Media and Nuns Colluding in Deception, Says Expert: Vatican’s Reform no David and Goliath Battle

LifeSite News ^ | 4/25/12 | Hilary White

[marshmallow]

ROME, April 25, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Despite few in the western world having seen any in the last four decades, the image of the nun as the sweet, selfless and courageous “bride of Christ” is remarkably enduring. And according to U.S. Catholic author, researcher and expert on Catholic religious life in the U.S. Donna Steichen, this “classic” and noble image is now being used knowingly by the LCWR sisters and their supporters as a means of generating public sympathy in their fight with the Vatican.

Last week the media and the “progressive” end of the Catholic Church reacted with outrage to the announcement by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is to be reformed after a doctrinal investigation found that their focus had turned more towards radical feminist politics than their Catholic religious foundations.

The picture being manufactured by sympathetic media, including the Washington Post, Huffington Post, and Independent, closely following the lead of the National Catholic Reporter and America, the two main organs of the extreme Catholic left in the U.S., is that of an epic struggle between a tyrannical, overbearing, “out of touch,” Vatican, and a group of plucky, underdog sisters, fighting a guerilla battle for intellectual and moral liberty: a theme one Catholic blogging wag has described as an endless recap of the plot to Star Wars.

That this shopworn theme is a deliberate falsehood, Steichen says, is what Catholics should first understand when reading either the secular mainstream coverage of the affair or the sisters’ own comments.

“This spin,” she said, “is omnipresent, always interesting, and often unintentionally comic. But however maliciously intended, I think it contains an element of nostalgia. It proves the irresistible attraction of goodness. Not even the liberal......

[marshmallow]

Steichen told LSN that the only trouble with this picture is that the “good sisters” made in the image of this archetype are mostly an artifact of U.S. history and are now nearly extinct. LCWR represents about 80 percent of the 57,000 religious sisters in the U.S., with an average age of 74 and climbing. With the exception of a handful of young, deliberately faithful, countercultural, and largely recently-founded communities, the LCWR nuns and sisters have abandoned not only the habit that symbolized their devotion, but the faith that defined it, she said.

The religious core of Catholic sisterhoods was replaced decades ago, she told LSN, by an extreme left political ideology manifested in a feminism that has grown increasingly radical and bizarre, and in recent years, infused with New Age and occult practices that have nothing to do with Catholicism.

I'm wondering if this move by the CDF just might be an exercise in futility and a waste of Archbishop Sartain's time. If these religious orders are as far gone as Steichen says, then suppressing them might really be the proper option, here.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

On the plus side, I have met some of the young, orthodox, devout and hard working younger nuns and I was very impressed. One group is of a fast growing denomination that are having a hard time meeting the needs of so many new members so quickly.

Another order in particular minister to Native Americans and are in very high demand. They have to “rough it” a lot in very rural places in the US where there is great deprivation, even of food and fresh water.

They truly put these elderly, leftist NINOs to shame.

[Venturer]

Feminism (spit)

All it has gotten us is Divorce,Abortion, Same Sex Marriage,and women with the morals of an alley cat.
Now it wants to destroy the Church.

[Mrs. Don-o]

What a tangled mess. Almost 1,800 congregations and convents represented here, each with a different story. It would take Solomonic wisdom-- and I can only wonder why this wasn't dealt with on a case-by-case basis by individual bishops over the past 40 years?

It's like weeding out a once-lovely garden which has heirloom roses of irreplaceable beauty, and weeds with taproots the size of your leg.

As I know, eyeing the kudzu in my backyard.

[Salvation]

**I’m wondering if this move by the CDF just might be an exercise in futility and a waste of Archbishop Sartain’s time.**

No way is it a waste of the CDF’s or Archbishop Santain’s time.

Remember all the fuss when they started looking into the seminaries — I can refresh your memory if you wish.

This will prove very fruitful in the shutting down of the dying out orders and the implantation of new orders of sisters who are very orthodox and serve Christ first, rather than their own ideas.

[Salvation]

Media and Nuns Colluding in Deception, Says Expert: Vatican’s Reform no David and Goliath Battle
The Real Shock...
A Catholic ‘war on women’ {Barf alert/liberal tripe}
The Vatican and the Sisters
The Vatican and the Sisters
NPR Offers Air to Catholic Sister to Diss Pope, Bishops: 'Women Get It First Then Explain to Guys'

Important Background Information About the CDF-LCWR Situation
Nuns Gone Wild: A Trip Down Memory Lane
Exhibit A for Explaining the LCWR Report
Vatican Crackdown on U.S. Nuns a Long Time Brewing
LCWR: getting to the truth of the matter (the blogosphere response to CDF document)
Radical feminist nuns’ group ‘stunned’ by Vatican criticisms, reform plan
Vatican announces reform of US women's religious conference (more details)
Citing doctrinal problems, Vatican announces reforms of US nuns' group
In hard-hitting document Vatican launches clean-up of feminist nuns in United States
LCWR Having a Bad Day. Vatican Names Archbishop Delegate to Continue Watching LCWR and Network

[Gumdrop]

God bless Donna and her family. I see she is still a culture warrior!

I babysat for her children when she was a mother of the first two. They were nice kids, and Donna told me she was itching for a fight with the liberals in the church. She was smart and was a good researcher, so when she came out with her book, it was all properly documented, and no one could legitimately argue with her reporting on the facts. Keep up the good fignt, Donna, and I hope you live to be 100!

[LadyDoc]

attention everyone: The Vatican is only asking those belonging to the leadership organization to change. That is 1500 women. It does not extend to the orders they belong to and claim to represent, and it probably doesn’t even extend to many of those who belong for various reasons but don’t go along with the ditzy ones.

They are spinning the problem as if all nuns are in trouble, when it’s only 1500 women.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

?

I think you intended a response to someone else’s post.

[Mrs. Don-o]

You'r exactly right, and thank you for clarifying that. It's the LCWR per se -- which is the leadership conference actually set up by the Vatican and answerable to the Vatican --- which is being reformed (for want of a better word.)

Still, the problems have been going on for decades and involved many thousands of people. It should have been addressed closer to home and a long, long time ago.

When I was a Lay Associate of the Benedictines, they, with the rest of the LCWR, were supporting Agnes Mansour (the pro-abort Mercy sister who was running for a Congressional seat in Detroit!) and the Prioress was conducting wacky liturgies in which she was practically concelebrant, flagrantly illicit and almost very probably invalid. (It was excruciating.)

Christless Eucharists.

Merciless Mercies.

And that was 30 years ago.