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…