American nuns are preparing to assemble in St. Louis next week for a pivotal
meeting at which they will try to decide how to respond to a scathing critique of their doctrinal loyalty issued
this spring by the Vatican — a report
that has prompted Roman Catholics across the country to rally to the nuns’
defense.
The nuns will be weighing whether to cooperate with the
three bishops appointed by the Vatican to supervise the overhaul of their
organization, the Leadership Conference of Women
Religious, which represents about 80 percent of women’s Catholic religious
orders in the United States.
The Leadership Conference says it is considering at
least six options that range from submitting graciously to the takeover to
forming a new organization independent of Vatican control, as well other
possible courses of action that lie between those poles.
What is in essence a power struggle between the nuns
and the church’s hierarchy had been building for decades, church scholars say.
At issue are questions of obedience and autonomy, what it means to be a
faithful Catholic and different understandings of the Second
Vatican Council.
Sister Pat Farrell, the president of the Leadership
Conference, said in an interview that the Vatican seems to regard questioning
as defiance, while the sisters see it as a form of faithfulness.
“We have a differing perspective on obedience,” Sister
Farrell said. “Our understanding is that we need to continue to respond to the
signs of the times, and the new questions and issues that arise in the
complexities of modern life are not something we see as a threat.”
These same conflicts are gripping the Catholic Church
at large. Nearly 50 years after the start of Vatican II, which was intended to
open the church to the modern world and respond to the “signs of the times,”
the church is gravely polarized between a progressive wing still eager for change
and reform and a traditionalist flank focused on returning to what it sees as
doctrinal fundamentals.
The sisters have been caught in the riptide. Most of
them have spent their lives serving the sick, the poor, children and immigrants
— and not engaged in battles over theology. But when some sisters after Vatican
II began to question church prohibitions on women serving as priests,
artificial birth control or the acceptance of same-sex relationships, their
religious orders did not shut down such discussion or treat it as apostasy. In
fact, they have continued to insist on their right to debate and challenge
church teaching, which has resulted in the Vatican’s reproof.
The former head of the church’s doctrinal office,
Cardinal William J. Levada, said after his last meeting with the nuns’ leaders
in June, just before he retired, that they should regard his office’s harsh
assessment as “an invitation to obedience.”
“I admire religious men and women,” Cardinal Levada
said in an
interview with The National Catholic Reporter. “But if they aren’t people
who believe and express the faith of the church, the doctrines of the church,
then I think they’re misrepresenting who they are and who they ought to be.”
The sisters say they see no contradiction in embracing
the Catholic faith while also being open to questioning certain church
teachings based on new information or new experiences. The Leadership
Conference has not taken a stand in favor of the ordination of women or the
acceptance of gay relationships, but it has discussed such topics at its
meetings. Members insist that open discussion of church doctrine is not only
their right but is also healthy for the church.
They say their approach is no different from that of
many Catholic priests and laypeople, not just those in the United States. As
evidence, they cite messages of support they have received from Catholic
religious orders of men and women all over Europe, Asia and Latin America — as
well as in the United States.
“We make our vows, but our obedience isn’t blind,” said
one mother superior, who, like others, did not want to be identified while the
future of the Leadership Conference is in limbo. “Obedience comes from
listening.”
Vatican II led to dramatic changes now taken for
granted by many Catholics: allowing worship in local languages instead of only
Latin, encouraging the participation of laypeople, and cooperating with other
churches and faiths.
The council also approved a document, “Perfectae
Caritatis” (“Perfect Love”), that instructed men and women in religious
orders to study their orders’ founders and original sources, and use that
inspiration to re-evaluate and renew their mission. The sisters say they took
the instruction to heart.
“We were the ones who probably took Vatican II and ran
the fastest and the farthest with it,” said Sister Janice Farnham, a retired
professor of church history at the Boston College School of Theology and
Ministry. “Sometimes our church leaders forget, we were tasked to do these
things by the church. The church said jump, and we said, how high?
“The church said update, renew, go back to your
sources, and we did it as best we could. We did it with a passion, and we paid
dearly.”
The sisters after Vatican II had access as never before
to higher education, and they went on to become scholars and theologians, chief
executives of hospitals, legal aid lawyers, social workers and martyrs in
countries like El Salvador. They took on issues including economic injustice,
racism, women’s rights, immigration, interfaith relations
and environmentalism — which for many years put them in collegial working
relationships with bishops who were also engaged in those causes.
But the two popes who reigned for the last 34 years —
first John Paul II and now Benedict XVI — appointed bishops who are far more
theologically and politically conservative than their predecessors. Drawing on
these popes’ teachings, this new generation of American bishops has steered the
church’s social priorities toward opposition to abortion, gay marriage and
secularism.
The Leadership Conference was a thorn in the Vatican’s
side even before 1979, the year its president at the time, Sister Theresa Kane,
welcomed John Paul to Washington with a public plea to ordain women in the
priesthood. The group has remained unified despite pressure from the Vatican by
making decisions only after consulting its membership. It is hardly the small
splinter group that some conservative critics have recently tried to portray.
The disciplinary action against the nuns comes just as
American bishops are struggling to reassert their authority with a wayward
flock. The bishops are in the midst of a campaign to defend against what they
see as serious threats to religious liberty — especially a government mandate
to provide employees of Catholic institutions with health insurance that covers
contraception. But the prelates are well aware of polls showing that about 95
percent of Catholic women have used birth control at some point in their lives,
and 52 percent support same-sex
marriage — little different from the public at large.
The dissonance is of great concern to American bishops
and the Vatican.
“The church must speak with one voice,” Archbishop
Carlo Maria Viganò, the papal nuncio to the United States, said in an address
in June to American bishops at their meeting in Atlanta. “We all know that the
fundamental tactic of the enemy is to show a church divided.”
He added pointedly that at this “difficult time,” there is a special need for women and men in religious orders, and for Catholic universities, to “take on an attitude of deep communion” with the bishops.