National Nuns’ Group Dodges Showdown with Vatican

By Laurie Goodstein
New York Times
August 11, 2012

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/11/us/national-nuns-group-seeks-dialogue-with-vatican.html?_r=1

Sister Florence Deacon, left, and Sister Pat Farrell of the nuns’ group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

Sister Pat Farrell, the departing president of the nuns’ group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, said at a news conference that the members of her organization wanted to be “recognized as equal in the church,” to have their style of religious life “respected and affirmed,” and to help create a climate in which everyone in the church can talk about “issues that are very complicated.”

“Their expectation is that open and honest dialogue may lead not only to increasing understanding between the church leadership and women religious,” the nuns said in a statement, “but also to creating more possibilities for the laity, and particularly for women, to have a voice in the church.”

Some Vatican officials have already indicated exasperation with the nuns’ insistence on perpetual dialogue. They say that church doctrine is not open for dialogue. Cardinal William J. Levada, an American who until June was in charge of the church’s doctrinal office, called the nuns’ approach a “dialogue of the deaf.”

The decision to seek a dialogue came after more than 900 nuns spent four days doing what they call “listening to the Holy Spirit” inside a hotel ballroom. They represent about 80 percent of the 57,000 Catholic nuns in the United States. They were responding to an edict issued in April by Cardinal Levada’s office, which ordered three American bishops to rewrite the Leadership Conference’s statutes, evaluate its programs and publications, and revise its liturgies and rituals.

The Vatican accused the group of promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith” and “corporate dissent” against church teachings, like those prohibiting the ordination of women to the priesthood, same-sex relationships and artificial birth control.

Many nuns said they regarded the Vatican’s assessment as not only wrong, but also “a public humiliation,” said Sister Mary Waskowiak, a Sister of Mercy, in a news conference on Thursday.

They said they did not want to respond with anger because they believed in dialogue as the best method for resolving problems. It is what the sisters say they practice within their own communities when they have differences, and they said they wanted to see this method serve as a model for others in and outside the church.

Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emeritus of New Testament studies at the Jesuit School of Theology/Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., who received an award from the nuns’ group on Friday, said in an interview: “There is definitely a desire to de-escalate the conflict, because fighting is not what we’re about. But there are also non-negotiables,” she said, including the belief that God speaks through many people, not just through the bishops.

The board of the nuns’ group is to meet on Saturday with J. Peter Sartain, archbishop of Seattle, the Vatican appointee charged with overhauling the nuns’ group. Archbishop Sartain praised the nuns in a statement and said, “We must also work toward clearing up any misunderstandings, and I remain truly hopeful that we will work together without compromising church teaching or the important role of the L.C.W.R.”

Some church analysts said the nuns’ group may be able to stall because the leadership in the Vatican is in flux and the overhaul is supposed to take five years. Cardinal Levada has been succeeded by a German, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller. He has called for the nuns to uphold church doctrine, but he has also said that he desires “mutual trust” with them.

The standoff between the Vatican and the nuns has become a proxy for the struggle between the church’s right and left flanks. As the nuns were reminded this week, many Catholics who want to see their church reformed are looking to the nuns to be their voice. “Our church has become so judgmental,” Thomas C. Fox, publisher of the National Catholic Reporter, a liberal Catholic media outlet, said in a speech to the sisters on Thursday. “We get edicts of judgment after edicts of judgment. Who’s there to say we love you, we support you, to say we understand your pain?”

“When we look around, the place that we’re hearing that is from you,” he said. “Like it or not, you are the authentic voices of the people of God.”

But it is the job of the Vatican’s office to rein in those who dissent, said Ann Carey, author of “Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women’s Religious Communities,” who is covering the nuns’ conference for the conservative National Catholic Register. “When they see someone trying to lead the laity in the direction of changing church teachings, to me that’s a legitimate concern.”

When the nuns at the assembly on Friday heard their officials read their formal statement, there was enthusiastic applause, said Sister Camille D’Arienzo, a past president of the leadership conference. It suited the nuns, she said, because “It’s steeped in hope for a good outcome.”