Fortnight for Freedom, Day 6

In my previous installment in this series of posts — a series whose main point is to question the currently-under-way Fortnight for Freedom campaign instituted by Archbishop William Lori and the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops — I talked about the Vatican censure recently aimed at Margaret A. Farley and her book Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics.

Farley, a professor emeritus of Christian ethics the Yale Divinity School and a "woman religious" (in Catholic-speak) in the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, had in her book proposed modern attitudes toward masturbation, homosexual acts, homosexual unions and remarriage after divorce (among other topics). These are attitudes that the Church hierarchy finds offensive, but which I decidedly do not.

As the upbraiding of Farley was publicly revealed, American nuns as a group were simultaneously pushing back against their own recent censure by the Vatican. In April (see this Washington Post story) the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), an umbrella group representing 80 percent of Catholic sisters and nuns in the United States, drew the fire of the Vatican over ...

... serious theological errors in statements by members, widespread dissent on the church’s teaching on sexuality and “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith” ...

That's what was stated in "a church report released Wednesday [April 18]," the Post story said. A member of the all-male apostolate in the U.S., Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle, was appointed by the Vatican "to oversee 'reform' of the women’s organization," according to the story.

The epicenter of the dispute between the Vatican and the LCWR seems to have been that:

NETWORK, a Washington, DC lobbying group founded by Catholic sisters in 1971 was singled out as “silent on the right to life” ... “I think we scare them,” Sr. Simone Campbell, a lawyer who serves as the executive director of the lobby said of the church’s male hierarchy ...

The article then said:

Campbell sees the current tension between male and female Catholic clergy as a part of a post-Vatican II democratic evolution within the church, but worries that the male leaders fail to recognize the “witness of women religious.”

“I made my vows over 40 years ago to serve the people of God and that service is unseen in this document,” she said in an interview.

“It’s painfully obvious that the leadership of the church is not used to having educated women form thoughtful opinions and engage in dialogue,” Campbell said.

Also mentioned in the article:

In October, the U.S. Bishops’ doctrinal conference offered a formal critique of theologian Sister Elizabeth A. Johnson, who they said inappropriately over-emphasized feminine descriptions of God in a new book.

And:

After the head of the Catholic Health Association, Sr. Carol Keehan, voiced approval for the Obama administration’s attempt at a compromise on the HHS birth control regulations, Cardinal Timothy Dolan said he was “disappointed that she had acted unilaterally, not in concert with the bishops.”

A follow-up article soon appeared. It was headlined, "American nuns stunned by Vatican accusation of ‘radical feminism,’ crackdown." This photo accompanied it:

Sister Mary Alice Chineworth, 94, and other
nuns at the Oblate Sisters of Providence motherhouse
all have their favorite spots to sit during evening prayers
in the chapel Aug. 24, 2011, in Catonsville, MD.

(I take the liberty of including the photo because I, too, live in Catonsville, MD, and my last birthday was August 24, 2011!)

The points made in the article included:

• The directive from the Vatican taking the American sisters to task came without warning and took the women religious by surprise.
• The directive amounted to "a Vatican crackdown on what it calls 'radical feminism' among the women and their purported failure to sufficiently condemn such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage."
• "The Vatican report took the nuns to task for making 'occasional public statements' that disagree with the bishops, 'who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals'.”
• There was a question of fairness: "The Vatican report didn’t focus on public positions the women took but rather on the private conversations they had at their own meetings and comments they made in private letters to Vatican officials about such issues as how to minister to gays and lesbians."
• A large number of lay Catholics stood up on the nuns' side: "Thousands of people joined a Twitter drive to support the Leadership Conference, which represents more than 80 percent of American nuns. Using the hashtag #whatsistersmeantome, one person wrote of the nun who 'was the rock of our Catholic campus'. Another man tweeted about how his father lost his own mother at 13. 'It was the Mercy sisters who consoled and loved him onward'.”
• The connection between priests and nuns has been weakening since the late 1960s and early 1970s, according to Sister Pat McDermott, president of the 3,500-member Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, which is based in Silver Spring, MD.
• The number of women religious in the U.S. Catholic Church is seriously on the decline.

Anyone see the pattern here? As the male hierarchy has become increasingly conservative, a trend that started with the pontificate of Pope John Paul II beginning in 1978, the vocations of women religious in this country have dwindled. Meanwhile, those sisters and nuns who have remained have grown increasingly out of step with the apostolate.

How long can this go on? How can anyone think it's good for the Church?