Posted on 12/16/2014 8:28:24 AM PST by GIdget2004
A sweeping Vatican investigation of Roman Catholic sisters in the United States that began five years ago amid criticism they had become secular and overly feminist ended up mostly praising nuns for their contributions to the church, a sign of the shift in tone under Pope Francis.
The report released Tuesday praised the sisters, thanked them for their selfless work caring for the poor and promised to value their "feminine genius" more, while gently suggesting ways to survive amid a steep drop in their numbers.
Given the criticism of American religious life that prompted the Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI to launch the investigation in 2008, the final report was most remarkable for what it didn't say.
There was no critique of the nuns, no demands that they shift their focus from social justice issues to emphasize Catholic teaching on abortion, no condemnation that a feminist, secular mentality had taken hold in their ranks.
Rather, while offering a sobering assessment of the difficult state of American congregations, the report praised the sisters' dedication and reaffirmed their calling in a reflection of the pastoral and encouraging tone characteristic of the first Jesuit pope.
It was a radically different message, in both tone and content, from that of another Vatican office investigating an umbrella group of their leaders.
That investigation, conducted by the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, resulted in a Vatican takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in 2012. The doctrine office determined that the LCWR, which represents the leaders of 80 percent of U.S. sisters, took positions that undermined church teaching and promoted "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Headline should read,
I thought he would take away Sister Mary Francis’s ruler.
...
There was no critique of the nuns, no demands that they shift their focus from social justice issues to emphasize Catholic teaching on abortion, no condemnation that a feminist, secular mentality had taken hold in their ranks.
For decades the church has shifted away from actually standing up for its doctrine and claiming (Gasp!) that they are teaching universal and timeless truths even if sometimes those truths are hard to live up to. Francis has only made it more obvious. However nobody seems to ever correlate this shift to "soft" catholicism with the precipitous drop in vocations.
Let's face it, if your goal is to be a community organizing left wing activist you don't need to become a nun. You can just join Code Pink or something. So if all nuns are now why is anyone surprised that few women want to take those inconvenient vows of poverty, obedience, and chastity? With this declaration that trend will continue.
Good headline. Many of the US nuns are left wing wackos, many hate men and many others espouse teaching that is against the Catholic Church. Fortunately, they are a dying breed.
Well, it is now official. This gasbag IS the new age social justice pope. Somehow, someway he needs to be taken from us. Those nuns are completely out of control. Radical feminists, pro-abortion, pro-birth control, pro-radical homosexual everything. His dumping Burke is starting to make more sense each day.
Unfortunately, many Americans are still hopelessly trapped in the Bing Crosby/Ingrid Bergmann version of these issues.
What is not said in the article is that the LCWR is mostly suffering from a revolt by the far more orthodox young sisters, who resent and reject the behavior of those older, more politically leftist sisters in the upper ranks of the LCWR.
And at the same time that the membership of the LCWR is dwindling, the number of nuns in some of the orders is jumping, some orders falling short of the accommodations they need to support their strong growth.
http://the-american-catholic.com/2010/05/21/booming-traditional-relgious-orders/
“The most successful institutes in terms of attracting and retaining new members at this time are those that follow a more traditional style of religious life in which members live together in community and participate in daily Eucharist, pray the Divine Office, and engage in devotional practices together. They also wear a religious habit, work together in common apostolates, and are explicit about their fidelity to the Church and the teachings of the Magisterium. All of these characteristics are especially attractive to the young people who are entering religious life today.”
Watered down like crazy.
Not what happened.
The message was that many nuns still needed to reform their orders.
Elections have consequences.
Actually, the headline is untrue. The commission just did the routine thing, thanking them and then telling the nuns that they had to work on their community life, prayer life and liturgical life - in other words, everything.
They were told to “carefully review their spiritual practices and ministry to assure that these are in harmony with Catholic teaching,” and that their social work shouldn’t forget that it was “about Christ.”
The report also said - which you won’t hear reported anywhere - that the decision to stop wearing the habit was ill advised in many cases.
And it lamented the fact that nuns are aging out and there will be virtually none of these active orders left unless they change.
So don’t believe this one. The interviews were done and the report was substantially finished before Pope Francis started to restore the 1970s, and it wouldn’t have been any different even if Benedict were still the Pope.
Nobody except the press thought that Benedict was going to say “off with their heads.” We’re talking about a bunch of misguided elderly ladies here, who have no young people coming into their orders so it’s really not necessary to say anything dire. They’ll die out, although they’d be happier if they changed a bit and got back some community life and prayer life and remembered the reason for their being nuns in the first place - and that’s all this report is saying.
Meanwhile, the Sisters of Life are brimming with vocations, not only young but highly educated women. So that tells you what you need to know.
Unfortunately? Asshat.....
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