Statement on Vatican Investigation of United States Women Religious
FutureChurch, Cleveland Ohio
1. FutureChurch’s mission is guided by the reforms of the second Vatican Council. Of all the groups in the Church, women religious have been among the most zealous in embracing and implementing the far-reaching changes and blessings of the Council. FutureChurch regularly advocates on behalf of women ministers in the Catholic Church. We care about the concerns of women religious who pioneered today’s leadership roles for lay women and men.
2. We believe any post Vatican II endeavor should incorporate the principle of subsidiarity whereby actions and decisions are first taken at the level closest to those most involved. Therefore, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the organization that represents 95% of US religious communities, should have been consulted before any decision was made to conduct an Apostolic Visitation of US Women Religious. Sadly, the LCWR was not consulted and is now itself the subject of an investigation, apparently at the behest of some bishops, who mistakenly believe that speakers at LCWR conferences openly opposed Church teaching. Since there are no women bishops or even any women in the upper echelons of the Church’s power structures, there was no one to intervene, clarify and defend the practices of this widely respected organization.
3. The Apostolic Visitation may provide positive opportunities for US women religious to demonstrate to Rome their outstanding commitment to service to the disenfranchised and to justice in church and in society. We are concerned about the apparent secrecy and lack of transparency of this process. Women religious and the Catholic faithful who ultimately fund such endeavors, should be given a full report of the outcomes. Leaders of communities of women religious and of the LCWR should also be given the opportunity to respond and refute any misrepresentations before the report is finalized and before any decisions are made.
4. It is true that there has been a significant decline in the number of women entering religious life in recent decades, just as there has been a decline in the number of priests. Religious communities are already deeply cognizant of this reality. Some public statements by church officials seem to reflect a simplistic understanding of the reasons for the decline. For example, some seem to believe the decline is due solely to changes in religious garb and/or traditional ministries such as teaching and nursing, without taking into account the vast societal changes of the last 50 years. Not the least of these is the rise in feminist consciousness, entry of Catholics into mainstream U.S. society, increased annual income of Catholics, and the advent of smaller Catholic families. A study of parents done by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in 2000 found that 67% of Catholic parents would not encourage their child to pursue a career as a priest or a nun. In the 1950’s and early 1960’s a Catholic woman’s choices were limited to being a nurse, a teacher, a wife or a nun. Today many more opportunities are open. The institutional church’s failure to address systemic sexism is one reason educated Catholic women hesitate to become more intimately associated with the Church in a religious community.
5. The Catholic Church is facing immense problems today: a worldwide ‘Eucharistic famine’ caused by the priest shortage, widespread closing of parishes, the profound failure of our bishops to be accountable for clergy sex abuse and financial scandals and the hemorrhaging of Catholics to other denominations (or to none at all) because of a loss of credible leadership. With all of this one can only wonder why the Vatican is choosing to study the sisters. The Catholic Church would be better served if our leaders used their time and energy to study the Church’s governance structures with a view to encouraging greater participation of all the faithful in church decision-making, gender balance in church offices, transparency and accountability.
Approved by the FutureChurch Board of Trustees on July 22, 2009