A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

LCWR’s totally inadequate, wrong-headed response to the Vatican investigation August 14, 2012

LCWR, the Leadership Conference of Women’s Religious, which represents one of the fastest declining groups of religious orders in the Church, has been placed under an Apostolic Visitation, or investigation, for their numerous affronts to the orthodox belief and practice of the Church.  Their rejections of Church Doctrine are too numerous to list, but suffice it to say that there are few areas of belief where these aging female religious groups do not apostatize.

Pretending doesn’t make it so

And while I have a number of disagreements with Dr. Jeff Mirus, he does a pretty good job of laying down the problems with the LCWR in a recent post.  More specifically, he fisks the LCWR’s official response to the Vatican’s notification of the planned oversight of this very problematic group, in which the LCWR apparently plans to stonewall and do all it can to oppose the implementation of any badly needed reforms.  The response of LCWR is not very surprising, but it is still important to note just how far they’ve wandered from their vow of obedience, and how distorted their view of the Church (or “church” to them) is (long post, but make sure you read the last 3 paras!):

But the key point is that the LCWR has no mission apart from the mission of the Church, and it is up to the hierarchy of the Church to determine what constitutes an authentic Catholic mission and what does not. [Exactly.  Female religious do not equal the Magisterium, no matter how much that fact enrages them]That is why such quotes as the following, taken from the recent LCWR statement, simply will not do:

• “As the meeting took place, participants were reminded of the thousands of people…who have communicated with the LCWR…, urging that the response be one that helps to reconcile the differences that exist within the Catholic Church and creates spaces for honest and open conversation on the critical moral and ethical questions that face the global community.” [This suggests that the Church does not currently have ‘space’ for honest and open conversation on critical moral and ethical questions, and that it is precisely this lack which is the real problem.] [I would also argue that this is progressive code-speak for “we’re going to tell the Vatican how it is, and if they don’t like it, they can take a flying leap.”  Terms like “conversation” and “dialogue” always mean “we’re going to harangue you till you agree with us.”  But there can be no agreement here]
  
• “While acknowledging their deep disappointment with the CDF report, the members proclaimed their intention to use this opportunity to explain to church leaders LCWR’s mission, values, and operating principles.” [This suggests again that the fault is all on Rome’s side (one marvels at the small “c” in “church”), and that the LCWR is not interested in changing what may be wrong with its own mission, values and operating principles—which are supposed to be part of the mission of the Church. This also sets at naught the entire detailed Apostolic Visitation the Vatican has already completed.] [Aside from the incredibly condescending affrontery of the response, I believe the Vatican is all too aware of just what the “mission, values, and operating principles” of LCWR is.  They have been weighed, and found wanting]
  
• “[The LCWR members’] expectation is that open and honest dialogue may lead not only to increasing understanding between the church leadership and women religious, but also to creating more possibilities for laity and, particularly for women, to have a voice in the church.” [So the LCWR is intent on using the talks to further its own agenda concerning power in the Church, as if it speaks now not only for all women religious but the laity as well. Yet much of the harshest criticism of the LCWR has come from the many women’s religious orders who refuse to participate in it, and from lay persons who are continually scandalized by the LCWR’s disregard of Catholic doctrine and fruity para-liturgies.] [Exactly……..”dialogue.”  Their intent is to bash the Vatican and the PATRIARCHY! for the “refusal” to allow the impossibility of women priestesseses.  This is absolutely no change from their current MO]
  
• “The officers will proceed with these discussions as long as possible, but will reconsider if LCWR is forced to compromise the integrity of its mission.”  [I pray LCWR is given a choice – “compromise,” or disband.  I wonder how long this rhetoric would last if some of the member orders of LCWR were suppressed and their members formally laicized (I say formally, because most already live like laity)?]
  
• “The members…urged the officers not to allow the work with CDF to absorb the time, energy, and resources of the conference nor to let it distract the conference from the work its mission requires.” [Don’t let the Vatican distract you! The hubris is breathtaking.] [Did the members really do that?  Or did the leadership just determine their own response in a heavy-handed, authoritarian manner?  I’m not sure. I have read, and been told, that there are many good and faithful women religious suffering in these LCWR member orders.  That they are living a veritable purgatory of mortification under the modernist, radical feminist leadership of their order and the LCWR. Perhaps that is the case.  But I don’t think it an exaggeration to say that many of the women in these orders have fully bought into the radical feminist, frankly God-hating premise of the LCWR leadership.]
  

  Farrell

  
  

The rest of the post-assembly press release goes on to emphasize the LCWR’s continuing commitment to “a higher level of ethical, shared commitment and synergy to realize positive change”, as discussed by their “futurist” speaker Barbara Marx Hubbard—a level which the Vatican apparently cannot possibly attain. [Hubbard is also a pioneer of the new age movement and holds numerous syncretist, indifferentist beliefs.  Her very presence as headline speaker is a rejection of much of what the Church believes] In her Presidential address to the Conference, Sister Pat Farrell, OSF, offered the six key tools “for navigating the shifts occurring in the world and the church”: contemplation, use of the prophetic voice, solidarity with the marginalized, community, nonviolent responses, and the capacity to live in joyful hope. One wonders how such contentless “keys” can help one to navigate between true and false, let alone unlock the potential of a successful Catholic mission.

The LCWR assembly closed by giving its highest honor to Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, a theologian and professor emerita at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley (not known as a haven for the orthodox).

Ah, yes, Sister Schneiders.  Here is what she wrote not long ago: “When the first Women’s Ordination Conference met in

Schneiders

Detroit in 1975, the women who attended were focused on…the admission of women to orders…. Since 1978, women have come to realize that…we are not talking about how to organize the institution. We are talking about whether the God of Judeo-Christian revelation is true God or just men-writ-large to legitimate their domination; whether Jesus, an historical male, is or can be messiah and savior for those who are not male….”

I don’t know how you can reject the Holy Catholic Faith more than that.  I really don’t.  You can see the venomous hatred for the Church in those lines, and a complete rejection of what God has revealed through His Church.  In addition to the radical feminism present, also very visible is the modernism which rejects most or all of Scripture and Tradition in favor of a worldly, indifferentist approach to religion.  What she is referring to is the formation of a woman-dominated new age pagan gaia-worshiping religion, which is frankly satanic.  Also amazing is the utter disregard these women seem to have for the Blessed Mother, Her exalted status in the Church (she is the Mediatrix of all Grace, in addition to being the only sinless pure human that ever lived), and her vital role in salvation history.  But because she was obedient to Her Son, she is ignored and rejected.   Even more horrifying is the near-total worldly focus of these women religious – obsessed with their alleged oppression, they miss the entire notion of “dying to self” and surrender to Christ that made so many beautiful, wonderful female Saints.

I know, in charity, the Vatican must make this last attempt (I pray it is a last attempt) to bring these, for the most part, very old women back into the Church.  But these women have been so consumed by their lust for power and so led astray by the twisted logic of radical feminism, that I believe it will take a miracle of Grace to bring any of them back as individuals, let alone the entire group.  The destruction of female religious life in this country is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions.  We have no idea how much damage has been done to the Body of Christ by the collapse of religious life.  But it appears these women will not slide silently into the night.  I, for one, pray for their conversion.

Nun terrorized by oppressive patriarchs