Apostolic Visitation of Women Religious: An Update

From Catholic World Report.  Excerpts follow:

...While the visitation is on schedule, and anecdotal reports indicate that the on-site visits went very smoothly and amicably, the entire project has faced significant challenges, including confusion about the apostolic visitation and the separate doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious; the resistance of some women religious; the manipulation of the visitation process by some religious superiors; and the role the media has played since the announcement of the visitation...

For more from the same author on the issue of the issues facing women religious after Vatican II, see Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities.  For an overview of the troubles roiling the Church after Vatican II, see Signs of the Times: Understanding the Church Since Vatican II (best read with the Pedagogy of the Oppressed to understand why many priests and religious were doing what they were doing.)

For a taste of the agenda behind a lot of these movements, check out Catholicism in the Third Millennium and read the chapter on "The Unfinished Agenda." Also check out the bit on Wicca as a spiritual path found fruitful by many Catholic women. For one who has walked that road, see Mary Daly.  For a more "traditional" Catholic overview  and response to the movements afoot in women's religious life (one that doesn't always do a good job at preserving charity, though it is undoubtedly quite informative), see Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism.

One of the reviews at Amazon on Steichen's book by "Foluso" gives a sense of why the visitation matters to ordinary Catholics the world over:

As a Catholic in Nigeria, I have been baffled at how all my cousins who travelled to Europe and the United States to study first in "Catholic" high schools and then in "Catholic" Universities under the "watchful" gaze of hosts of religious have lost their faith. Talking to them about it even puzzled me more, because all of them without exception had had close dealings with priests and religious in their respective schools, people they had a lot of respect for. I found their ideas about the Church's teaching on faith and morals amazing for people who still claim to be Catholic (of course, Sunday Mass is a thing of the past).

Amazing, because worse ideas couldn't have come from Jack Chick.

Donna Steichen has solved the puzzle for me in a way no-one else could. I understand only too well now what happened to all my cousins.

You need a tough stomach to finish the book, but when it comes to these issues, ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance could mean the death of a soul.

Thanks Donna!

In short--the visitation didn't just appear out of thin air.  Nor is it a fallaciously based "witch-hunt" (though, as some of the above demonstrate, there would be witches to be found), but rather a long time coming magisterial response to a strange wind blowing through women's religious life for many decades now.