You have got to be kidding me. Yes, there are fewer nuns now, but more importantly, YES, they are still more connected to the work of social justice than any white male privileged Catholic bishop sitting in the Vatican.

These women live the Gospel instead of sitting around bickering about it. For shame on you, National Catholic Register!

Sorry, A Catholic Feminist, you’ve got it wrong. Many nuns who have been represented by the LCWR have been very unhappy with the leadership for quite some time. They have been praying for the Vatican to do something and finally their prayers have been answered. Look into it a little more, open your mind and soften your heart, you may be surprised where God takes you! God bless you!

Seen but not heard.

Sorry, A Catholic Feminist, you’ve got it wrong. Many nuns who have been represented by the LCWR have been very unhappy with the leadership for quite some time. They have been praying for the Vatican to do something and finally their prayers have been answered. Look into it a little more, open your mind and soften your heart, you may be surprised where God takes you! God bless you!’

Pete, since you brought it up, it is only right that you should give us the facts as to the percentage of Sisters that are unhppy with the LCWR leadership, 10%, 30%, 50%, 75%.

For some time, women religious have been promoting their own self proclaimed papal teachings rather than that of the Catholic Church.  These women, who claim to be Catholic, neither respect the authority of the Church to bind and loose moral teachings, nor are obedient to Church teachings.  To be Catholic, is to accept the authority of the Church and to be obedient to Her and Her teachings.  The Vatican’s call to be obedient and to adhere to Church moral teaching is nothing more than a call to women to either live up to their Catholic identity, or leave it behind.  If they continue to stand in “protest” to the Church, then they should join a Protestant Church. This has nothing to do with “women”, it has everything to do with anyone who calls themselves Catholic that is not, in fact that.

I think the visitation is a good idea. The Congregation for the Doctrine should:
1) THank the Sisters for their good work
2) Kneel before the Sisters and beg foregiveness
3) Admit that they and the administrators in Rome have lost all meaning of the Gospel, and humbly ask the Sisters to educate them.

As one who was lucky enough to be educated by veiled nuns in the 1930’s and 1940’s I want all to know I greatly appreciate their work. Their departure from the schools was a grave catasrophe.  It’s too bad the nuns did not fully appreciate their contribution, and many listened instead to extreme feminists who told them to replace their veils with men’s cut jackets and become successful. Combine this loss with the loss of many stay at home mothers at about the same time, and it is easy to see why several generations of young adult Catholics have little knowledge of their religion and little interest in pursuing it.
I wish to congratulate the nuns who stayed at their posts and mothers who made great material sacrifices for their great conribution to the Church. I,m sure their reward in heaven will be great.

In my late 30s and early 40s, after I reverted to the Church, I attempted to pursue a vocation to consecrated life. I would have preferred a semi-contemplative community that did some parish work and/or “intellectual work” (writing, translating, editing, etc.) and wore some form of habit and veil. However, my poor health precluded my entering any religious community. Instead, I became a Lay Carmelite who is active in my parish as a catechist, lector and EMHC both at the altar and to the sick.

I get the impression that most of the communities affiliated with the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious do not accept vocations from women over 35, while most of the communities affiliated with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious accept older vocations. This may be one reason why the median age of new arrivals differs so much between the two groups of women religious in the US.

Sorry A Catholic Feminist, escorting women to abortion clinics and pondering “resurrection as myth” heresies isn’t living the Gospel.  Corporal works of mercy, and the wider umbrella of Catholic social teaching, are crucial, and critical, and very, very important…but you are leaving some critical stuff out of the Gospel if you stop at social justice.

What we have now, with the calling to account of the LCWR, is an open war between those who are faithful to Catholic doctrine and those who want a Church re-made in their own image of individualistic rights, e.g., women priests, gay marriage, abortion, etc.  The wider adherents to the Obama side of things are very vocal in supporting the wayward nuns who are being used to front their agenda.  The LCWR leadership well knows this and is capitalizing on it.  I don’t know what a church re-made according to their desires would look like—but it would be a far cry from the Catholic Church we know now, especially if they replaced sound theology with their New Age vagaries.  There is a lot of false representation of the problem in the secular press which likes to print pictures of nuns in full habit (NOT the LCWR types) and complain about the bullying of room.  I hope sensible people can see that the Church as the right to call its so-called faithful to account when they represent the Church officially like the nuns do.  The Church is not the bully, the progressives are.  They use all the tactics of intimidation that they can summon including false representation, endless “dialog,” name-calling, ridicule, and the ever useful wail that “I’m a victim.”  Let’s read the Church documents, be careful to be kind and respectful, and—especially-adhere to the need for sound doctrinal teaching and loyalty both to the Mystical Body of Christ and Jesus himself.

Catholic Feminist, you have got it all wrong.  But by your Title, it is not surprising. To this 73-year old Cradle Catholic, there is nothing in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church called “Catholic Feminist”. Any Women Religious Congregation in the Catholic Church which does not OBEY its own Rule, the Church Leadership represented by the Bishops, the Magisterium and Holy See, has been swallowed by the “World” and must either reform immediately or be disbanded.  The Church must insist on disciplined and obedient Nuns who are genuine “Brides of Christ” not pseudo-Nuns who are “brides of the World”. OBEDIENCE TO THEIR SUPERIORS, THEIR BISHOPS, THE CHURCH MAGISTERIUM AND THE HOLY SEE, IS ONE OF THE THREE CARDINAL VOWS THEY TAKE AND MUST UPHOLD

I think some in the hierarchy are “too preoccupied with issues like women’s ordination and same-sex attraction.” The sisters I know do the following: works with prostitutes and their children to provide support to get the women off the street; works with Catholic Charities as a nurse practitioner; works in the local Catholic school office (this sister is 80); works as a hospital chaplain because the priest who previously did that work died & was not replaced; works as a university professor; teaches in a Catholic school in the deep south; with other sisters feeds a hot meal to homeless people everyday and at night houses homeless women & their children in the same place.

Bravo, Editors, Bravo!

The Holy Spirit is purifying and renewing the church in the U.S. Praise God!

First, there was a renewal of the seminaries, now the reform of the leadership that infected religious life in the U.S. with a spirit of rebellion and anti-life. I rejected religious life years ago after a retreat where all the nuns had feminist agendas, lived in apartments and wore lay clothing. I can live at home and live a holy life without joining such a group. It was not like the community of holy women who taught me in school before Vatican II.

Anyone wanting to know what religious life is like today should read the transcript of the interview Jimmy Akin did with Ann Carey, author of “Sisters in Crisis.” That explains much of this in a nutshell.

It’s exciting to see the traditional communities growing rapidly now while the dissident nuns are fading into oblivion. The Catholic Church has had enough of the nuns like the one in Chicago who worked as an escort for Planned Parenthood. What a scandal!

I ask people to pray every day for Archbishop J. Peter Sartain who is overseeing the reforms.  He is truly a prayerful man of God and an excellent choice for the task.  People really need to read the documents on why this was called for and not just follow the sound bites.  NCR has and excellent article in the current print edition that explains quite a lot, including how LCRW is honoring Sisters who are in direct conflict with the Vatican.  This is not to say that MOST nuns are not in obedience, just that some high profile things are going on by a few which is causing scandal.

Religious take three vows; obedience, poverty and chastity. Obedience to God and to His Church is always the sign of someone who has consecrated themselves to God. Jesus Christ was obedient unto death.  Those who head up and follow the LCWR have moved so far from even being Catholic that they themselves are the ultimate scandal and they have been for a very long time. The LCWR themselves know that they are not in step with the Church. They even shut down their website and removed all the links that showed who has spoken at their conferences and who is scheduled to speak and removed massive amounts of information that would convict them in their fall from following Jesus Christ. These are actions of the guilty and the prideful. They want to hide the truth of who they are and enlicit sympathy. Too bad all their backers are not Catholics in truth either. I pray their hearts and minds will be open to what first drew them to want to serve the Lord. They cannot gain souls for Christ if they have lost their own. Good deeds do not guarantee salvation. Pray for their conversion.

It was the previous generation of nuns, the ones who wore the habits, that built the infrastructure of society 100 years ago. To these late souls, we owe our gratitude. The current crop of nuns are decidedly different. LCWR is highly activist, independent and worldly. No lilies of the field, these women. They ride the coat tails of the accomplishments of their predecessors. They have performed some charity, but what profits them if they gain the world and lose their souls in disobedience to God’s will? And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing.—-1Corinthians 13-3.

I am a Lay Associate of the Felecian Sisters and must say, the Felicians are most dedicated to adhering to the gospel message of Christ.  They feed the hungry, clothe those in need, educate our children, minister to the lonely.  They love Christ and are obedient to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church.  I am privileged to witness such self-giving.  I once walked into the room of an elderly sister and found her, all alone, listening to the news on her radio and praying for the world.  These wonderful sisters help hold up the world through their love for others. 
Let’s not lump these wonderful sisters into an investigative report results.  What would Mother Teresa say about all this.

Didn’t these same women take vows of obedience? How is this following Christ? If God wanted female priests, He would have ordained His Mother and His other female followers. His choice not ours. That is obedience. Read Saint Jude’s Epistle.

The history of religeous orders in the Roman Church is replete with the perceptions of new needs and the emergence of new movements.  These, in turn, led to the founding of new orders; think Franciscans, think Medical Missionariesm think Jesuits.  The idea that obedience is the highest of the virtues seems to me to be reflective of a sense of great insecurity and a need to, as my Japanese friends say “Hamnmer down the protruding nail.”  Certainly, some of the more radical sisters have gone and continue to go overboard in their behavior.  But to use this as a sledge hammer to beat up all those who do not feel fitted to the ‘strict adherance’ orders is to do many good women a grave injustice and to further support the twisted view of the Cuurch authorities as one that says “My Way or The Highway”.  Let The Spirit operate and in the words of another female ‘outlier’ “All will be well.”

It’s a matter of profound concern and sadness when many express anger with the Church without a full understanding of the lived apostasy often expressed by some within the LCWR. 

Even mercifully ignoring Sr. Laurie Brink’s comment of “moving beyond the church, even beyond Jesus,” from LCWR’s 2007 Leadership Conference (a self-inflicted wound of Latae Sententiae), or their leadership’s decision in 1977 to reject Inter insigniores, the well-circulated excerpts from the LCWR’s own Mentoring Leadership Manual should be cause for alarm and sorrow for any who love our women religious in the Church and therefore want to see them represented by faithful leaders.

Please take the time to prayerfully read the Doctrinal Assessment before expressing an opinion, and you’ll find that the Church’s actions are not only well-justified, but their intentions’ ultimately based on loving concern:

http://www.usccb.org/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=55544

Their lead speaker Barbare max Hubbard is a new ager and is into some type of evolutional spirituality and none on Jesus Christ and Him Crucified for us.
https://lcwr.org/assembly
And some on Barbara can be found here:
http://www.barbaramarxhubbard.com/site/
Now we can see why the Vatican is concerned about the content of their conferences.
And This is personal as I know several nuns who were good people and who seemed to have gotten off on these tangents.
So let us pray for them and for us that God may give us the grace to avoid such folly.

I think that true social justice was lost when the Sisters abandoned teaching. The Catholic schools were the best chance for poor families to have their children educated on a higher level than the public school and give their kids the best chance of a college education and a better life. Their disipline, love, and guidence helped children that came from bad situations see that life didn’t have to be that way. They saw there was a better way. They were encouraged to choose to do what was right even when all around them discouraged them. They also learned to take responsibility for their actions.

It is past time that all the priests and religious who disagree with the teaching of the One, Holy and Apostolic Church leave. They will find welcome arms in what remains of the Anglican communion, after it looses those of its’ members who are moving to the one true church, because the Anglicans subscribe to all the changes they would like to see in the Catholic church.

The devil knew to distract Adam to appeal to Eve, which caused the demise of their descendants—us.  Now, the devil appealed to the Religious women under the guise of feminism.  I still remember Sister Cordelia, a Polish nun in her 80’s (I was a 2nd grader)..........it was that one year of her catechesis which has stayed with me forever in the form of seeds.  To this day, I thank God for her.  I see how many great saints, religious, Popes, priests, functioning societies, etc. were the result of good, loving, giving, loved the Truth and God fearing religious women.  We need to pray for them…....they made healthy societies…..and now (the poorly cathecised ones) make sick societies.  God bless those nuns who do love the Lord, the Church, and have to bare the brunt for the bad ones.  Thank you.

Dear Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith,
    Thank you for furthering the cause for liberal Catholicism so
effectively. Your iron-fist approach taken against America’s vowed
sisters has provided more positive PR for a liberal approach to Church
than anything Call to Action, Women’s Ordination Conference, and
Dignity could do combined. I am so grateful that your actions reveal
liberal Catholics’ deepest, darkest suspicions about your petty power
mongering to be grounded in reality. Really, accusing the women who
serve the poorest of the poor of failure to follow the gospel? That
surpasses even the most liberal Catholics’ worst expectations of you.
So thank you for revealing the truth behind liberal Catholic faith:
that following Christ is fundamentally about courageous witness to
love and justice; and that top-down power structures that demand blind
obedience are intrinsically contrary to the Gospel.

It appears to me that the nuns are more open to the inspirations of the Holy Spirit than is the Vatican!  The loss of so many Religious and priestly vocations points to the Pope who declared that the Religious Life and Priestly Vocation is NOT a higher calling than the Married or Secular life.  I know several Religious who left their Orders at that time!  I do not recall the pope’s name.  This was, as far as I am concerned, just another unnecessary pronouncement, as many of the recent changes have been unnecessary and confusing to the laity!  For example, removing confessionals from the church, and placing the Blessed Sacrament in a side room.  I think Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament should be at the center of the Church.  As for confessionals, without them our privacy is taken away! I don’t know any Catholic who goes to confession any more. Few if any enjoy a face to face encounter with a priest if you are confessing!  Changes like this should have been presented to the laity to vote on!  If I had my way, every nun would qualify to be a Permanent Deacon.  They would be a big help to the Church!

GodIsLove views these things through a lense of some type of dictatoroal persecution, I suppose. I read the apostle John in 2 John vs 9 “Anyone who is so progresive and does not abide in the doctrine of Christ has not God, he who abides in the doctrine has both the Father and the Son” and John was, most scholars believe, addressing an early type of Gnosticism in which the belief in Jesus’ redemption in the flesh was somehow being denied or modified. I believe it is much safer for our salvation to take the attitude of St Paul, who chose to preach Jesus Christ and Him Crucified 1 cor ch 2 vs 2 and 3. So this is not a matter of some attempt on the part of the Vatican to somehow squash true freedom but to protect the faith and perhaps the eternal salvation of many. And I do believe the new age views I pointed to above constitute a type of new Gnosticism and, with our recent celebration of Jesus passion and resurrection we should again focus on the Lamb of God who is our only salvation.

Dear Feminist, you appreciate the good work of these nuns. Yes everyone including communists and anti catholics and atheists will agree with you. But what these nuns want now ? They want to enjoy the pleasures of the world together with the service. Jesus was born in a poor family, he led a worker’s life, he taught that our body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, he gave sacredness to marriage. Do these nuns believe in such teachiings ? They want luxurious life, want to enjoy gay marriage, homosexuality abortion etc.  Yes, it is very difficult to live in chastity, so freedom of sex can remove this difficulty, according to nun thinkers. No we have to bear our cross daily and follow Jesus, if you want to love him

Either you will be Blessed, shamed or tormented. Shame on those who piously call for anyone to leave the church because they dare take responsibility for their own souls rather than blindly and unquestioningly follow the prevailing authority of men. How many times have we heard that the Church is not without sin? When it is time to meet the Lord, please donot excuse any failings with I depended on others to tell me what to think about my own responsibility to God and others. To judge others because they in good conscience disagree, will be on you! I trust my vow of Obedience to only God.

“Two men went up into the Temple to pray. One was a PHARISEE, and the other was a PUBLICAN. The Pharisee stood up and prayed thus within himself: ‘Oh God, I thank You that I am not like OTHER men are; robbers, extortioners, unjust, evil-doers, adulterers.—Or even as this PUBLICAN! I fast twice every week and I faithfully give tithes, one-tenth, of all that I get.’

“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even lift up his eyes to look toward Heaven, but he beat upon his breast and said, ‘God, be MERCIFUL to me, a SINNER!’

“Then Jesus said to those around Him, ‘I tell you the truth, that THIS man, rather than the other, went home JUSTIFIED before God. For everyone who EXALTS HIMSELF will be HUMBLED, and he who HUMBLES HIMSELF will be EXALTED!’” (Luke 18:9-14)

Rick, perhaps you don’t know anyone who received, as I often did, brochures from these sisters inviting me to attend retreats to “worship the goddess”, ” find your inner goddess” etc. They should sever from the Church and become social workers and New Age goddesses on their own account. They may do a lot of good for the poor, along with corrupting their morals but they are not Catholic. And they have NO business speaking for the Church and opposing the bishops and Magisterium. It is misleading to those who think they actually speak with any authority other than their own.

Pesqueira, Jesus tells us in unequivocal Terms : “He who hears you, hears Me and the One Who sent Me. He who does not hear you does not hear Me or the One Who sent Me”.  You call yourself a Catholic Religious, yet you arrogantly discard and trample underfoot the Vows you took when you were Consecrated - OBEDIENCE, POVERTY AND CHASTITY???? You blantantly distort the Teachings of the Catholic Church and disobey the Authority of the Bishops and want to insist you are still in the Catholic Church??? You are disobeying Jesus Christ Himself and the One Who Sent Him. I humbly tell you, Pesqueira, a Catholic Religious YOU ARE NOT.  You are an Apostate. The Holy See, under the Guidance of the Holy Spirit has the Divine Authority to discipline any Catholic Congregation of Religous, Clergy or individual Lay Faithful, who disobey the Authentic Teachings of Christ which this One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church has preserved, protected, teaches and proclaims as ordered by Jesus Christ Himself when He bestowed upon His Apostles, with St. Peter as the Head, the Apostolic Divine Powers to shepherd His Sheep until He comes again. These scandalous LCWR’s should get out of our Holy Church and join the shrinking Anglicans who subscribe to all the sacrilegious changes they would like to see in the Catholic Church. To quote Susan Varenne above, “the LCWR have moved so far from even being Catholic that they themselves are the ultimate scandal and they have been for a very long time. The LCWR themselves know that they are not in step with the Church.”

How about all of the “posters” read the Epistle of Jude.

Today is The feast of Saint Athanasius, bishop and, we can remember,how close the church and many of it’s Bishops came to denying the Divinity of Christ. And yet, through Apostolic authority, at the council of Nicea, God protected the truth of His church, in a basic issue like the Divinity of Christ. Yes, some on LCWR have gotten off track and need to be disciplined and some may choose to leave the safe “Ark of the church”. Still we should remember that God would invite those in error back to His church first, and would only ask those who refuse truth to leave. Still, with all of the heresies some of those who are members of the LCWR are proposing, it is time, to avoid scandal that the true teachings of the church, be again affirmed, and schismatics and heretics sadly be asked to leave if they refuse to repent and to accept the truth lest the whole leaven be corrupted.

Perhaps we fail to see how difficult it is to stick with the truth these days. With the pressure Mr. Chen is taking in China fighting their 1 child policy we forget the pressures we face too. With some of the wealthiest people in the world such as Goeorge Soros, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and others supporting such causes as population control and some of these persons infiltrating our church with groups like “Catholics for Choice”, and with the Obama ADministration offering support to schismatic groups within the church,  we must understand the pressure many face to become Judases. So let us pray many Rosaries that the Mother of God who was most obedient and was sinless may assist all who are open to the truth and to ourselves too that we may remain faithful.

It makes no sense.  To serve God as his bride is basically to NOT serve yourself.  That means: adhere to doctrine, serve others, obey the magisterium.  How can there be confusion?  It’s not at all about yourself, or about feminism.  The nuns of the past did well to serve children in schools and wear their habits and proudly proclaim their servitude to Christ and his church everywhere they went, not only by action, but by sacrifice and by attire.  I find this to be one of the greatest honors attainable.  If you want to “protest” the Church, this is not the place for you.  To be Catholic is to obey the pope, doctrine, magisterium, etc.  This should be obvious.  The problem is that nowadays, both religious and lay people want to serve themselves first, and God 2nd.  This is impossible.  If you wonder why things fall apart around you, selfishness is the answer.