"Notes on the LCWR Overhaul: Sisters Under Scrutiny" by John Allen/National Catholic Reporter/ Time for Nun-Priests!

 (The Inside Scoop on Vatican Attack on Nuns by Vatican Observer John Allen)
"By far, the biggest Vatican story at the moment in the American media market is an announced overhaul of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the main umbrella group for superiors of the roughly 400 women's orders in the States. The move has been presented by the Vatican as a "reform" but styled as a "crackdown" in most press coverage.As is by now well known, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican's powerful doctrinal watchdog agency, has faulted LCWR for silence on issues such as abortion and euthanasia, a climate of "corporate dissent" on matters such as homosexuality and women's ordination, and the inroads of "radical feminism." The congregation appointed Archbishop James Peter Sartain of Seattle as its delegate to oversee reform, with power to do things like reviewing documents before publication and signing off on speakers for LCWR meetings..."

Keeping the record straight
"Two brief observations are in order regarding coverage of the story to date.
First, there's been an understandable tendency to confuse the action regarding LCWR with the broader apostolic visitation of women religious in America, which was sponsored by the Congregation for Religious and is now closed. In part, that's because both processes were announced at roughly the same moment and have unfolded over the same span of time.
An April 20 blog on "The Daily Beast" by Barbie Latza Nadeau, for instance, suggested that Sr. Clare Millea, the American sister tapped by the Congregation for Religious to run the apostolic visitation, is somehow also responsible for the assessment of the LCWR. (That piece, by the way, ran under the provocative headline "Nuns Gone Wild!" and featured a picture of Millea.)

For the record, the doctrinal review of LCWR and the visitation of women religious are two separate things, and it's inaccurate to suggest that the LCWR overhaul is a direct consequence of the visitation.

As an aside, it might be worth keeping the visitation in mind in thinking about how things with LCWR might shake out. When the visitation was announced in early 2009, it produced a round of dismay and resentment in some quarters similar to what's playing out today with regard to the LCWR. Yet now that the visitation is over, many observers would say it wasn't as traumatic as some early forecasts suggested.

At face value, the Congregation for the Faith seems to have flung down a fairly dramatic gauntlet to LCWR. Experience suggests, however, that sometimes things that seem cataclysmic at the beginning have a way of becoming less so as time rolls on.

Second, it's been suggested that the move against LCWR amounts to payback for the more favorable position many sisters in the States took on the Obama administration's health care reform initiative, in contrast to the American bishops.

No doubt the recent flaps haven't helped, but on background Vatican officials insist that the issues with LCWR involve longstanding concerns and are not driven by current events.

Here's the chronology.

The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith informed LCWR that it was launching a doctrinal probe back in April 2008, before the health care reform debate in the States heated up. Led by Bishop Leonard Blair of Toledo, Ohio, the review unfolded in 2009 and 2010. Its conclusions were actually reached in January 2011, but the congregation decided to wait until the apostolic visitation was over before presenting them.

Given that timeline, the split over health care reform could perhaps more accurately be seen as illustrating the tensions that led to the doctrinal assessment rather than directly causing it.

A minor miracle

Whatever else comes from the tumult, it's already prompted one minor miracle that most Catholic observers probably thought they'd never live to see: Sr. Joan Chittister and George Weigel actually agreeing on something.

Chittister, of course, is a Benedictine and probably America's most prominent feminist sister. Weigel, a biographer of John Paul II, is a champion of orthodoxy. Politically speaking, they're usually matter and antimatter, yet on the question of how LCWR ought to respond to its present travails, they're on the same page.

Chittister made her comments in NCR's day-one story on the Vatican announcement. In effect, she said LCWR ought to disband canonically and then regroup outside the official structures of the church. Doing so, she said, might be the only way to avoid "giving your charism away" and "demeaning the ability of women to make distinctions."

In an April 23 essay for National Review, Weigel wrote that Chittister's suggestion "had the virtue of honesty" and "drew the curtain on a long-running charade" -- by which he meant that in his opinion, LCWR is outside "the boundaries of Catholic orthodoxy and orthopraxis," so dissolving its official status would be recognizing reality.

To some, the fact that prominent voices on both the Catholic left and right seem to be reaching the same conclusion is a clear signal of where things stand: For better or worse, the future of LCWR might not be within officialdom.

That, however, is not quite the tone Sartain has struck in his brief early comments. Speaking to the Catholic News Service in Rome earlier this week, he said he hopes to help LCWR see "that we are all in this together" and called the overhaul "a great opportunity [to] strengthen and improve all of our relationships on every level."

(I contacted Sartain to give him the chance to expand, but he said that out of respect for the members of the LCWR board, who are scheduled to meet in May, he doesn't want to say anything more for a while.)

Beyond "Vatican vs. nuns" and "Rome vs. America," the fallout from the LCWR fracas thus illustrates another persistent tension in Catholic life, between what one might call the "prophetic" and "communal" instincts. The former wants to push the church to realize the best version of itself (as a given prophet might understand it), while the latter regards having a place at the table as at least as important as getting one's own way. Prophets want hard choices to be made while community folks are more willing to tolerate compromise as the best way of holding the family together.

The question now is whether, vis-à-vis the LCWR, those instincts are necessarily in conflict or whether there's a "both/and" solution waiting to be crafted."

[John L. Allen Jr. is NCR senior correspondent.)

Bridget Mary's Reflection:
It is hard to believe that Joan Chittister and George Weigel both reached the same conclusion.
But, it is logical and makes sense to me. 
The LCWR should disband canonically and regroup as an independent association of women religious. This would chart a new path forward to freedom from Vatican control. And would offer the nuns more opportunities to continue their outstanding witness to Gospel justice on the margins with the marginalized. This would also give the nuns, called to ordination, an opportunity to publically live their vocations as priests.  As I have said before the Association of Roman Catholic Women Priestss would welcome "nun-priests" as sisters on the journey who have been living their priesthood for a mighty long time!
Bridget Mary Meehan, Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, www.arcwp.org
sofiabmm@aol.com,703-505-0004