U.S. nuns face "inquisition"

"Blimey, I wasn't expecting the Spanish Inquisition!"
"Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!"

I see these stories from time-to-time on EWTN and elsewhere.

If it is true that the watered-down Catholicism that people like me experience is to blame for the lack of Vocations, the Church should schism.

We will go our way, and the true Church favored by those who love the costumes and pageantry of the Spirit will go theirs.

We really have almost nothing in common. Your side mocks “Social worker” nuns who foolishly devote themselves to “whatever it is that community organizers do” as St. Sarah put it. My side really likes the expression of love, joy, and community that we get in our Worship, but we seldom/never say the Rosary, seldom/never drop down and throw ourselves on the ground in front of the Eucharist in its splendid Gold Monstrance.

We each think the other is idolatrous.

I do not know how many years it would take for the real Roman Catholic Church of John Paul and Latin Mass to call forth enough young women to take up the garb of a Medieval woman and teach in Catholic grade schools, work in Catholic Hospitals and support rather than challenge the Male Hierarchy.

And I do not know how long it will take for young men to realize that with the Latin Mass and absolute obedience to authority and celibacy being a Priest would be a worthwhile life, but it is possible that within 20 years the Roman Catholic Church in America will be a vibrant top-down place, but it is certainly worth a try.

This is utterly proper, if to the non-Christian, weird or scary. But when the neighborhood McDonalds starts using dogmeat for the Big Mac, even they'd agree that Corporate needs to step in.

What an enormous liar this Brink character is. She pretends to be a "nun" in the "order of preachers", a Dominican Nun, and yet she is, certainly, a cynical post-modern post-rational individual, whose idea of "sojourning" means getting "close" to God by rejecting everything that the Catholic faith can teach her about God, and substituting her own private ideas for the teaching of the church.

She should first take off not only any meaningless habit, but her name's prefix and suffix (Sister Brink OP), and return to being merely Brink, publically renounce her religious vows in less disengenuous manner than she has thus far already done so.

She is the most silly sort of charlatan. She is a regular secular liberal academic, in nun's clothing. She would do any womyns-studies program proud.

Warren

Honestly, around pages 17-18 the paper provides a very good example of what Confessional Lutherans (Missouri Synod, etc.) call the "theology of glory," which is always at odds with the apostolic "theology of the Cross."

Connie Connie:

"It's sad that the Anchoress (and Rod, sort of) is so gleeful about the impending demise of these women who have, really, sacrificed their lives in the name of the church."

When a keynote speaker for the women in question explicitly speaks of "moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus," do we have grounds for believing or saying that they have "sacrificed their lives in the name of the church"?

Of course they're supposed to be an ecclesiastical work force. When they joined, the Church promised them that they would have to work extremely hard all their lives for little or no pay and only the hope of eternal salvation. If you don't consider that a privilege, don't join.

"Of course they're supposed to be an ecclesiastical work force."

Well, not entirely. There is a sliding scale of active and contemplative emphasis in different orders, and the more contemplative religious are meant to spend a lot of time not working. That's meant to be a valued pursuit too.

The Catholic hierarchy most certainly does NOT think of women religious as "an ecclesiastical work force." Quite the contrary: Religious life is classically expressed in the contemplative state -- monks and nuns devoted exclusively to prayer and asceticism. "Active" orders -- the ones that run schools, hospitals, etc. -- are a much later and fairly recent development in Church history. Their active apostolates are supposed to be an overflow of their fundamental orientation toward contemplation and asceticism.

The problem with so many women religious in the United States isn't fundamentally a Left vs. Right thing. It's that because of the urgent need to build from scratch and then maintain a massive network of institutions for a mostly immigrant Church, religious life in the U.S. historically has placed an extreme emphasis on active apostolate at the expense of contemplative or cloistered life.

Active apostolates are certainly good and holy, but an excessive emphasis on them in this country has caused too many religious (women as well as men) to lose sight of what religious life is really about, which is witnessing to the Gospel of Christ through the total gift of their lives.

"We will go our way, and the true Church favored by those who love the costumes and pageantry of the Spirit will go theirs. We really have almost nothing in common" tjproudamerican

TR: Agreed. Go have fun, see you when we see you.

Hello Rod,

How hard would it have been to have contacted well-informed orthodox Catholic sources to explain what many heterodox nuns have been up to for decades, without eliciting so much as a peep from Rome?

Apparently, much too hard for the Grey Lady.

If this investigation actually has teeth, it's long overdue. It's probably too late to save many of these orders.

Hello Don,

I'm always edgy about conservatives getting too gleeful about how orthodox young clergy and religious are.

I'm sorry, but I am gleeful. Given the desert that religious life - with rare exceptions - has been through the last 40 years, I think we have a right to be.

And they're still struggling into headwinds too much, frankly, to be "arrogant."

i>It's positively scandalous that nuns would be spiritual seekers!

Correct.

Getting back to the fundamentals

Correct again.

It is scandalous that women claiming to be Catholic nuns reject Catholicism for some fantasy known as "Post-Christianity". People seek out nuns, ask them for prayers, seek counsel, etc based on their (the nuns supposed) Catholicism. These nuns, btw, certainly don't have a problem acting and looking like Catholic nuns when they are asking the faithful for money to support themselves or their pet projects. Either be a Catholic nun or don't be a Catholic nun, but if you are going to be a nun, then the laity have ever right to expect that they will hold Catholic teaching (and the same applies to priests or bishops). Too many of this communities want to do their own thing but they want the Catholic attached to it only for financial reasons or to get some sort of legitimacy.

It's positively scandalous that nuns would be spiritual seekers!

As sarcasm this is pretty weak.

Obviously nuns shouldn't be "spiritual seekers." The role of the religious -- male or female -- is to witness radically to the reality of having found the Answer. If they want to be "seekers", fine: Just stop pretending they are something else.

What they need is a good dose of orthodoxy and swift and merciless correction for any transgression of thought.

LOL! We're talking about a very slow, painstaking process of inquiry that will likely result in a handful of specific recommendations for reorienting U.S. religious life toward the Christian witness its intended to be.

And despite over 40 years of outlandish behavior and dramatic numerical decline among the extreme activist orders, this Visitation was triggered by one particular transgression: The public proclamation by the keynote speaker at a major gathering of the more liberal women religious that she and many of her sisters are "moving beyond" Jesus Christ and the Church.

That's not just "any transgression of thought". It's the whole enchilada.

"I'm sorry, but I am gleeful. Given the desert that religious life - with rare exceptions - has been through the last 40 years, I think we have a right to be.

And they're still struggling into headwinds too much, frankly, to be "arrogant.""

Athelstane--let me clarify what I'm getting at. The orders of nuns who are corrupt like these--performing seances, venturing into post-Christian territory--really are corrupt. I'm glad they are losing their power. All I'm saying is let's also allow this to give pause to reflect on our own internal weaknesses (and those of orthodox Catholics). Having correct doctrine is great, but I've also seen the tendency among some to close ranks, develop a hyper-spiritualized faith, or a faith that is overly-intellectualized.

We need to be able to continuously reflect and reform our means of living our faith. That's all I'm saying. Hip, hip, horray--we have conservative clergy and religious just isn't enough.

The Vatican's best approach would be to simply isolate these kinds of nuns from the rest of the church. Their beliefs and practices are blatantly heretical from perspective of orthodox Catholicism, and even from that of basic, orthodox Christianity. Sorry, but Jesus is the center of Christianity. If you've "gone beyond Jesus" or some sort you've left the faith. Just to be honest, you need to call your religion something other than Christianity. But this could backfire in the press (much of which is liberal and grossly ignorant about Christianity) if the Vatican doesn't play its cards right. Since the average age of these nuns in their late 60s, best to just push them quietly to the side and let them die off in peace all the while fostering young nuns and monks who are orthodox. After all, it won't be too long before these leftovers from the 1960s are dead or in a nursing home. The way things look now, their theological views will die with them.

rr

let us not ignore that many - if not most - nuns are faithful orthodox and have devoted their lives to the people of the Church.
As many orders find themsleves without new novices - these nuns who are older often have a difficult future ahead of them. The old retirement homes owned by the orders have been sold, they find themselves without adequate pension finds and younger nuns to care for them in their old age, and with the hadnful left in their orders, lose the life of community that was so central to their vocation.
It is sad how easily these women have been forgotten.

And anyone remotely involved in a parish knows that there are obnoxious priests who fail to show proper respect to the nuns working in their parishes.

Personally, the Young Fogeys, as Father Andrew Greeley calls them, leave me as cold as liberation theologians and guitar strumming, bad music loving, sandal wearing priests of the 1960s generation. There's got to be a happy medium in there somewhere. Every young priest I've encountered in the last 10 years has been conservative and has had old-fashioned faith that edged towards the fanatical and hasn't necessarily been long on people skills. People are a lot less likely to follow a priest or a nun whom they actively dislike. Greeley's books made me hope for a church that was a little more attuned to the people and to changing times. The new guys turn me off and make me want to take a closer look at the Episcopalian Church.

Hello rr,

But this could backfire in the press (much of which is liberal and grossly ignorant about Christianity) if the Vatican doesn't play its cards right. Since the average age of these nuns in their late 60s, best to just push them quietly to the side and let them die off in peace all the while fostering young nuns and monks who are orthodox.

The viscerally negative reactions are already on display in the Times comment section for the article. No further proof is needed of the truism that anti-Catholicism is the last acceptable prejudice. Short of becoming the Episcopal Church or Unitarians writ large there is nothing the Church can do to please such people, alas.

At some point, the Church can’t allow media ignorance of its doctrine and practices from doing what needs to be done, and likewise there will be limits to how much it can educate the press or manage the message.

Yet what you suggest may not be far from what Rome decides to do. Take concrete corrective measures only where necessary. Figure out bottom lines for what is acceptable in religious life and measure all orders against that. Decide which ones are salvageable. Quietly wind down the ones which are not, ensuring they receive financial support and continue on until they die out so long as they accept no new postulants (almost a purely theoretical concern anyway) and are not engaging in any theological instruction anywhere. Give vigorous support to the most healthy. Rinse and repeat.

Posters here should clearly distinguish between religious orders, which concerns this particular investigation, and diocesan priests. They have very different vocations. The lack of, say, people skills among parish priests (probably an issue going back centuries at some level, I suspect) is more of an issue with the latter, and the mechanisms for addressing it in formation and beyond are very different as well.

I find it "sad" that these nuns are dying off only in the sense that they have lost their charism and might even lose their souls, because of their own bad choices. Theirs is a tragedy, one entirely of their own choosing. But I am pleased that they will no longer be around to mislead Catholics.

Here we see a fundamental distance in what folks think religion -- in this case, Catholic Christianity -- is for. If you think religion is primarily about humanity's thoughts and expressions about God, what is happening to the nuns will seem unjust. If, though, you think (as I do) that it's enormously important that religious dogma and tradition is preserved and passed on intact to future generations -- that indeed the literal salvation of souls depends on it -- then you will be pleased that these women's orders that have gone off the rails are expiring.

Don Altabello is absolutely right, though, to warn against orthodox/traditionalist gloating. Right doctrine is by no means sufficient; the self-styled orthodox have their own big problems (see Maciel, Marcial). Still, orthodoxy cannot be optional, not in any healthy church.

The sad thing is that this should have happened 30 years ago, as Donna Steichen has said. By the time it's all over, almost nothing significant will be done to these heterodox nuns.

Hello Rod,

Still, orthodoxy cannot be optional, not in any healthy church.

And you know Neuhaus's Law as well as anyone: "Wherever orthodoxy is optional, it sooner or later will be proscribed."

Greeley's books made me hope for a church that was a little more attuned to the people and to changing times. The new guys turn me off and make me want to take a closer look at the Episcopalian Church.

A church that is "attuned to the people and to changing times" sounds like a pretty good description of the Episcopal Church. And it is what makes me thank God (literally) that I am Catholic.

Greeley is another radical dinosaur, like many of these sisters. We can't see the last of him and his ilk too soon for my taste.

If, though, you think (as I do) that it's enormously important that religious dogma and tradition is preserved and passed on intact to future generations -- that indeed the literal salvation of souls depends on it -- then you will be pleased that these women's orders that have gone off the rails are expiring.

Let me try to unpack that statement, which, under the circumstances, strikes me as odd indeed.

I think what you are saying is that knowing and adhering to (I assume correct) religious dogma and tradition is essential because human beings - here we are fearing for our descendants - who do not know and adhere to that (correct) dogma will be sent to hell on that account alone.

This seems a rather odd statement about the Roman Catholic Church by someone who left that Church and joined another. Catholic dogma and tradition are not identical to Orthodox dogma and tradition (I gather) and where they differ, both sides insist that they are right and that the other side is wrong. I do not believe that either Church takes the position that it just doesn't much matter either way.

According to that line of thought, from your point of view as Orthodox, these women's religious orders (and, indeed, all RC men's religious orders as well) "went off the rails" in about the year 1000, at the time of the schism. Off the rails is off the rails, yes? Why would the details matter from that standpoint?

I find it "sad" that these nuns are dying off only in the sense that they have lost their charism and might even lose their souls, because of their own bad choices.

All this talk from Mr. Dreher about people "losing their souls" (a polite way of saying, "being condemned to burn in Hell forever") is troubling.

I think this bothers me because statements to that effect imply, if they do not say outright, that Mr. Dreher has some kind of inside line to the Last Judgment, and he knows (or "sadly", except that he doesn't seem very sad about it) suspects that those with whom he disagrees will be condemned for not adhering to his notions of right doctrine.

I don't think Mr. Dreher (or anyone else) has that kind of inside information. Even the Catholic Church itself, never hesitant to judge and condemn, has thought long and hard about this, and refuses to state categorically that any individual is damned, wisely leaving that decision with God, where it belongs.

Let us not all collectively forget that the point of these missions to American women religious is reconcilliation, not excommunication. The inquisition narrative that's being used widely in both the NYT-esque articles and by many conservative pundits is simply wrong. This is *not* about 'cleaning' out the so-called dinosaurs.

But you're not a Catholic, and I presume therefore that you do not think the Catholic Church has the fullness of the faith. When you say "If, though, you think (as I do) that it's enormously important that religious dogma and tradition is preserved ..." you cannot be talking about anything these women are likely in any case to be preserving, I assume.

Not true. I may now be an Eastern Orthodox Christian, but I live in the West. I believe the future of my own civilization depends on the health of the Roman Catholic church more than any other institution. To the extent that the Catholic church strengthen itself in its own orthodoxy, we all benefit, from my point of view. I'm not an Episcopalian either, but I watch what happens there with concern, and hope and pray for the traditionalists, who may not have the fullness of truth from my point of view, but who are a lot closer to the truth than the heterodox modernists they oppose.

Do you propose that only Democrats have any business rooting for this or that faction within the Democratic Party? That only Republicans have any standing to hope for this or that faction to triumph in the GOP? The future direction of the two American political parties affects us all. From my viewpoint, the fate of the Roman church is far more important for all of us in the West, whether or not we are her communicants.

My daughter of 21 is hoping to join a thriving, orthodox, Catholic order of sisters, the School Sisters of Christ the King in Lincoln, NE. They have something of a building program going on, with several young women joining their order in recent years.

The healthy recovery of the Catholic Church in America will mean much good in the future. A robust, confident, well-educated, bountiful, learned Catholic Church that will not be cowed will be a marvel to see.

With a nod to Justice Jackson, 'baptism is not a suicide pact.' The Church owes it to nobody to countenance heresy.

If small is beautiful, the RCC is going for very beautiful indeed.

Yes, if only they would liberalize as the Episcopal Church is doing. Oh, wait...

Dennis, I looked up the School Sisters, and they certainly look a likely lot of (mostly young) women. Best wishes to them and to your daughter!

I'm hoping they are more typical than the other young people I know who are considering RC religious life these days. I'm thinking of one young man in particular who wants to be a priest. I have known him for a few years, and while he is certainly bright and earnest, he is more than a little...weird. Of course to my knowledge he has not yet been accepted at seminary, and I am hoping for everyone's sake that wiser heads prevail in his case, and that they are not desperate enough to take him.

Observer,

Yeah, God knows there is no room for the weird in society.

If we had Orthodox nuns who had gone so far off the rails, I would be quite pleased for them to be suppressed or to die off from lack of interest.

When was the last time you spoke to an Orthodox nun? How many Orthodox nuns are in your kids' classrooms? I don't see a difference between the recruitment and retention of Orthodox nuns and those of Roman Catholic nuns, if anything the RCs are more successful.

But to the point:

St. Ignatius of Loyola taught that when someone made a comment that could be taken as erroneous they should first be asked how they understood what they'd said, rather than it be assumed that they intended error. He wrote this: Let it be presupposed that every good Christian is to be more ready to save their neighbor’s proposition than to condemn it.

I remember when people declared of Tielhard and Merton what you declare of these nuns in virtually identical terms.

Re: And Observer, We Catholics and our Orthodox brothers only really differ on what Petrine primacy means.

What?

What about different understandings of original sin, the substitutionary atonement, the procession of the Holy Spirit, and a few moral issues like just war, divorce, and contraception?

Observer,

Yeah, God knows there is no room for the weird in society.

Franklin, I was trying to say that my young friend is flamingly, obviously gay. I don't have a personal problem with this, nor does "society," but I've heard that the super-Orthodox RC priesthood might have a few issues here.

You may be right. Perhaps there still is no problem with this.

Greeley is a liberal, one who doesn't care for some of the conservative factions of the Church. I happen to agree with him. But one of his best lines is "Catholic means here comes everyone." I'm Catholic too and I think there is some room for dissent. Reading the New York Times article, I don't see any nuns who no longer believe in God, the Trinity, the Virgin Mary, or the tenets of the Church.

No longer calling yourself Catholic doesn't seem to have caused any diminution of your confidence that you can tell everyone who else is Catholic and who isn't, though. This non-practicing cradle Catholic just checked the baptismal promises.

V. Do you reject Satan? R. I do. V. And all his works? R. I do. V. And all his empty promises? R. I do. V. Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth? R. I do.

V. Do you believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was born of the Virgin Mary was crucified, died, and was buried, rose from the dead, and is now seated at the right hand of the Father? R. I do.

Do you believe in the Holy Spirit, the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting? R. I do.

That's it, folks. Pretty much as I recalled. There's no loyalty oath of absolute fealty to "everything the Catholic Church teaches," which is a phrase containing much wiggle room, anyway, based on the serious disagreements about what constitutes teaching authority and who has it that we've seen here between self-described faithful Catholics. I suppose you could find such an absolutist position in the penumbra of the phrase "I believe in the holy Catholic church." But that wouldn't be strict constructionism, I don't think.

No longer calling yourself Catholic doesn't seem to have caused any diminution of your confidence that you can tell everyone who else is Catholic and who isn't, though.

It's not me, sister, it's the Catholic Church's own understanding of its authority. You and I may have rejected it, but it is what it is, whether or not you or I accept it. You are trying to impose a Protestant understanding of ecclesiology onto the Catholic Church. Who are you to tell the Catholic Church how to understand itself?

Nobody is forced to be Catholic, but if one is going to be Catholic, then for heaven's sake, be Catholic. People like these nuns want to have all of the advantages of being Catholic, without accepting Catholic teaching authority on faith and morals.

Still, you seem to be correct on the baptismal promises thing. I remember standing at Easter vigil as a Catholic saying the very words that I believed everything the Catholic Church teaches is true because God gave the Church teaching authority. But a cursory Google search doesn't turn up any phrase like that in the Easter Vigil liturgy. If somehow I'm remembering correctly, would somebody please point to where this comes from?

"Find another church if you don't like this one" definitely sounds like a Protestant attitude to me. I think the main reason I've toyed with joining other churches that are closer to my actual beliefs but have never actually done so is that I AM Catholic. It is the one, true church. There are no other churches and they are not going to kick me out. I'm a bad Catholic who doesn't make it to Mass and disagrees with some of the dogma and dislikes some of the more reactionary conservatives I've encountered of late, but I am a Catholic. Anyone who has been baptized a Catholic is one for life, according to canon law. It's essentially a family. Your black sheep uncle who does things the family doesn't like and embarrasses you at the family reunion is still your uncle. You can't disavow the connection even if your dad writes him out of the will. According to the Catholic Church, Rod Dreher is still a Catholic as well, particularly since he only moved over to the Russian Orthodox Church, which is regarded as pretty much Catholic for all intents and purposes by church law. It doesn't matter that the Russian Orthodox Church disagrees; the Roman Catholic church doesn't care if Mr. Dreher still takes communion. I subscribe to the notion of trying to change something you don't like from within. That's probably the attitude of the nuns as well. I doubt they're dancing naked around a fire, swearing oaths to the Lord and Lady, or denying the existence of the Trinity or somesuch.

"definitely sounds like a Protestant attitude to me." Andrea

TR: Not to me and I'm a "cradle Catholic."

Granted you will always be "part of the family" in some sense, but that doesn't mean you have to stay in your hometown if you can't stand living there. If you can't stand the way things are in Catholic-town then yeah go to Episcopal-town or Baptist-town or wherever. Maybe Catholicism will still be your ultimate home, but why make everyone miserable? Why should a person pretend to be a part of something they don't even like anymore?

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." John 13:34

The good shepherd goes out loking for those of His flock who are heading off in a dangerous direction. Some of the sisters appear to have lost their way and Rome is sending a capable compassionate sister to see what the situation is at ground level. It would be a poor and careless shepherd who simply let them keep heading towards the abyss.
All nuns faithful to their vows and Church teaching have nothing to fear from such a visit.