Cardinal Burke on Nuns’ Group: ‘If it Can’t Be Reformed, Then It Doesn’t Have a Right to Continue’"by Patrick B. Craine/Vatican Slapdown of LCWR Continues with Cardinal Burke's Threat of Shut-Down

The Vatican's so-called "smackdown" of nuns continue with Cardinal Burke's Threat of LCWR Shutdown.
I don't think the nuns will tolerate this oppression much longer. It is time to declare independence and sing: "Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we are free at last"!
Bridget Mary Meehan, arcwp
www.arcwp.org

WASHINGTON, D.C., August 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – "A senior Vatican prelate has fired a fresh salvo in the Vatican’s effort to reform the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, with a warning that the rogue organization could be shut down if they fail to implement the reforms demanded by the Vatican.“If it can’t be reformed, then it doesn’t have a right to continue,” Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Vatican’s Apostolic Signatura, told EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo in a Thursday interview for The World Over.“How in the world can these consecrated religious who have professed to follow Christ more closely … be opposed to what the Vicar of Christ is asking? This is a contradiction,” he said.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) launched the reform of the LCWR in April with a hard-hitting document raising serious doctrinal issues with the group, including its failure to uphold Church teaching on the right to life, homosexuality, and women’s ordination. The organization represents about 80% of America’s 57,000 women religious.

Cardinal William Levada, then-prefect of the CDF, warned in June that the LCWR could be decertified if they fail to implement the reforms.

The group, which has advocated radical feminism for decades, has fought back, framing the reform as a case of a patriarchal Vatican seeking to exercise control over women. “The question is, ‘Can you be Catholic and have a questioning mind?’ That’s what we’re asking,” Sister Pat Farrell, LCWR’s president, told National Public Radio in July. “This mandate … puts us in a position of being under the control of certain bishops, that is not a dialogue. If anything, it appears to be shutting down dialogue...”