured sacramental life in the church," the authors of the report wrote. The investigation also found that while the Leadership Conference has emphasized Catholic social justice doctrine, the group has been "silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States.

The reform will be managed by Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain and could stretch over five years.

Nick Cafardi, a canon lawyer and former dean of Duqesne Law School, said he has worked over the years with many nuns and that the description in the report does not reflect his experience with them. Cafardi is an Obama supporter.

"I don't know any more holy people," Cafardi said of American religious sisters. "I see a lot more holiness in the convents than I see in the chancery."

[thrusse11]

I am not a Catholic, nor do I claim to be of any denomination. I am a Christian and therefore believe in the teachings of Christ and His Word. I believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the inerrant Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and practice. Ironically, the Catholic Encyclopedia agrees with this statement as well but this is clearly not the case and this situation is evidence of that. This is what the Catholic Encyclopedia says about the Bible, "The Bible not only contains the word of God; it is the word of God. The primary author is the Holy Ghost, or, as it is commonly expressed, the human authors wrote under the influence of Divine inspiration. It was declared by the Vatican Council (Sess. III, c. ii) that the sacred and canonical character of Scripture would not be sufficiently explained by saying that the books were composed by human diligence and then approved by the Church, or that they contained revelation without error. They are sacred and canonical 'because, having been written by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that have God for their author, and as such have been handed down to the Church'. The inerrancy of the Bible follows as a consequence of this Divine authorship. Wherever the sacred writer makes a statement as his own, that statement is the word of God and infallibly true, whatever be the subject-matter of the statement." If the Catholic Church truly taught that the Word of God is inerrant and infallible these issues would have never been an issue. COME ON CATHOLICS READ YOUR BIBLE!

[guitaristmom61]

About 5 years ago my daughter was in ICU, near death. The doctor had told us that she may not survive the night. I called my former campus minister to ask for prayers. She had a chip on her shoulder about me, calling me unhealthy (I am a bit outspoken). I was calling her for a prayer request. I didn't get that far. She told me to go and love and serve the Lord and never contact her again. My daughter has recovered...however, I never did from that night when the nun made our prayer request call, about her and refused to listen. Yesterday, I finally had enough courage to confront her. I do believe that these nuns do need to be confronted, especially those that are in the woman priest movement. They are angry feminists who need to be checked. I hope the Vatican is able to get ahead with it.

[RocketToTheStars]

The Catholic Church has the right to enforce its rules and regulations - to the extent those rules and regulations do not violate any laws. I am always amused when liberals throw out such hate-filled words as "misogyny" and "racism" in the attempt to portray their antagonists as people who hate and therefore somehow less human. I have never encountered anyone who hates as much as liberals. Man, talked about haters! So, saying Catholic leaders are misogynistic unveils you for the haters you are. And I am not Catholic, but I believe the Catholic Church has a right to manage its own affairs, regardless of your evil and hate-filled thinking.

[tjl20]

I know that over time the Vatican has always had control over what their religion does in every country, but they shouldn't be able to just up and change things to how they want in the U.S. I believe the Vatican should have limited or no power on rewriting all the stuff the U.S. does with their religion and followers of the religion.

[chaytahn]

You miss the point of the church being ONE HOLY AND CATHOLIC. That means it is the same (or tries to be) from one country to the next and to keep universal rules in place for all of us. Otherwise we would just be protestants.

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

by EmpireGeorge----_____-- April 19, 2012 2:47 PM EDT
or until you can hose it no longer......those who are raped or abused should always contact the authorities/police and report the abuse..........the church isn't the police and they aren't responsible for enforcement of law.....what a dope you are.
---
Not dopey enough to support a cult that conspires to commit pedophilia like you, that's for sure......

[rockychance]

GREEN MONKEY RELIGION! How can you be a member of any religion and not follow the teachings? It makes no sense. The Pope tells Catholics what to follow and if they don't follow the Pope, then they certainly do not believe in historic Catholicism. So many religious people are messed up.

[FormerUSMCSergeant]

All religious people are messed up.

It's a consequence of self-delusion.

[chaytahn]

rockychance.. exactly. And the nuns took an oath of obedience....so they either need to follow it or resign.

[jt92202]

What everyone needs to remember is that when a woman becomes a Nun she knows the rules of the church before she becomes one! If you decide to become a Nun you are accepting those rules!! Now my question is WHY WOULD ANY WOMAN WANT TO GO BY THE RULES OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH? Those rules are made by man NOT GOD, the same men that felt that women were not equal to them! The Catholic Church has perverted Christianity and gods word for 2000+ years!

My opinion but maybe not yours!!

[MaryPAnderson]

I also find it rather interesting that there are no more stories of the small skeletons found in or under the dirt floors of old convents, seems that even the sisters had issues with the early churches stance on abortions etc...queen annies lace so prevailent in church gardens and mugwort are abortants...

[AnnieDanny]

There are real and fake Christians in every group. How many horror stories have we heard of nuns who tormented and abused their students? And yet others say that the sisters in their schools were kind, sincere and devout. And I think that's the case, most of the time. But the bad ones can do a lot of damage.

There's also the risk of worldly values sneaking into church doctrine, which is a huge problem for every church and every Christian. The church CANNOT reflect the values of the world. It must reflect the values of Christ. I don't know what liberal ideas have infected the nuns of America: it would be interesting to know what they're referring to.

The question is: what exactly ARE the values of Christ? And which doctrines are merely the values of a human system called the "Church?" And which values come from modern society - which has been rapidly redefining what is moral and what is not.

I wish them well with their overhaul. It should be interesting.

[chaytahn]

Amen Annie :)

[ageofknowledge]

Dear Pope,

Don't let the nuns push Obummer, homosexuality, forced homosexual indoctrination of children via the public school system like exists now in California, etc... etc... etc...