Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Vatican Reprimands a Group of U.S. Nuns and Plans Changes
The Vatican has appointed an American bishop to rein in the largest and most influential group of Catholic nuns in the United States, saying that an investigation found that the group had ?serious doctrinal problems.?
The Vatican?s assessment, issued on Wednesday, said that members of the group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, had challenged church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoted ?radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.?
The sisters were also reprimanded for making public statements that ?disagree with or challenge the bishops, who are the church?s authentic teachers of faith and morals.? During the debate over the health care overhaul in 2010, American bishops came out in opposition to the health plan, but dozens of sisters, many of whom belong to the Leadership Conference, signed a statement supporting it ? support that provided crucial cover for the Obama administration in the battle over health care.
The conference is an umbrella organization of women?s religious communities, and claims 1,500 members who represent 80 percent of the Catholic sisters in the United States. It was formed in 1956 at the Vatican?s request, and answers to the Vatican, said Sister Annmarie Sanders, the group?s communications director.
Word of the Vatican?s action took the group completely by surprise, Sister Sanders said. She said that the group?s leaders were in Rome on Wednesday for what they thought was a routine annual visit to the Vatican when they were informed of the outcome of the investigation, which began in 2008.
?I?m stunned,? said Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby founded by sisters. Her group was also cited in the Vatican document, along with the Leadership Conference, for focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping ?silent? on abortion and same-sex marriage.
?I would imagine that it was our health care letter that made them mad,? Sister Campbell said. ?We haven?t violated any teaching, we have just been raising questions and interpreting politics.?
The verdict on the nuns group was issued by the Vatican?s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is now led by an American, Cardinal William Levada, formerly the archbishop of San Francisco. He appointed Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle to lead the process of reforming the sisters? conference, with assistance from Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki and Bishop Leonard Blair, who was in charge of the investigation of the group.
They have been given up to five years to revise the group?s statutes, approve of every speaker at the group?s public programs and replace a handbook the group used to facilitate dialogue on matters that the Vatican said should be settled doctrine. They are also supposed to review the Leadership Conference?s links with Network and another organization, the Resource Center for Religious Life.
Doctrinal issues have been in the forefront during the papacy of Benedict XVI, who was in charge of the Vatican?s doctrinal office before he became pope. American nuns have come under particular scrutiny. Last year, American bishops announced that a book by a popular theologian at Fordham University, Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, should be removed from all Catholic schools and universities.
And while the Vatican was investigating the Leadership Conference, the Vatican was also conducting a separate, widespread investigation of all women?s religious orders and communities in the United States. That inquiry, known as a ?visitation,? was concluded last December, but the results of that process have not been made public.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/vatican-reprimands-us-nuns-group.html?_r=3
Re: Vatican Reprimands a Group of U.S. Nuns and Plans Changes
I immediately started humming "Sisters Are Doing It For Themselves"
I have nothing to add other than just because something has always been doesn't mean it always needs to be.
Am I blind or does this not even state what order they are? Stupid article (okay, not really, but what order dammit?!)
Eta: I see it was the leadership conference. I will go look for what orders make it up.
I understand it, and their church, their rules. If I wasn't already an ex-Catholic, this type of thing would bother me, but that train left the station years ago.
FWIW, my still devout Catholic mother has a lot of issues with the Church right now, exactly because of this:
Doctrinal issues have been in the forefront during the papacy of Benedict XVI, who was in charge of the Vatican?s doctrinal office before he became pope.
She feels the Church has far better things to be doing.
Also, how often have we heard on here "I go to a progressive and tolerant Catholic Church," and then we're reminded that those churches are straying from doctrine, etc.? Why isn't the Vatican reprimanding those churches and their priests? Why just the, um, "radical feminist" nuns?
"Her group was also cited in the Vatican document, along with the Leadership Conference, for focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice"
I just read a poem this morning that seems appropriate here:
"We still yearn for you, Jesus, but we no longer know where to seek your presence.
...
Can you ever be found in those churches that have
Rejected the powerless and the marginalized,
The lepers and the Samaritans of our day,
Those you called our brothers and sisters?"
---The Lament of a Believer in Excile, John Shelby Spong (excerpt)
I agree on "their church, their issues." It's sad, though, that the Church is causing such divisions within their membership. I've got many Catholic friends and every single one of them is disenchanted. This ranges from a mid 60s wife and mother to a male friend who spent years struggling with his faith and sexuality before finally attending seminary at Notre Dame. He ended up deciding not to take his final vows and spent several years away from the Church due to what he called "the hypocrisy." (sp?)
Even though I finally made my personal break with the church about 2 years ago, reading this kind of stuff still makes me stabby. "Radical feminist themes" and helping the poor too much???? I can't even.
The silver lining of things like this for me though are that they make me even more sure of my decision to leave the church.
The Vatican gets to makes the rules (I guess guidelines, in this case, I don't think this is enshrined anywhere in canonical law. Hopefully). I guess it's a rule now
.
Yep. A lot of my current disenchantment centers around Benedict. I wasn't a fan when he was chosen, and I'm still not a fan.
::punches ticket for express train to hell::
FWIW, I cried when JPII died. I loved him. So it's not like I'm critical of the papacy in general.
Please note that this is not said to mock. This made me think of the scene in Mad Men where Peggy's sister is telling Peggy to go easier on her mom. "It's been a hard year....the Holy Father died."
I did too and I'm a dirty hellbound heathen. He was good people.
Funny how they have the time and resources to investigate their nuns for being too charitable and Christlike, but not the time or resources to stop their priests from molesting children.
andplusalso
Which is why I would like to see people who feel more liberal on such issues stop supporting the Church.
This is a snapshot in time. They're not going to stop fighting, and things will change over time.
There was a time not too many generations ago when mass in English (or the vernacular of the country, whatever that is) was a radical idea that people thought would never come to fruition.
Way to go back in time and beat a dead horse.
The Church currently devotes enormous resources to the protection of children.
Let's ask all those children who were abused over decades while the church covered it up if it's a dead horse.
Seeing as how the abusers continue to be exposed or continue to resurface even as recently as 2011, it's not so much a dead horse.
For motherf*cking real. And the key word there is currently. As in, after their ish got blasted all over the damn news.
They do reprimand parishes and priests. Unfortunately, this is a large group, a leadership conference made up of many members (much like USCCB) so it will get a lot more press.
eta: Regarding 2 in Ireland holding "liberal" views
http://www.herald.ie/opinion/why-our-priests-are-being-silenced-by-the-vatican-3086155.html
".........a dead horse."
WTF?
*speechless*
Source other than the Church?
lol, by that logic, celebrating Christmas is a dead horse.
My main point regarding the molestation of children by priests is that it need not be brought up in every single discussion of the Catholic church or the Catholic faith.
And while there may still be issues arising from the past and legal battles being fought, the Church takes the protection of children very seriously today. Every volunteer or employee who is to have contact must go through training regarding sexual abuse, and there are strict guidelines regarding interactions with children by adults and the reporting of anything inappropriate.