UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
by Ken Briggs | Feb. 26, 2013
Analysis
As it turns out, the investigation of American nuns came squarely in the middle of Pope Benedict XVI’s eight-year reign. It angered those who’d pledged themselves to renewal and stirred barely suppressed glee in the minority whose concept of religious life was pre-Vatican II.
In the years leading up to that alarm, many religious communities belonging to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious had languished in the face of huge challenges, among them the financing of care for retired sisters and sheer survival.
Their position was further compromised by a successful public relations initiative to convince the public that adherents of the rival Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious, certified by the Vatican in 1991 as a traditionalist alternative, were thriving as the result of their fidelity to true religious life while LCWR-affiliated groups were dying because they had abandoned their vows for worldliness and self-seeking.
No matter that the publicity was essentially wrong. It had an impact; news coverage focused on the joyous nuns in habits who did everything the old way and were booming. Renewal sisters found themselves in a defensive posture.
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