A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Shroud waving for LCWR April 30, 2012

The Dallas Morning News has run an op-ed about the Vatican appointment of an apostolic delegate to oversee the dismal, disastrous Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).  This op-ed is of a form so common in the past week that it is apparent to me that the LCWR have once again resorted to their usual defense against Church discipline: “Why would the Vatican pick on us poor, sweet, defenseless little nuns?”

But, first of all, these women will tell you themselves, they’re not nuns, they’re sisters. They are being disingenuous and hypocritical to use the image of a sweet, prayerful, cloistered nun in their public effort to diffuse the disciplinary enforcement long overdue.  So, before I begin on the execrable op-ed, just remember:

This:

Does not equal this:

Or, to put it in words, a raging feminist active lesbian in a pantsuit does not equal a faithful nun in a habit praying her entire life in a cloister.  These things are radically different, and there is no problem whatsoever with the latter in the eyes of the Vatican or any faithful Catholic. 

To the op-ed, a few brief excerpts for flavor:

Two months ago, I went to the Maryknoll [that’s a bad sign right from the start, the Maryknoll are down there with the Jesuits in terms of embrace of leftist modernism] motherhouse, a massive stone building in Ossining, N.Y., to interview 93-year-old Sister Madeline Dorsey for a book I am writing. This was a sister who had chosen to stay with the poor in El Salvador after the 1980 murder of Archbishop Oscar Romero. A few months later, she found the bodies of her murdered sisters buried in a shallow grave. She was willing to risk her life, she said, “to help the poor rise up and know themselves as children of God.”

So when I heard that the Vatican had ordered a crackdown on the largest umbrella group of U.S. sisters, accusing them of spending too much time “promoting issues of social justice,” I was stunned. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been, given Rome’s historic failure to support its best and brightest………..

OK, first, the snide remark “best and brightest” is ludicrous.  I guess to this leftist apparatchik author (who also happens to be a profesor at Catholic Loyola-Chicago!  $$ka-ching!), only those on the left side of the spectrum working “social justice” issues can be the best and the brightest.  Not so those dull-witted, backwards, repressed, “un-liberated” women in cloisters.

Next, the Vatican is not accusing them of “too much time promoting social justice.”  That’s not at all what the Vatican said, it said they do social justice of a sort, but that it has become disordered and, much more so, that they apostasize from what the Church believes on scores of issues.  Many are not faithful to their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience – especially the last two.  And their perversions of doctrine and morality, including personal morality, have left many formerly glorious religious orders moribund, near death.  That is why the Vatican has had to step in, because these sisters (especially LCWR leadership, but also many rank and file) stopped being Catholic decades ago, and their actions have gravely weakened religious life in this country. I also add, that the “social justice” practiced by the sisters quoted in this piece is a terribly distorted, “liberation theology” rejected as erroneous and damaging to the Faith by Blessed Pope John Paul II, noted reactionary.  More..

In 1985, she and 15 other church workers were charged with “conspiracy to smuggle illegal aliens.” [Were they smuggling illegal aliens? Well, she was convicted of four felony counts.  After her trial, the woman in question, Darlene Nicgorski, also “realized” she was lesbian] The day after Nicgorski learned of her conviction on five felony counts — which could have resulted in a 15-year prison sentence — she spent the night at my apartment in New York.

She did not end up serving time. But she never forgot that while Protestant leaders and then-Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee had been strong supporters, she had heard no response from Rome. Later, she would leave her order. [That is probably for the best]

Good grief, “Rome” runs a universal Church of over a billion souls.  So, no, they don’t typically run to the scene of each self-inflicted bit of drama a priest or religious finds themselves in.  And given what I know of Weakland, and certain female religious, that “drama” is often an attempt to garner PR for their cause.  Note again, however, how the author is trying to make “Rome” the bogeyman and portray the religious sisters as poor innocents desperately trying to aid the huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.  Give me a break. 

I also wrote about Sister Mary Aileen Dame, a doctor who had spent decades treating the poor in rural villages and city hospitals. I met her at the airport in Managua, Nicaragua, in the late 1980s.

In the evenings we would drink beer out of plastic bags and talk about the Sandinistas. [My stars, did you see that Daniel Ortega?!?  He’s dreeeeaaaaamyyy!  Oh, by the way, the Sandinistas murdered tens of thousands, like the good revolutionaries they are] But she cared less about politics than ministering to women who had rarely seen a doctor, and she lamented what she saw as the Vatican’s neglect of the poor. She, too, would later leave religious life.

Yes, Rome cares nothing for the poor, save for operating more charitable relief services than any other organization on the planet, and doing more for the poor than most all other religions combined. Good point!  I wonder if the good sister described above ever reflected on whether it was really Rome’s care for the poor that was distressing, or Rome’s lack of attention to her that really bothered.

She spent the next decades finding God again in the people with whom she worked on promoting human rights for Guatemalans. She fasted for days and nights in front of the White House to get the U.S. government to release information about her case. I remember longtime peace activist, now-retired Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, sitting silently with her on the grass [Yes, Gumbleton always found time to go attention-seeking outside the White House] One evening National Security Adviser Anthony Lakestopped by to check on her.

Sisters came by the dozens, some spending days by her side as she became thinner and thinner. But no one from the Vatican sent as much as a note.

Once again, the drama.  And the sense that,  in spite of their rejection of the Faith, their left-wing liberation theology, and their vitriol towards dad the Vatican, they desperately crave recognition and approval from their fathers that same Vatican. 

Here’s a but that sums up the views of the author of this black is white, up is down, Laverne is Shirley op-ed, Julia Lieblich:

Author Julia Lieblich helps us to see how the spirituality of these women — two of whom are no longer nuns — has led them to challenge traditional Catholic dogma and authoritarianism. Their progressivism may be the salt that gives savor to the new activism of laity and the new forms of feminine spirituality afoot in our times.

Sheesh has that 40 year old rhetoric grown tired.  These women have “progressed” themselves right out of the Church.  But their cohorts who have remained within have done immense damage.  It is doubly sad, because religious life,

BFFs!

properly practiced, is absolutely essential to the proper function of the Church.  But I get the sense from these women that they were far more concerned with the world than with God. 

I pray the Vatican sticks to its guns and disassembles LCWR, and lets nature take its course with its many corrupted orders.

NB: no, not all women in every order that belongs to LCWR is a raging feminist, but many are.  So there.