Reuters
The past two years have been rough on the relationship between American nuns and the Church. In 2012, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops released its "Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious," an eight-page report that criticized aspects of the assemblies, addresses, and newsletters of the country's largest organization of nuns. Among other things, it pointed to "significant doctrinal and moral content ... which often contradict or ignore magisterial teaching." The sisters were instructed to withdraw or revise several publications, review their statutes, and reframe their discussions of Catholic doctrine.
Last week, the cardinal in charge of leading these reforms addressed the leaders of the LCWR in Rome, and he didn't have a lot of praise for the group's progress.
"I apologize if this seems blunt, but what I must say is too important to dress up in flowery language," Gerhard Ludwig Müller said.
this stinks to high Heaven, this no more than the religious war on women started against Mary Madeleine when she gained favor and trust over male disciples with Jesus. the male hyerarchy of the church is reluctant to relinquish power and control.For the last several years, the Congregation has been following with increasing concern a focalizing of attention within the LCWR around the concept of Conscious Evolution. Since Barbara Marx Hubbard addressed the Assembly on this topic two years ago, every issue of your newsletter has discussed Conscious Evolution in some way. Issues of [your publication] Occasional Papers have been devoted to it. We have even seen some religious Institutes modify their directional statements to incorporate concepts and undeveloped terms from Conscious Evolution.The fundamental theses of Conscious Evolution are opposed to Christian Revelation and, when taken unreflectively, lead almost necessarily to fundamental errors...
This is a pretty serious rhetorical move. The LCWR is generally considered to be the less conservative organization of women religious in the United States; members of its more conservative counterpart, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, maintain more traditional practices like wearing habits. But the LCWR has a much broader reach—the orders that belong to the organization account for roughly 80 percent of women religious in the United States. Comparing them to adherents of early Christianity's spiritual competition seems like a particularly barbed way to criticize them.
civil war within the church is not new but the women need to come together how can the teach and be an example if half is progressive and the other half still stuck in the medieval world of women are a non issue? there seems to me little difference in the rich Catholic church and the secular world it mirrors the political relationship between the plutocrats and "we the people".
