UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
EDITORIAL
It seems, in what can be gleaned from the final report of the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, that a certain reasonableness ultimately prevailed in an exercise that has rightfully been called “a disaster.”
Religious women remain one of American Catholicism’s great treasures. Of all the matters in the church in need of investigation, the organization whose members are leaders of more than 80 percent of women religious in the United States was not one of them.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s “assessment” of LCWR was a disaster, an unnecessary sign of distrust. Keeping that assessment in mind should temper the celebration coming from some quarters of the church and commentariat acclaiming the success of “dialogue.”
If there is reason to cheer, it is that the women managed to impress upon the Vatican that they had no intention of engaging the issue exclusively on the arcane protocols of an all-male clerical culture in which only its members are clued in to the means of survival. So the women held out, apparently (though no one is talking yet), for that conversation of equals.
In the meantime, the clerical culture received what must have been a stunning immersion into the reality of church as it exists beneath the hierarchical level. The raw fact — a necessarily political fact, as it turns out — is that most Catholics and many others know the nuns, have been helped by them or influenced by them in countless ways, while few people would know their bishop if he showed up at the front door.
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