Paul KeenanThe Vatican’s inquiry in to US nuns raises some concerns, but it is positive, writes Paul Keenan
The tone was one of ‘peace in our time’, the mood one of happy solidarity. As the key speakers at the December 16 Vatican press conference dealt with the final report arising from the three-year Apostolic Visitation into women’s religious congregations of America, each was keen to state the positivity of this “affirmative report”, a document to leave US sisters “affirmed and strengthened”.
Among the three female religious representatives flanking Cardinal João Bráz de Aviz (prefect) and Archbishop José Rodríguez Carballo (secretary) of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life during the conference, Mother Mary Clare Millea, the Vatican’s Apostolic Visitor to the US nuns, became happily tearful at the outcome of a process that had been anything but a happy one at the outset.
First launched by the Congregation for Religious Life in 2008 at the behest of then-Pope Benedict XVI to examine fully the ‘health’ of women’s religious life in America, the Apostolic Visitation was immediately met with a suspicion among the 341 women’s religious communities to be investigated, not least as no explanation for what prompted the visitation was conveyed.
Speaking on December 16, Mother Millea recalled how “some congregations reported that their elder sisters felt that their whole lives had been judged and found wanting” by the launching of an unexplained process of investigaton.
Suspicion was later to give way to outright apprehension and fear when, in the course of a radio interview in 2009, Cardinal Franc Rodé, then-prefect of the Congregation for Religious Life, who, having previously cited spiritual life, governance, vocations and formation as areas of interest referred to “irregularities or omissions in American religious life”, adding: “Most of all, you could say, it involves a certain secular mentality that has spread in these religious families and, perhaps, also a certain ‘feminist’ spirit.”
This was the atmosphere through which Mother Millea was forced to cut in seeking answers during the first phase of the visitation in 2009.
Questions
Questionnaires dispatched to communities were ignored, returned incomplete and even blank and accompanied by communities’ constitutions by way of answering the questions posed (which, despite Cardinal Rodé’s ominous words, confined themselves to his earlier categories). Subsequently, facing a raft of complaints from orders, the visitation team signalled that a number of questions did not need to be answered and were to be dropped from the order of business.
This conciliatory move was later met by a more positive atmosphere when, in 2010, Mother Millea began a round of face-to-face meetings with the leaders and members of some 90 communities (together with invited laity and bishops eager to show support for their women religious).
On December 16, Archbishop Carballo told the press conference that 78% of superiors general “voluntarily engaged in personal dialogue with the visitator” during this phase.
Later, according to Global Sisters Report, which has tracked the visitation from the outset: “Not only were sisters comforted by the meetings themselves, but also by the widespread support they were receiving, as laity around the nation both thanked them for their service to the Church and defended their integrity.”
And it is much of this service which makes up the final report issued on December 16. Taking a predominantly positive slant, though with some notable criticisms, the report describes a vibrant congregational life in the US. Acknowledging that the vocational peak of the 1960s is not a norm to which US religious communities can return, the report nevertheless notes the high level of continuing service to society at large and lauds both the ability of many women’s congregations to attract novices and the quality of their formations towards final profession (while simultaneously encouraging lay involvement in services to make up for the vocational shortfall, through what the report hails as “creative ways”).
Mother Agnes Donovan, who represented the Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR) at the press conference, asserted from this that “religious life is not dying in the US…and [according to the report] there is reason for hope”.
Meanwhile, Mother Sharon Holland, current president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), also a participant at the Vatican press conference, hailed the report as “not a document of blame or simplistic solutions” that would leave US congregations feeling “appreciated and trusted to carry on”. (For the record, a separate visitation to the LCWR is ongoing.)
In the end, on that ‘feel-good’ December 16, it fell to journalist and contributor to The Irish Catholic, Joshua McElwee to give voice to the report’s criticisms and potential responses States-side.
Receiving the microphone during the inevitable Q&A session after the press conference, McElwee suggested that a cohort of yet disgruntled nuns exists and asked how they, feeling undervalued and underappreciated, could now be brought into the fold with the report findings released.
Specifically, McElwee was referring to two report areas: a calling for a review of spiritual practices, accompanied by a warning to some congregations “not to displace Christ from the centre of creation and of our faith” and an ‘advisory’ note regarding the wish of potential vocations “to be externally recognisable as consecrated women… a particular challenge in institutes whose current lifestyle does not emphasise these aspects of religious life” – to be interpreted as a scolding to those congregations no longer given to wearing the veil. (Communities adhering to traditional veils have reported a greater appeal among young candidates over recent years in the United States.)
Responding to McElwee’s line of questioning, Mother Sharon Holland acknowledged that the issue has been on her mind for some time through the visitation but, for those still apprehensive and fearful, “I don’t have the answer yet”.
Absence
In the absence of such an answer, Cardinal João Bráz offered something of an open-ended addendum to the report.
“We are aware that the Apostolic Visitation was met with apprehension by some women religious as well as the decision, on the part of some institutes, not to collaborate fully in the process,” he told assembled journalists. “While this was a painful disappointment for us, we use this present opportunity to express our willingness to engage in respectful and fruitful dialogue with those institutes which were not fully compliant with the visitation process.”
Two months into the Year for Consecrated Life, an invitation to further dialogue has thus been issued, adding to the hope expressed in the report on US women’s communities that the visitation might “continue to bear abundant fruit for the revitalisation and strengthening of religious institutes in fidelity to Christ, to the Church and to their founding charisms”.
Perhaps voices stilled by apprehension will now respond.