Fort Worth Bishop says nuns may face ex-communication after letter forbidding him from property
FORT WORTH (CBSNewsTexas.com) - The public legal dispute between the Carmelite nuns and Bishop Michael Olson isn't cooling down.
Friday evening, the nuns posted a statement accusing Olson of "Unprecedented interference, intimidation, aggression, and private and public humiliation."
The nuns forbade him from their property and from contacting them.
Their letter reads, "No one who abuses us as has the current Bishop of Fort Worth has any right to our cooperation or obedience."
In his response, Olson said, in part, "Reverend Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach may have incurred ex-communication ... The other nuns, depending on their complicity in Mother Teresa Agnes' publicly, scandalous and schismatic actions could possibly have incurred the same."
Excommunication is an ecclesiastical penalty intended to reform Catholics who commit a significant canonical crime. They are prohibited from receiving sacraments or from exercising leadership in the church.
Olson also said the monastery of the Most Holy Trinity, located just southeast of the I-20 and 287 interchange will remain closed to the public until the nuns disavow the actions of the Reverend Mother.
The fracture between the bishop and the nuns comes as the nuns are still involved with an internal church appeal over the bishop's actions this spring.
He dismissed the Reverend Mother from her leadership position after learning she told two people she may have violated her vow of chastity with a priest, something she later recanted.
She and another nun filed a civil suit against the bishop.
In June, a judge decided he didn't have jurisdiction to hear the religious dispute in civil court.
Just last month, the nuns dropped their plans to appeal in order for the internal church legal process to continue. After that, the bishop allowed priests to return to the monastery and restored daily mass for the nuns.
There is no word whether these recent volleys in the saga will change that.
