Fort Worth Catholic bishop tells monastery supporters to stop raising money to help nuns' legal fees
FORT WORTH (CBSNewsTexas.com) — The Fort Worth Catholic bishop who is in a growing public and legal dispute with an order of nuns has told supporters of the monastery to stop raising money to help with the nuns' legal fees.
The fundraising makes the members of the Ladies Auxiliary to the Discalced Carmelite Nuns "complicit in their religious disobedience," according to the letter from Bishop Michael Olson.
He referenced a decree from the Vatican last week appointing him as the Pope's representative in the dispute, writing that despite the Auxiliary's best of intentions, they were "undermining my very pastoral office."
Olson asked former president of the organization Natalie Strand to rescind the invitation for donations she sent to members in May, and to cease all effort to raise funds for the lawsuit.
In that May letter to members, Strand wrote that the nuns' pursuit of justice was coming at a steep price going up against of the largest entities in the world, and asked members to prayerfully consider donating directly to the monastery to help with their bills.
The Auxiliary has not responded directly yet to Olson's request.
The letter from Olson is the newest development in the battle, which just this week includes police involvement for the first time, and allegations from the diocese of drug use at the monastery.
The dispute, which started internally at the Arlington monastery in late April, became public when the Carmelite nuns took the extraordinary step of a filing a civil lawsuit against Olson and the Fort Worth Diocese.
They claim he invaded their privacy, took their property and publicly defamed the Reverend Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach when he said he was investigating a report she had violated her vow of chastity with a priest from outside the diocese.
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