VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
by John L Allen Jr on Apr. 27, 2012 All Things Catholic
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.
The story has become a cause célèbre, primarily because of the deep fault lines it seems to encapsulate: men vs. women, family values vs. women’s issues (especially in a domestic political season in which an alleged “war on women” is in the air), Rome vs. America, left vs. right, authority vs. dissent, the hierarchy vs. the grassroots, and so on. Depending on where one stands vis-à-vis those divides, it’s easy to see LCWR as either a hero or a scapegoat.
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