Paul KeenanUS nuns and Vatican officials seem as divided as ever
The poet T.S. Eliot’s contention that “April is the cruellest month” must surely ring true among those US female religious orders represented by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).
It was in April 2009 that the leadership of the LCWR revealed to its members – religious superiors representing some 80% of female congregations across the US – news that the Vatican was to launch a doctrinal assessment of the movement, arising from concerns as to the congregations’ direction on such issues as abortion and homosexuality.
It was April 2010 when, during a meeting with the then prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), Cardinal William Levada that the sisters were publicly accused of creating disunity in the Church over their support for the Obama Administration’s Affordable Care Act – containing the controversial abortion/contraception provision.
In April 2012, and at the conclusion of the doctrinal assessment, the LCWR received its instruction to begin a process of reform under the guiding hand of Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle.
If it was hoped that April 2014 would bring more positive news on the back of that reform process, Vatican watchers were to be disappointed. Following a meeting in Rome on the 30th of the month between the leadership of the LCWR and the CDF, words such as ‘blunt’ and ‘frank’ were bandied about in illustrating the tone of exchanges, described as a CDF “rebuke” in at least one report.
Reform
Boiled down, the LCWR was informed in no uncertain terms by CDF prefect Cardinal Gerhard Muller that efforts to date in conforming to the reforms set were deficient, a contention fully backed by Archbishop Sartain in a statement after the meeting.
The intervening period has allowed for responses and assessments of that April meeting. The LCWR itself had claimed it wished to pass the details of the meeting to its own members before issuing its subsequent statement.
Taken together, the cardinal’s address and the archbishop’s and LCWR’s reactions paint a picture of figures still poles apart on what is expected or required of the parties involved.
Cutting past the more shrill coverage of an all-male grouping dictating to an all-female grouping within a patriarchal structure allows the outside observer to deal with points of contention put forward by the sides, both of which have stressed that they are open to “authentic dialogue and discernment” to quote the LCWR.
However, the ‘what’ of that dialogue and discernment is the key for the nuns.
Protesting that they did not recognise themselves in the doctrinal assessment finally offered by Rome, the LCWR members insisted that misperceptions of US female religious are evident in the CDF’s approach and attempts to clarify this have only led to “deeper misunderstandings” – the nuns bemoan a communication breakdown and the resulting “mistrust”.
These complaints hark back to the LCWR national assembly last August in Florida where, in a closed door session, Archbishop Sartain addressed delegates towards updating them on the reform process and better explaining its roots. In this, apparently, he failed, with those nuns willing to speak afterwards (all had been requested not to share details) stating that the reasons for a doctrinal reform were not elucidated satisfactorily and all the archbishop had offered was generalities about religious life.
For the CDF, however, the matter is altogether clearer, and is best illustrated by referencing again the LCWR’s national gatherings.
Major point
A major point of concern for Church authorities in relation to the ‘doctrinal direction’ of US female congregations lies in the choice of speakers invited to address the assemblies over recent years.
The doctrinal assessment pointed specifically to this issue and resulted in an instruction for the LCWR to seek final CDF approval before confirming any future guest speaker.
Yet, in the first year of reform, 2012, the national assembly, without seeking that approval, offered delegates a presentation by Barbara Marx Hubbard, a noted philosopher and proponent of ‘conscious evolution’, a theory which sees humanity dictating its own future through its own advances in fields such as science and medicine. Having watched the theory enter publications now circulating among US female religious, Cardinal Muller took the opportunity of the latest meeting to denounce the theory as “opposed to Christian Revelation”.
Even allowing for miscommunication on that particular matter, the sisters have done themselves no favours in announcing that, during the forthcoming 2014 assembly, the recipient of the LCWR award for outstanding leadership will be Sister Elizabeth Johnson, whose printed works have already been frowned upon by the CDF for their “errors”.
Cardinal Muller’s communicated displeasure on this point was met by the LCWR’s despair that “one aspect, in one book, of a distinguished theologian’s body of work seems to cast the entire body of respected and credible works in its shadow”.
On this, as with other issues ‘inherited’ by Pope Francis upon his ascent to the throne of St Peter, Vatican watchers have been keen to speculate as to the Pontiff’s own opinion on all of this, given an apparent circumspection in other areas (just witness the brouhaha over Communion launched in the world’s media by his pastoral phone call to an Argentine woman, or his simple “who am I to judge” around homosexuals).
Change of mind
Despite the quite reasonable contention that the Pontiff is confident enough to allow curial departments to take care of their own remits, much has been made of comments made by Cardinal Walter Kasper, a close confidant of the Pope, in the wake of the Rome meeting, apparently geared towards softening the impact of Cardinal Muller’s comments (the cardinal is a current member of the International Theological Commission which regularly advises the CDF).
Pressed on the meeting during a visit to the United States, Cardinal Kasper made light of perceived divisions, adding that where the LCWR might reasonably be expected to make changes towards better communion with Rome, “perhaps also the [CDF] has a little bit to change its mind. That is the normal way of doing things within the Church.”
However, against any temptation to automatically view the cardinal’s words as those of Francis, it must be acknowledged that within weeks of the Pope’s election in 2013, then Archbishop Muller was able to inform the LCWR that the Pontiff “reaffirmed the findings of the [doctrinal] assessment and the programme of reform”.
That was another cruel April for US sisters who may have hoped for a different message.