Conservative Order of Catholic Nuns Resign en Masse

Almost all of the members of a conservative order of nuns that serve the elderly in French nursing homes have announced that they have asked to be released from their vows following attempts by the Vatican to force them to alter their way of life and to “modernize” their order.

According to their lay supporters, the sisters have been accused of engaging in “too much prayer” and concerns have been expressed that they wear the guimpe, a traditional form of religious head covering used by nuns that is no longer in vogue among the Church’s liberal elite. The sisters say that they are accused of a “deviant authoritarianism,” of being “too classical” in their thinking, and of being guilty of an “immobilism” in their devotion to their institute’s charism.

A total of 34 of the 39 members of the the Little Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Redeemer say they want to quit the order after a Vatican dicastery removed their superior general and attempted to impose three “commissioners” on them who were hostile towards their more traditional practices.

The three commissioners are led by a religious sister and theology professor with a short haircut who does not wear a habit, one who defends Amoris Laetitia and whom the sisters have said does not understand their religious charism.

The sisters say that their protests against the choice of commissioners and their request that they receive someone else more suited to their charism have fallen on deaf ears, leading them to the conclusion that they could no longer carry out their vocation within their institute.

“After having acquired the moral certainty throughout this year that the reception of the apostolic commissioner within our Institute would cause serious and certain harm, both regarding the understanding of the charisma bequeathed by God to Mother Mary of the Cross, our Foundress, and the way of living it, after many times proposing solutions of appeasement without any answer ever having been given to us, after consulting with authorized and competent persons, after having prayed much and always with the desire to remain daughters of the Church, wanting to remain faithful and obedient to the truth, it seemed to us that we had no choice but to renounce our vows,” the sisters wrote in a public statement issued on November 7 (PDF here).

“We are therefore 34 out of 39 Sisters who are members of the Institute, who have asked to be relieved of our vows by the Dicastery for Religious,” the sisters add. “We do not make this sacrifice lightly: we desire to remain in full communion with the Church, but we cannot indicate more clearly, nor more painfully, our impossibility, in conscience, to obey what is imposed.”

Read the rest here.

Unbelievable. Those orchestrating the evils now convulsing the Roman Church are playing with a fire that does not go out.

Rome severely criticizes dissident nuns

By the warm and fuzzy standards of the post Vatican II era, this is a positively blistering indictment. I think it's as close as I have seen any document issued by the Holy See in decades come to throwing out the H Bomb. Read the report at Fr. Z's blog.

Fr. Z On The Great Nun Controversy

Friends, no matter what the nuns claim, this whole mess with the CDF and American bishops is not about bishops having power over nuns, or men being over women.

The problem is that the LCWR types are “moving beyond Jesus”.  They are drifting out Christianity.

That looks like hyperbole when I state it this starkly, but this is really where they are going.

I don’t think these nuns even realize where they are going.

When you come right down to it, their problem is – ironically – with the documents of Vatican II!  They really have a problem with Lumen gentium on the constitution of the Church.  They don’t know who the Church is and who they are in the Church.  They no longer understand what consecrated life is (they think they are “prophetic” and therefore are allowed to “question” any teaching and are free from the “institutional” Church and hierarchy) and they have forgotten who their Lord is (they are moving beyond Jesus).

And their real enemy is Vatican II.  They have more problems with Vatican II than the Lefevbrists have.  We will probably reach an accord with the SSPX before the LCWR is squared away.

I know where they are going.  The LCWR gals are on a train, zooming down the track straight toward a canyon, and the bridge is out.

From here.

I think that is a pretty insightful summary of things.

In case there was any doubt...

...as to just how bad things have gotten with dissident Roman Catholic nuns and their supporters, this should settle the matter.

HT: The Crescat

Yea, I am Orthodox, so that means I have some issues with the Catholic Church, though of course I don't pretend to be Roman Catholic. But that aside Benedict XVI is the best thing to hit Rome in centuries. My fear is that it will take decades to clean house over there. May God grant him many many years!

Vatican tight lipped on meeting with dissident nuns

ROME - What do American nuns do when they are accused of being radical feminists? They respond as radical feminists might: by challenging the male authority face-to-face. 

Sister Pat Farrell, head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the umbrella group that represents 80 percent of the U.S.'s 57,000 Catholic nuns, traveled to Rome to confront accusations that her organization promotes "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

Farrell met American Cardinal William Levada, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, on Tuesday.  The gathering was aimed at reconciling their differences, but it has the potential to permanently alienate many American nuns from the Holy See.

Read the rest here.

Birds of a feather...Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA stands behind LCWR

In a statement released Friday, Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA says it supports the LCWR's response to the Vatican report. Here's what the organization wrote:

    The entire membership of Roman Catholic Womenpriests-USA (RCWP) proudly stands in solidarity with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and fully supports the actions that the LCWR will be taking in response to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith report.

    RCWP believes that as a matter of justice, the CDF mandate must be discussed openly and candidly with the LCWR membership.

Read the rest here

Why Benedict XVI was right about the nuns

As a rule, Sister Brigid McDonald tries not to pay too much attention to papal pronouncements, but Pope Benedict XVI’s recent decision to rein in American nuns, found by a Vatican investigation to harbor “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith,” caught her attention.

Last month, Benedict announced that a four-year Vatican investigation had found the Leadership Conference of Women Religious has challenged church teaching on homosexuality, the ordination of women and the 2010 health-care reform popularly dubbed Obamacare. Nuns, the investigation also concluded, spend too much energy on poverty and economic injustice and not enough on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Read the rest here.

There are so many scandalous quotes it's hard to pick the most shocking. But if I had to go with one, it would be this line... "We help with the Occupy movement and the right-to-choice movements."

Enough said.

Vatican crackdown on U.S. nuns was 40 years in the making

(Reuters) - When Pope John Paul II arrived in the United States in 1979, the president of the nation's most powerful organization of nuns met him with a challenge.

In a bold welcoming address, Sister Theresa Kane called on the pope to include women "in all ministries of our church," including the priesthood. The pope sat silent, his expression stony.

That moment did not change Vatican policy.

But it unveiled growing tensions between the Vatican and American nuns. The conflict would continue to mount for the next three decades, until this week the Vatican finally moved to reassert control over the aging but still ferociously independent conference of Catholic sisters.

Read the rest here.

This was a petty surprising story. No, I don't mean all of the details about decades of radical nuns thumbing their nose at Rome. That is hardly a news bulletin for Catholics of either the conservative or liberal stripe. Rather I am shocked, indeed almost stunned, by the at least somewhat balanced tone in the story. I can't imagine how it got by the editor.

Rome orders crackdown on US nuns

The Vatican orthodoxy watchdog [sic] announced Wednesday a full-scale overhaul of the largest umbrella group for nuns in the United States, accusing the group of taking positions that undermine Roman Catholic teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality while promoting "certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."

An American archbishop was appointed to oversee reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which will include rewriting the group's statutes, reviewing all its plans and programs -- including approving speakers -- and ensuring the organization properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual.

The Leadership Conference, based in Silver Spring, Md., represents about 57,000 religious sisters and offers programs ranging from leadership training for women's religious orders to advocacy on social justice issues. Representatives of the Leadership Conference did not respond to requests for comment.

Read the rest here.

The usual suspects are having a seizure over this.

Corul Sfintei Manastiri Camarzani - Pruncul Imparat

Catholic Pundit: Lesbian-hugging Marxist nuns have reduced US parishes to nuclear wasteland

If you are looking for tact or touchy feely diplospeak move on. You WILL NOT like this.



H/T Damian Thompson

Schema Nuns

Russian Nuns of the Great Schema. I have seen few photos of Schema Nuns and have no recollection of seeing this many in one picture. (Click on the pic for full size.)

From Byzantine Texas