At The Turn of the Tide: religious life

Showing posts with label religious life. Show all posts

Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Laboure Society: "Delivering Vocations Which Would Otherwise be Lost"

A cause well worth supporting. Excerpts:

...What Laurent discovered — and what few casual observers realize — is the roadblock debt presents to thousands of potential priestly and religious vocations. While guidelines vary by order, diocese and seminary as to what debt new members are allowed to carry, for many religious orders that number is zero.

...“We are a national organization with the specific purpose of serving the Church by delivering vocations which would otherwise be lost,” he said.

The Laboure Society assists aspiring religious in addressing their financial situation in several ways. Applicants are thoroughly vetted, including through the order they wish to join. Roughly every six months, those accepted are organized into classes, usually 10 to 15 members in size.

The class is brought together at a three-day financial boot camp where members are taught ethical fundraising skills and work through a strategic plan to tackle the accumulated student loans of the group (personal debt is not addressed by the society’s program).

Laurent said while class members then return to implement the fundraising plan in their home areas, they are not cut adrift. Each class is assigned a mentor who follows up to assess progress and provide support.

“This is a very well-thought out protocol,” he said. “The individual serves as accountability to the team members.”

Once the money has been collected, it is allocated to each team member in the form of grants with the exact amount each team member receives calculated by a comprehensive formula. The society doesn’t issue checks to team members, but takes over management of loan payment schedules. Individuals who don’t receive grants sufficient to wipe out their debt join a second team to participate in additional rounds of fundraising.

The group makes loan payments as long as the individual continues to advance through their vocational path and returns any unpaid principal if a person abandons their vocation. To date, the non-profit organization has helped more than 230 individuals into priestly and religious formation...

Their website here. See also Serra International.

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Pope Francis Approves of LCWR Reform

Hermeneutic of continuity, folks! Excerpts:

...Archbishop Müller told Sr. Deacon that he “recently discussed the Doctrinal Assessment with Pope Francis, who reaffirmed the findings of the Assessment and the program of reform for this Conference of Major Superiors,” an April 15 statement from the congregation said.

“It is the sincere desire of the Holy See that this meeting may help to promote the integral witness of women Religious,” the communiqué stated, and this requires “a firm foundation of faith and Christian love, so as to preserve and strengthen it for the enrichment of the Church and society for generations to come.”

Since it was his first time meeting with the leadership of the group, Archbishop Müller thanked the sisters for their “great contribution” to the Church in the United States, “as seen particularly in the many schools, hospitals, and institutions of support for the poor” that have been founded and staffed by religious.

He also “emphasized that a Conference of Major Superiors, such as the LCWR, exists in order to promote common efforts among its member institutes as well as cooperation with the local Conference of Bishops and with individual Bishops.

“For this reason, such Conferences are constituted by and remain under the direction of the Holy See,” he stated, citing canons 708-709...

Why the reform? See here.

Thursday, March 21, 2013

60 Minutes, the LCWR, and Necessary Church Reform

So 60 Minutes ran a piece on the Vatican's doctrinal investigation of the LCWR. GetReligion was not amused. Excerpts:

CBS released this clip last week, previewing the Sunday 60 Minutes piece. Talk about hard-hitting! Talk about the opposite of obsequious!

Oh wait. It looked horrific.

Apparently it was. After it ran on Sunday, one person tweeted:

“60 minutes” tonight marked the election of Pope Francis with an outrageously slanted Bob Simon piece hammering the Church
Another:

aaaand first up on 60 Minutes: Will Pope Francis continue using the same office as the Inquisition to persecute American nuns?

yeah, reporting is one thing. Glowing as you question the subject is quite another.
You can watch the whole thing and make your own judgment, but Godbeat veteran Jeffrey Weiss said the piece failed on a number of counts...

Why the investigation? Here're some of the reasons I perceived. John Allen had some good points about the investigation. There are reasons laid out in the Vatican's own document on the visitation. Excerpts:

...The decision of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) to undertake a doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) was communicated to the LCWR Presidency during their meeting with Cardinal William Levada in Rome on April 8, 2008. At that meeting, three major areas of concern were given as motivating the CDF’s decision to initiate the Assessment:

Addresses at the LCWR Assemblies.
Addresses given during LCWR annual Assemblies manifest problematic statements and serious theological, even doctrinal errors. The Cardinal offered as an example specific passages of Sr. Laurie Brink’s address about some Religious “moving beyond the Church” or even beyond Jesus. This is a challenge not only to core Catholic beliefs; such a rejection of faith is also a serious source of scandal and is incompatible with religious life. Such unacceptable positions routinely go unchallenged by the LCWR, which should provide resources for member Congregations to foster an ecclesial vision of religious life, thus helping to correct an erroneous vision of the Catholic faith as an important exercise of charity. 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.

Policies of Corporate Dissent
The Cardinal spoke of this issue in reference to letters the CDF received from “Leadership Teams” of various Congregations, among them LCWR Officers, protesting the Holy See’s actions regarding the question of women’s ordination and of a correct pastoral approach to ministry to homosexual persons, e.g. letters about New Ways Ministry’s conferences. The terms of the letters suggest that these sisters collectively take a position not in agreement with the Church’s teaching on human sexuality. It is a serious matter when these Leadership Teams are not providing effective leadership and example to their communities, but place themselves outside the Church’s teaching.

Radical Feminism
The Cardinal noted a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith in some of the programs and presentations sponsored by the LCWR, including theological interpretations that risk distorting faith in Jesus and his loving Father who sent his Son for the salvation of the world. Moreover, some commentaries on “patriarchy” distort the way in which Jesus has structured sacramental life in the Church; others even undermine the revealed doctrines of the Holy Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the inspiration of Sacred Scripture...

What does radical feminism in the Catholic Church and women's religious orders look like? From the side of someone who may well be a supporter or at least sympathetic to this approach, there's a classic overview from Thomas Rausch, SJ's Catholicism in the Third Millennium:

...Feminist spirituality is a relatively new field that has grown out of the struggle of women for equality in both society and Church. It is a particular expression of liberation theology. Like feminist theology (for it is often difficult to separate theology and spirituality) feminist spirituality covers a broad spectrum of positions and persons in the contemporary Catholic Church. Some feminist theologians have moved explicitly beyond the Christian tradition; their theological interests focus on the pre-Christian European worship of the Goddess, a nature religion also known as Wicca. Mary Daly is among those feminists who identify themselves as post-Christian. Others, such as Rosemary Radford Ruether and Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza, have challenged the tradition in a radical way from within. What is common to most feminist theologians is a concern to bring the often neglected experience of women into the theological enterprise.

Feminist spirituality seeks to articulate a vision of the spiritual life that can embrace the experience of women, particularly their experience of oppression; it seeks to address their particular needs and help them reappropriate their own spiritual power. Consciousness raising is a first step toward a genuine feminist spiritual vision. Women who have so often been defined in terms of their sexual and reproductive functions insist that their value and personal possibilities cannot be deftermined by biology. This feminist spirituality offers women an alternative vision that includes a critique of those forces and movements that have oppressed women and alienated them from themselves. Patriarchy, the structuring of society and culture in terms of male interests and power, and hierarchy, organizing society and Church in terms of higher and lower status, are both rejected. Feminist spirituality emphasizes equality, inclusivity, and mutuality. It prefers the discussion to the lecture, the square to the circle.

Feminist spirituality differs from much of traditional spirituality in its nondualistic approach to all of reality; it seeks to overcome the split between body and spirit, between spirituality and sexuality, transcendence and immanence, reason and feeling, the sacred and the secular, between this world and the next. It seeks to read the Gospel in such a way that women will be empowered; thus it is uncomfortable with the emphasis in classical theology on losing the self by putting others first, seeing here a reinforcement of the passivity and submission to which so many women have been conditioned by a patriarchal culture and Church. Displacing one's own ego is fine if one's temptation is to pride, but for many women the real task of a genuine conversion is to be more assertive, to affirm their own value, and come to a genuine love of self.

Sandra M. Schneiders lists the following as major characteristics of feminist spirituality: First, it must be rooted in women's experience. Thus there is generally an emphasis on a personal sharing of stories as a way of recovering what has been repressed and of raising consciousness. Second, it celebrates those aspects of bodiliness, such as menstruation and childbirth, that religion has been silent about. They are life-giving, not shameful. Third, it is concerned with nonhuman nature, with its sense of our organic relationship with the universe; its vision is ecologically sensitive. Fourth, it emphasizes rituals that are inclusive rather than hierarchical, joyful and participative rather than unemotional and dominative. Feminist spirituality is concerned for the renewal of Church ministry, liturgy, organization, and community. Finally, feminist spirituality sees an intrinsic relationship between personal growth and social justice. From the perspective of feminist spirituality, the personal is always political...--Thomas Rausch, Catholicism in the Third Millenium, 2nd Edition, (Michael Glazier Books, 2003), pg. 184-186.

From critics of the approach, one can read Ungodly Rage: The Hidden Face of Catholic Feminism, The Feminist Question: Feminist Theology in the Light of Christian Tradition, Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities, Sisters in Crisis Revisited: From Unraveling to Reform and Renewal, and Prodigal Daughters: Catholic Women Come Home to the Church.

Why is this vision of feminist spirituality described by Rausch a problem? Well, if you're post-Christian and outside the Church, then you're certainly no longer Catholic or Christian. And the LCWR, by a past president's own admission, contains some member congregations who have gone precisely that far.

...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 practicing Wicca, you're violating the Church's ban on magic and the New Age. If you reject all forms of hierarchy, then you will inevitably be at war with the Church from within, since it is inherently hierarchical according to the teaching of Vatican II. If you're an offshoot of liberation theology, you need to take account of the Church's teaching on liberation theology. If you differ from traditional Catholic spirituality, then you're rejecting the teaching of Doctor of the Church St. Teresa of Avila, Doctor of the Church St. Hildegard of Bingen, Doctor of the Church St. Catherine of Siena, Doctor of the Church St. Thérèse of Lisieux, and a whole host of other women mystics and saints. If you choose to believe that all that is personal must be political, then you have accepted the via moderna in its entirety which will inevitably see all exercises of authority as unwonted impositions of power on the will of another, never as the right exercise of the functions of the members of the body of Christ. If you truly believe that traditional spirituality is wrong when it supposedly, somehow rejects bodiliness and simultaneously hold that true liberation for women comes from refusing to be defined by biology in any way at all, you're not only incoherent, but also ignoring the true richness of the Church's teaching on the theology of the body. If you refuse to be willing to lose your life in order to save it (Luke 9:24; Matthew 16:25; Luke 17:33; Mark 8:35; Matthew 10:39; John 12:25), then you're repudiating the eternal dynamic of gift at the heart of the Trinity into which we are all invited, choosing to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil rather than the tree of life, choosing power over paradise (as though choosing tradition and deification somehow meant women were disempowered! Mary, she of the Magnificat, is Queen of heaven and earth.). If you steadfastly believe that the Catholic Church can and should ordain women, then you're steadfastly in violation of the clear and irreformable teaching of the ordinary magisterium.

Does this mean there is no room in Catholicism for feminism? Not at all. See the following for a sampling of some celebrations of Catholic womanhood in the different walks of life:

There is plenty of room within the Church for a tremendous celebration of women. There is room in the Church for women to take on many more roles, and to continue to work wonders in the roles they currently occupy. But there is not room in the Church for a feminist theology/spirituality which privileges power over love.

To hold the form of feminist theology outlined by Rausch is to place oneself in the permanent role of dissatisfied Catholic, permanently seeking to alter the fundamental structure of the Church from within by force to conform it to the demands of your ideology. The faith does not have primacy in your life, nor does Christ, but rather power, challenging the faith rather than receiving it as that which has been handed on, and asserting your own all rightness over against the standards of the Catholic Church and her faith. This analysis is supported by Catholic women religious. Excerpts:

Physicians who are also Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma are criticizing the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and its defenders for using an impoverished “language of politics” instead of “the language of faith” in the dialogue with the Catholic hierarchy.

“There is no basis for authentic dialogue between these two languages. The language of faith is rooted in Jesus Christ, His life and His mission, as well as the magisterial teaching of the Church,” said the physician-sisters’ statement, which was issued after a June 2 meeting on the contributions of religious women in the healing ministry of the Catholic Church.

“The language of politics arises from the social marketplace,” they said. “The Sisters who use political language in their responses to the magisterial Church reflect the poverty of their education and formation in the faith.”...

the Religious Sisters of Mercy of Alma’s broader statement. It said that a religious community’s charism is given to “enrich the Church” and the Catholic hierarchy must determine its authenticity. A woman religious participates in this charism and “cannot separate her work from the Church.”

The sisters praised “the generosity and service” of the religious women who preceded them and foresaw “great hope” for the future of religious life in the Church.

They said that this hope rests in remaining within “the deposit of faith and the hierarchical structure of the Church.”

“We cannot separate ourselves from sacred tradition or claim to advance beyond the Church.”

The sisters’ June 2 meeting also addressed statements from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, various news agencies and other organizations. The Sisters of Mercy said these have created “confusion, polarization, and false representations about the beliefs, activities, and priorities of a significant number of women religious in the United States...”

Bottom line: Archbishop Sartain has been given a necessary and important task for the renewal of religious orders for women within Catholicism. There are a number of serious doctrinal problems extant within the LCWR's leadership and, by Sister Laurie Brink's own account, within the member congregations. Pray for Abp. Sartain and a graced reform for the LCWR.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Jesuits React to Francis, First Jesuit Pope

Why so unexpected?

The power of prayer.

The experience of being there for the announcement.

From their Superior General. Excerpts:

...In the name of the Society of Jesus, I give thanks to God for the election of our new Pope, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J., which opens for the Church a path full of hope.

All of us Jesuits accompany with our prayers our brother and we thank him for his generosity in accepting the responsibility of guiding the Church at this crucial time. The name of “Francis” by which we shall now know him evokes for us the Holy Father’s evangelical spirit of closeness to the poor, his identification with simple people, and his commitment to the renewal of the Church. From the very first moment in which he appeared before the people of God, he gave visible witness to his simplicity, his humility, his pastoral experience and his spiritual depth.

“The distinguishing mark of our Society is that it is . . . a companionship . . . bound to the Roman Pontiff by a special bond of love and service.” (Complementary Norms, No. 2, § 2) Thus, we share the joy of the whole Church, and at the same time, wish to express our renewed availability to be sent into the vineyard of the Lord, according to the spirit of our special vow of obedience, that so distinctively unites us with the Holy Father (General Congregation 35, Decree 1, No. 17)...

From the Jesuits’ secretary for the promotion of the faith. Excerpts:

...Father Blaszczak said Pope Francis’ training and priesthood as a Jesuit “tell you that he’s been steeped in Ignatian spirituality,” has had “a top-notch secular education” and that “his formation has always put him in touch with real people in real-life situations,” which he then has reflected upon in an effort to identify the ways God was present.

“That he chose the name Francis signals to us where he’s from, what he’s about and what he believes the reform of the church is going to require: It’s not going to require moral muscle, it’s not going to require just philosophical analysis; it’s going to require an engagement with the person of Christ,” particularly through the Scriptures, he said. “But it’s going to be the Christ poor and humble.”

While some people thought maybe Pope Francis took his name thinking also of the great Jesuit St. Francis Xavier, Father Blaszczak said Jesuits know just how important the life, example and spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi was in the conversion of their founder, St. Ignatius, and in the development of what has come to be known as Ignatian spirituality...

“For Ignatius, Francis is the alternative to the life of the world. Francis, with his itinerant ministry and his intense devotion to the life of Christ and his ascetical lifestyle,” is the counterbalance to the worldly life in the court, the Jesuit said.

“Ignatius, as he admits himself, was given to womanizing, gambling and feats of arms,” but at the time of his conversion, “to his great surprise,” Ignatius finds himself “much more attracted, much more consoled, enlivened and given joy when he thinks about imitating the life of St. Francis,” the founder of the Franciscans, who died in 1226.

Father Blaszczak said Catholics already have a good hint of how Ignatian and Franciscan spirituality might impact the way Pope Francis exercises his ministry “in the way he engaged the people of Rome” when he first stepped out onto the balcony as their bishop and pope March 13 “with great simplicity, with minimal pomp and circumstance.”

The Jesuit said he expected Pope Francis to continue as much as possible to live as he did while cardinal and archbishop of Buenos Aires, with “simplicity and austerity in conformity with the life of Ignatius and Francis, in conformity with his intention to follow Christ poor and humble.”

The focus of St. Ignatius, St. Francis and “historically of our new pope” when he was bishop was to be closest to the poor and those on the margins of society, he said...

"From the conversations I’ve had with my Latin American Jesuit colleagues, this is a man who knows his own mind. This is a man who is not afraid of choosing and marking his own direction,” he said.

He also said he did not think the life of the Society of Jesus would change much with a Jesuit in the Apostolic Palace, because “we are bound to the service of the church through our connection and availability to the Holy Father, and that doesn’t change” no matter who is pope.

The Jesuits promise not to seek high offices in the church, which explains in part why there has never been a Jesuit pope before. However, Father Blaszczak said, that Jesuit promise is secondary to their promise to always be available for whatever mission the church needs them to take on...

American Jesuits react.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Hollywood Starlet, Fulbright Scholar, Doctor...All Catholic Nuns

In these days of discussion about the reform of the LCWR, it behooves me to feature some other stories about women religious, such as the absolutely astounding track record of the Benedictine Abbey of Regina Laudis. The story of the founding is told in Come to the Stable, as well as Mother Benedict: Foundress of the Abbey of Regina Laudis.

The most well known of their nuns, of course, is Mother Prioress Dolores Hart, the recent subject of the documentary God is the Bigger Elvis (for more, see here, as well as The Leonard Lopate Show: “God Is the Bigger Elvis” - WNYC).

God Is the Bigger Elvis: Trailer

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