Vatican official says religious orders are in modern 'crisis'

No solutions yet, but at least they are admitting that there's a problem.

By John Thavis
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- A top Vatican official said religious orders today are in a "crisis" caused in part by the adoption of a secularist mentality and the abandonment of traditional practices.

Cardinal Franc Rode, prefect of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, said the problems go deeper than the drastic drop in the numbers of religious men and women.

"The crisis experienced by certain religious communities, especially in Western Europe and North America, reflects the more profound crisis of European and American society. All this has dried up the sources that for centuries have nourished consecrated and missionary life in the church," Cardinal Rode said in a talk delivered Feb. 3 in Naples, Italy.

"The secularized culture has penetrated into the minds and hearts of some consecrated persons and some communities, where it is seen as an opening to modernity and a way of approaching the contemporary world," he said.

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Berkeley Communist Criticizes Vatican Visitation

Does this look like a Nun to you?





Some "Catholic" Religious Don't Look the Part

The National Catholic Reporter has been harping on the issue of the Vatican Investigation of US Women Religious for some time now. Now they're enabling this dysfunctional religious family, giving air to their delusions and presenting a Catholicism that is counterfeit; that's what the NCR does.

Sister Sandy herself teaches Scripture, the kind of scripture scholar who tried to tell you that the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes wasn't a real miracle, at the Jesuit School of Theololgy at Berkeley California, and attempts to derail the Visitation by suggesting that the problems facing women religious in the Unitied States isn't really a problem. If American religious were alchoholics, we might say that they were self-deceived.

CR Editor Tom Fox interviewed Schneiders, asking her about the purpose and timing of her five-part essay.

NCR: Why did you write this article, why now?

Schneiders: To begin with “why now,” because the Vatican investigation of U.S. women religious has created what the Chinese ideogram for “crisis” means, namely, a situation of danger and opportunity. Religious and their life are in danger from three directions.

•First, they do not know what the Vatican plans to do with whatever information it collects and, if those who suspect that the conclusions were reached before the investigation began are correct this danger is not illusory.

•Second, there is the danger that some religious will become so disgusted, discouraged, disheartened, even justifiably angered by this implied questioning of the integrity of their lives and the authenticity of their ministries, and by the clear signals that they are expected, if they want ecclesiastical approval, to get back “in the box” that defined their pre-conciliar lives, that they will simply give up, either on religious life itself or on their own vocations to it, or on a church which seems to be defined by a narrow, rigid, exclusively institutional ecclesiology. [This isn't such a bad thing. If you don't like being a Catholic religious, hit the road and become something else. Many of these religious are actually destroying the Church and their attempts to deny either that or that they are somehow coherent with Catholic thought, are becoming increasingly hard for them to deny.]

•Third, there is the danger that generous younger women who are intelligent, courageous, motivated not by medieval romanticism or elitism but by love of the world for which Christ died, and who feel called to the following of Jesus in ministerial religious life will decide that they do not want to spend their lives and energy struggling with a patriarchal institution which denies their full human and Christian personhood.

[Note how she condescendingly refers to the more traditional young women who are no enthused by the religious life. The more conservative orders are the ones who are getting the vocations, not the liberal ones that this Berkeley radical envisions]

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Link to US Women Religious: Dysfunctional Family Values...

Women religious not complying with Vatican study | National Catholic Reporter

Women religious not complying with Vatican study | National Catholic Reporter

A related story, US Women Religious Dysfunctional Family Values, linked here.

Besides disobedience, US Women Religious bring other things to the table, like dissent, Women Religious Reshape the Divine.

US Women Religious: Dysfunctional Family Values

Congregation heads no longer required to supply ownership, asset, age information

Women religious will still have to answer other questions related to how they conduct their ministries, but like alcoholics, the mentally ill and habitual miscreants, they don't like being held accountable, and perhaps, like an overly permissive parent, Sister Millea, who is overseeing the visitation has caved into the complaints requesting asset, age and ownership information.

It's hard to understand why they would object to such requests for this information, unless, contrary to popular belief, a life of poverty is out of the question.

U.S. women religious superiors will no longer have to supply to the Vatican some of the most controversial information it had requested as part of a three-year study of religious congregations.

Word of the change in procedures came in a letter dated Nov. 5 sent to the women religious superiors by Apostolic Visitator Mother Mary Clare Millea.

It's good to see, however, that there will still be other questions, like the following, still trying to hold rebellious nuns accountable for their manifest failure to follow the rules and live lives that have more than an impressionistic resemblance to the visions of the founders of their communities.

Part B involves some 60 subjective questions regarding vocations, governance, financial, liturgical and spiritual life within the congregations. For example, questions include the following:

How often is the Eucharist celebrated in primary houses of the unit whether a mother house, formation house, retirement facility, skilled-care facility, etc.?

Do your sisters participate in the Eucharistic liturgy according to approved liturgical norms? [We know that in most cases this is, "No"].

Despite having serious disciplinary, doctrinal, honesty and emotional problems, US Women religious have some pretty serious enablers in their corner who are willing to help them on the path of destruction, like liberal family member, Fr. McBrien of Notre Dame who teaches "theology" to unsuspecting students, who's willing to step in and give a defense of the US women religious which not surprisingly attacks the Church as "sexist". Of course, he begins his article by citing another article from a Sacred Heart Sister who teaches at Berkley. She doesn't believe that many people with an opinion have the back ground to make their judgements, she says, "too many critics of religious life in the United States "have no lived experience of or academic competence" in regard to it.

But she doesn't stop there. She wants to talk about religious habits and cloisters from a feminist perspective that boarders on the pathological. Her issues with religious habits and religious discipline are almost too stupid and inaccurate to mention, especially for someone who holds others to high standards when it comes to judging her and her consorors' work in the US, like a lot of charlatans, she tries to slither behind academic degrees and hope that she won't be challenged. It has often been the case that such women and men in the Church, like Fr. McBrien, have gone unchallenged. It's time that was ended. If you don't really believe the Church is good for humanity, why bother with it? Get out. Please.

It's typical for dysfunctional family members to cover for their relatives' sins and crimes. In this case, it seems clear that misrepresentation and malfeasance is one possible accusation and the natural tendency is to defend one's self or others who are guilty of the same crimes you are.

Well, now US Women Religious have to be held accountable because their decadence and dysfunctionality has grown to such catastrophic heights that you don't need to be a person with trained proficiency to know that US Women's Religious are in trouble. All you have to do is read one of Sister Joan Chittister's columns or take time to visit a nominally "Catholic" college where you can find Female Religious Professors who will admit to you that they want to destroy the Church.

Read the article here...

Nuns Complain bitterly about Vatican Investigation

Liberal nuns make their thoughts known about the Vatican investigation. Some say that the Vatican is using it to cover up sex-abuse, another one is saying that surgery was banned by the Church.

Vatican investigation into compliance of U.S. Sisters to Catholic doctrine should not impact members of the Congregation of the Sisters of St. Agnes.

"And hopefully, it will not impact our university," said Sister Mary Mollison, acting president at Marian University.

She addressed Catholic religious women gathered Thursday at the Stayer Center about tension and rising polarization in the church.

Issues reportedly being investigated include the acceptance of gays and lesbians, the Catholic path as an exclusive path to redemption, and the return of habits. Vatican concerns have also focused on the declining numbers of religious vocations in Western cultures.

"Our freedom is part of the tension going on," Mollison confirmed.

Cardinal Franc Rode' said he requested the three-year study in response to concerns expressed by American Catholics — religious, laity, clergy and hierarchy — about the welfare of religious women and consecrated life in general, according to the National Catholic Reporter. Rhode heads the Vatican office overseeing religious orders.

Assessment of "women religious," as they are referred to in the Catholic Church, could include whether or not those speaking for an order support the idea of women priests, or gay marriage, or whether they believe there can be salvation outside the Catholic church, Mollison said.

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