Posted on 07/20/2012 4:32:18 AM PDT by markomalley
Sister Pat Farrel, president of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious breaks the silence in a radio interview with NPR. The world moves on and doctrine cannot remain static she says
It seemed like a coincidence to many but the day after a change of guard was announced in the leadership of the Holy Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - Cardinal Levada was substituted by Cardinal Müller nuns of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR), the association which represents 80% of women religious in the U.S. and which is preparing a national assembly to be held in August have broken their silence and agreed to talk about their placement under the supervision of an external commissioner.
Neither was it a coincidence that the first one to speak was President Pat Farrel, number two of the Dubuque Franciscan Sisters Congregation in Iowa, in an interview with National Public Radio in one of its most popular programmes. The nun reiterated the associations official response to the Vaticans unfounded accusations which could potentially be destructive to the continuation of their mission. But she went further, saying: There are issues about which we think there's a need for a genuine dialogue, and there doesn't seem to be a climate of that in the church right now."
Sister Farrel highlighted one fundamental question: is it possible to be part of the Church but be in favour of dialogue and discussion? Questions there are much less black and white because human realities are much less black and white. That's where we spend our days." I think one of our deepest hopes is that in the way we manage the balancing beam in the position we're in, if we can make any headways in helping to create a safe and respectful environment where church leaders along with rank-and-file members can raise questions openly and search for truth freely, with very complex and swiftly changing issues in our day, that would be our hope. But the climate is not there. And this mandate coming from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith putting us in a position of being under the control of certain bishops that is not a dialogue. If anything, it appears to be shutting down dialogue."
One of the questions on the table, which Levada tried to tackle, is the Churchs doctrine on sexuality. Here too, Sister Farrel refuses to be placed in the category of those who reject it: We have been, in good faith, raising concerns about some of the church's teachings on sexuality. The problem being that the teaching and interpretation of the faith can't remain static and really needs to be reformulated, rethought in light of the world we live in. And new questions and new realities [need to be addressed] as they arise. And if those issues become points of conflict, it's because Women Religious stand in very close proximity to people at the margins, to people with very painful, difficult situations in their lives. That is our gift to the church. Our gift to the church is to be with those who have been made poorer, with those on the margins.
The interview could not fail to address the question regarding the LCWRs position on the fight against abortion which Rome claims is too soft: "I think the criticism of what we're not talking about seems to me to be unfair. Because [Women] Religious have clearly given our lives to supporting life, to supporting the dignity of human persons. Our works are very much pro-life. We would question, however, any policy that is more pro-foetus than actually pro-life. If the rights of the unborn trump all of the rights of all of those who are already born, that is a distortion, too if there's such an emphasis on that. We also have many, many ministries that support life. We dedicate to our lives to those on the margins of society, many of whom are considered throwaway people: the impaired, the chronically mentally ill, the elderly, the incarcerated, to the people on death row. We have strongly spoken out against the death penalty, against war, hunger. All of those are right-to-life issues Our concern is that right-to-life issues be seen across a whole spectrum and are not narrowly defined. ... To single out one right-to-life issue and to say that that's the only issue that defines Catholic identity, I think, is really a distortion.
It is worth mentioning that after all the spontaneous and formal demonstrations of support for the nuns, including the full support of all superiors of the 7 Provinces of Friars Minor in America, other bodies have followed suit and expressed their full support for the LCWR cause. For example, the Augustinian Order, the Missionaries of the Most Precious Blood, the Xaverian congregation and the entire Conference of Major Superiors, the male equivalent to the LCWR.
So, in other words, Sister, you want the Church to change Her doctrine to correspond to your beliefs.
You have it exactly backwards, Sister.
You seem so... unhappy in the Church, Sister.
I can't help but think there must be some way to resolve that problem for you.
I think that tells everybody exactly what she's up to ~ and she imagines she has come up with yet another excuse for murdering the innocent.
I see Outer Darkness in her future, limited though it will be.
I’m going to go way out on a limb and propose a hypothesis that Farrell, et al, want the Church to sanction lesbianism.
***You have it exactly backwards, Sister. ***
Exactly! If the Church changed every time the world did, there would have been no Church for the last two thousand years. Christ didn’t found a church to make it changeable.
Christ made his church changeable with time. You can have services in a drive-in theater. Couldn’t do that in the 14th century.
The article fails to make mention of an important distinction: the LCWR represents leaders of women religious, not the orders themselves. So, the Mother Superior of Our Lady of Perpetual Modernism and the Abbess of St. Binkly the Woeful may converse upon topics together, in like manner. But not the rank and file nuns themselves, so to speak.
There’s no need for dialogue. There’s a need for Obedience, as the vows taken by most religious call for. The LCWR has not been following Catholic teaching, and has caused some of the flock to fall into error, in part because they apparently feel that they are not subject to the Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium of the Church. They’re mistaken in that, and this has been, sadly, a long time coming. If the LCWR waffles on such important teachings as those mentioned herein, and will not fall into when instructed upon obedience to do so, then it is a good thing that there is another group analogous to theirs which is faithful, to be used in their stead.
It is certainly worth mentioning that, regarding the last sentence, there are other groups in this country and others, in need of similar correction of error. Pray for them, and pray that the Vatican continues to clean house of these errors. Hopefully, without the loss of either these souls, or others.
>>”Sister Farrel highlighted one fundamental question: is it possible to be part of the Church but be in favour of dialogue and discussion?”
As you well know, sister, the answer to that question is yes, of course.
What is not possible is to be part of the Church, in an organization created by the Church, and promote and foster teaching in opposition to Church dogma - and in opposition to all Christianity.
To call this “being in favour of dialogue and discussion” is preposterous.
“Our gift to the church is to be with those who have been made poorer...”
Sister, the more taxes I pay, the more poorer I am made. But somehow, I don’t think you’ll be with me on April 15th.
That's true, actually. However, nobody in the Church hierarchy is doing that: from the Pope down to my pastor, they all teach, as Jesus did, that a Christian is to love and care for every brother and sister. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, welcome the stranger ... and they take a lot of heat for that, too.
What's happening is that Ms. Farrell and her ilk are taking one issue, the issue of abortion, and saying, "We're pro-death on this point, and only become 'pro-life' at some other point, if at all."
The use of the word “foetus” is a red flag of course. Sister needs our prayers.
Sister Pat Farrel, president of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious breaks the silence in a radio interview with NPR. The world moves on and doctrine cannot remain static she says
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