UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Angela Bonavoglia
It took nearly 12 hours for Archbishop Peter Sartain — Vatican-appointed overseer of the nation’s largest association of American nuns — to issue his paltry retort to the strong and vigorous statement released on June 1 by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, their first public response to the Vatican’s takeover plan. That could well be because he and the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, issuer of the Doctrinal Assessment, were pretty much stunned by the response of LCWR.
Buoyed by the support of Catholics nationwide who came out for vigils, signed petitions and expressed outrage at the CDF’s action, the LCWR declared that the CDF’s Doctrinal Assessment was based on “unsubstantiated accusations,” was “the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency” and — borrowing a freighted word the Vatican and the bishops regularly lob at all manner of “errant” Catholics — was “causing scandal” as well as “pain throughout the church community.” The Assessment (for my take, see The Nation, “American Nuns: Guilty as Charged?”) had lambasted the nuns for, among other things, their “radical feminism,” focus on poverty instead of pelvic issues, their lack of fidelity to church teachings on those controversial matters, and their failure to submit “allegiance of mind and heart to the Magisterium of the Bishops.”
While clearly conveying the message that they had no plans to roll over — a message hailed in headlines from coast to coast — what was most important about the position of the LCWR board was expressed very quietly in their statement, then made more explicit by LCWR president Sr. Pat Farrell in an exclusive interview she gave to the National Catholic Reporter on Friday.
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