Why Reform the LCWR? Let Me Count The Ways

Key among them, of course, is the fact that Sister Laurie was spot on in her analysis of the ways the many different congregations of religious women have taken since Vatican II. Terry Mattingly sums it up. Excerpts (with my emphases):

During this era of crisis and decline, some Catholic religious orders have chosen to enter a time of “sojourning” that involves “moving beyond the church, even beyond Jesus,” Sinsinawa Dominican Sister Laurie Brink told a 2007 national gathering of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

“Religious titles, institutional limitations, ecclesiastical authorities no longer fit this congregation, which in most respects is Post-Christian,” added Brink, a former journalist who is a biblical studies professor at Chicago’s Catholic Theological Union. For these women, the “Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative. … 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.”...

“If you’re going to be Post-Christian, then be Post-Christian. I don’t say that with snark. It’s just reality,” argued Catholic blogger Amy Welborn of Beliefnet. “If you’ve moved on — move on. Step out from the protective mantle of identity that gives you cachet, that of ‘Catholic nun.’“

However, it’s important to note that this “Post-Christian,” “sojourning” strategy was only the third of four strategies critiqued by Brink in the online text of her presentation, entitled “A Marginal Life: Pursuing Holiness in the 21st Century (.pdf).”...

Sister Laurie began with this assumption: “Old concepts of how to live the Life are no longer valid.” The first option, she said, is “death with dignity and grace,” as opposed to becoming a “zombie congregation” that staggers on with no purpose. This option must be taken seriously since the average age of the 67,000 sisters and nuns in the United States is 69. Many retreat ministries are closing and large “mother houses” are struggling with finances, while some congregations no longer invite or accept new candidates.

Meanwhile, Brink noted with sadness, some orders have chosen to turn back the clock — thus winning the favor of Rome. “They are putting on the habit, or continuing to wear the habit with zest. … Some would critique that they are the nostalgic portrait of a time now passed. But they are flourishing. Young adults are finding in these communities a living image of their romantic view of Religious Life. They are entering. And they are staying,” she said.

Finally, some women are fighting on, hoping to achieve reconciliation someday with a changed, egalitarian church hierarchy...

Right now, she stressed, the Catholic hierarchy is “right to feel alarmed. What is at stake is the very heart of the Church itself.”

If anyone expresses surprise that the Vatican would order the reform of a group which has speakers at their national conferences who speak gladly of women who have become post-Christian while retaining the title of Catholic woman religious, is saddened by flourishing congregations who are faithful to Rome and their traditional charism, and emphasizes that the hierarchy is right to be alarmed because there's a war over the heart of the Church--well, they're being disingenuous or they haven't been paying attention.

Oh, look.  The LCWR expressed surprise!  Excerpts:

The presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was stunned by the conclusion of the doctrinal assessment of LCWR by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith....

Here's the text of the CDF's assessment of the LCWR.  How did they read Sr. Laurie's speech?

Some might see in Sr. Brink’s analysis a phenomenological snapshot of religious life
today. But Pastors of the Church should also see in it a cry for help.

Does the CDF desire that the LCWR return to a pre-Conciliar vision of religious life?

The Assessment’s primary concern is the doctrine of the faith that has been revealed by God in Jesus Christ, presented in written form in the divinely inspired Scriptures, and handed on in the Apostolic Tradition under the guidance of the Church’s Magisterium. It is this Apostolic teaching, so richly and fully taught by the Second Vatican Council, that should underlie the work of a conference of major superiors of Religious which, by its nature, has a canonical relationship to the Holy See and many of whose members are of Pontifical right.

Does the Vatican find nothing good in the work of the LCWR and their members?

...there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the Church’s social doctrine...  

Not least among the flock to whom the Pope’s pastoral concern is directed are women Religious of apostolic life, who through the past several centuries have been so instrumental in building up the faith and life of the Holy Church of God, and witnessing to God’s love for humanity in so many charitable and apostolic works.

From a Dominican blogger, we have the themes of the speeches delivered at their conferences.  Key among them:

1. "Mission": all of the addresses I read (four of them) exhort the sisters to mission. But never the mission of the Church that we would recognize as evangelization, that is, the preaching and teaching of the gospel that Christ gave to the apostles. The mission the sisters are exhorted to take up is always, always some form of left-liberal social engineering disguised as caring for Earth or insuring access to adequate health [care] for women. ["Adequate health care for women" is usually U.N. code for "abortion/contraception," but the addresses do not speak to the issue directly. The 2012 CDF document lauds the good work the LCWR does in promoting certain social justice issues but notes their total silence on the issue of abortion.]...

Go read the whole post for the rest.  The speaker who was set to present this year is particularly interesting.  Excerpts:

The keynote speaker for the annual conference of the LCWR is...Barbara Marx Hubbard...Her big thing is Conscious Evolution, which is the latest repackaging of “est” with an added transhumanist/post-humanist subtext...Here she is on her website explaining Conscious Evolution...:

It has become obvious that a creative minority of humanity is undergoing a profound inner mutation or transformation. Evolutionary ideas are not only serving to make sense of this change, but also acting to catalyze the potential within us to transform. (Thought creates; specific thought creates specifically. [?])

It is the planetary crisis into which we were born that is awakening our sleeping potential for transformation. Planet Earth has given birth to a species capable of choosing whether to consciously evolve ourselves and our social forms, or to continue the course we have set toward our own extinction. And the choice is clear.

All great spiritual paths lead us to this threshold of our own consciousness, but none can guide us across the great divide — from the creature human to the cocreative human. [??] None can guide us in managing the vast new powers given us by science and technology. None of us have been there yet...

Get Religion has a roundup and critique of various stories on the reform.  Excerpts:

...The group was not cited in the Vatican document for focusing too much work on poverty and economic injustice. Far from it. They were actually praised for their work in this regard. In fact, on the first page alone is this line, “The Holy See acknowledges with gratitude the great contribution of women Religious to the Church in the United States as seen particularly in the many schools, hospitals, and institutions of support for the poor which have been founded and staffed by Religious over the years.” I read the eight-page document and certainly didn’t see anything coming even close to suggesting that the Vatican wants the sisters to focus less work on poverty issues. The document never indicates any problem with that work at all. Instead, it focuses on the sisters’ silence on other issues of social justice and fidelity to church teaching.

Cardinal William Levada appointed Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to lead the reform of LCWR, with assistance from a few other bishops...

Pray for Archbishop Sartain, for his advisory team, and for the LCWR--they'll all need the benefit of many rosaries, Masses, and much Divine Mercy for this all to work out well for everyone involved.