Religion & Law

By Ken Briggs

NCR, 8/7/09

As I see it, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which gathers next week in New Orleans, faces a bleak choice: either die or survive at a great cost to its integrity and dignity.

The Vatican has thrown down the gauntlet. The choice is stark: acquiesce to a ?doctrinal assessment? of leadership conference views -- on women?s ordination, the primacy of Roman Catholicism and homosexuality ? or reject the probe as an unwarranted fishing expedition bent on putting the organization out of business.

What we have here, I believe, could be the last major struggle over a way of understanding what it means to be Catholic. Sisters have retained more of Vatican II ethos and spirit than any group in the church, in the face of formidable opposition to large segments of it by the last two popes.

If Rome succeeds in wrecking this last organizational remnant of Vatican II, then all of American Catholicism suffers a great loss. Yet the will to resist appears to have dissipated. Without active protest, LCWR, as it?s been known, will exist no more. Voices of appeasement who counsel trust in Vatican intentions sound sadly out of touch with Rome?s hard line aims.

Meanwhile, the two investigations of sisters are in full stride, couched in terms of routine check-ups. One examines the ?quality of life? in sisters? congregations. It covers the chief components of governance, work and spirituality, the areas that became the touchstones of renewal. The other is aimed squarely at the leadership conference, long regarded as a thorn in the Vatican?s hide. Having failed for decades to break the Conference of its Vatican II identity, the latest offensive appears determined to finish the job.

Renewal was the word that encapsulated that search for the new life mandated by the Council. It is a word rarely spoken any more because its practice belongs largely to the past. But leadership conference has continued to uphold many of its values.

The superiors of the congregations have maintained near total silence in response to the investigations. Some believe the Vatican?s assurances that they have nothing to worry about. And because they believe they?ve done nothing wrong, they don?t appear worried.

If they don?t look squarely at what?s happening and speak out against it, however, I think the struggle to preserve even a semblance of the LCWR?s vibrant past will be lost. This dynamic conference, born in controversy because the Vatican objected strenuously to the term ?leadership? in its name change, could forfeit its legacy of defending not only sisters but a wider cohort of Catholic women and American Catholicism?s stake in renewal.

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