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NCR Editors: Are you telling me that all episodes of sexual abuse were by priests and that these sisters are completely and totally innocent? Why don't you investigate the cover-ups by many LCWR orders, who will not reveal personnel records and pay off information.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the secret purpose of the investigation were to assess and confirm the Vatican's secret suspicion that the priestly ordination of women could be the saving element in the restoration and rehabilitation of the priesthood?

Dream on.

NCR staff -

I value you so much.

And then you stumble in self-righteousness when you say, "It makes little sense to mature Christians today that...."

Whether I agree with the assessment that you attribute to "mature Christians" does not matter. I read your statement ("It makes little sense to mature Christians today that...") as cover for "those who agree with us are "mature Christians" and those who do not agree with us are *not* "mature Christians".

And then I wonder if I should seek news and analysis from any media source that has taken upon itself to define what "mature Christianity" looks like and thinks in the 21st century.

You may have just lost me at "It makes little sense to mature Christians today...", NCR.

Have some respect, please, even for the people with whom you disagree. I know your nuns taught you that back in parochial school.

Sincerely,

A liberal, progressive, 46 year old, women's college-educated,
graduate-educated, feminist professional, liberation theology fan, discerner to American (LCWR) Women's Religious life, cradle Catholic

Jean

Your editorial piece would have been sufficiently clear even without the "context". Placing the investigation/visitation within the framework of the Church authority and behaviors however, not only made their (our) treatment of women religious obvious in its incompetence, injustice and abuse of authority it rendered it ridiculously incongruous.

I added a bracketed "our" in attempting to acknowledge that we the people of church have tolerated, continued to support, cow-towed to, and therefore sustain a monolithic incongruity that would challenge the very fundamentals of Darwinism. We therefore are complicit in this consequent and indeed predictable travesty, this humiliation of women religious and of the dilemna to which they are subjected.

Imagine, a fantasy or science fiction scenario where the minds and souls of millions are ruled by, by and largely, sexless old men in flowery and flowing dresses, caped with exotic furs, elaborate decorations flowing from their shoulders. They demand total obedience and subservience setting superrogatary standards for their minions while tolerating and obscuring bestial behavior of their clandestine own. They are accountable to none yet demand to direct the behaviour of their subjects within every facet of their private and public lives. Believable...? (One might surmise that the revolution that birthed the USA was instigated by less)

One could go on to the treatment of women as socially and theologically inferior to be excluded from even the affairs that affect them and what that further implies but I might add one more note.

If the President of the United States were to be castigated by representatives of, say, Russia, or Great Britain or any foreign power, the way many of the representatives of the Vatican have vilified your president and have attempted to incite all measure of protest - and on your soil - there would be a new "cold war". I am sure that there are telephone calls and informal communications between the majority leadership and the White House which mitigate and, yes, the President knows that the majority of Catholics have more sense. What "out" is available to the women religious? Who is speaking for them? Thankfully, at least, NCR. One poster took serious offence at the editorial phrase "mature Christians". Maturity implies a certain degree of common sense balanced appropriately with intelligent perception and reflection. Our toleration of such anachronistic and even deviant management of our religion suggests to me that the "mature Christians" are either out of, "dis-membered" from, or other than Roman Catholic.

The pope has a distorted, disordered idea of Christianity. He fails to recognize that women are images of God, he holds the view of ancient church fathers that women are worthless, evil, subhuman creatures who are only good for breeding more boys and men, and cleaning. He completely gets the faith and example of Jesus wrong.

Seriously, this is the real reason for the horrors in the church that have gone on for thirty or more years with pope BXVI, then under the name Joseph Ratzinger, as prefect of Congregation of Faith and Doctrine, the silencer of theologians. The pope abuses children and women because of his demeaning attitude to women and children, and his perception only men, and really only male clergy of the church, matter. How else can one explain his tolerance of children, seminarians, youths, and women being abused by Roman Catholic clergy under his and his co-conspirator, JPII watch for the last more than thirty years. Silence the scandal, cover-up, continue to allow clergy to abuse with new victims was the popes's mantra. The clergy are only abusing powerless "lesser" males and "lesser" "creatures" was the popes's attitude.

I agree that this Investigation, Visitation of the nuns is very wrong. It is the bishops who ought to be investigated, and the ones who were complicit in the sex scandal ought to be brought to justice.

A great solution to priest shortage would be to ordain women. A collosal waste of talent is going on ignoring and dismissing women from ordination, and most Catholic laity know it.

Stopping married men too from priesthood is ludicrous too as Jesus picked married St. Peter as disciple! Again, most Catholic laity realize celibacy is not mandatory or suitable for the priesthood and having only the "celibate" male priests has resulted in too much problems for the church.

Distorted, disordered idea of the faith is what PBXVI has, and JPII before him, by denying women priests vocation in the Roman Catholic church.

You must think that we are all stupid to write such an editorial. There is very little "secret" about any of this. There is enough information on the WEB and in each city and parish to understand this. All of this whining is a distraction on the part of many who seek to frame it as a woman's issue. There are real issues of faith here. AS a woman and a Catholic who was gratefully educated in Catholic schools who ended up getting a Ph.D. - I am doubly insulted.

Two quick comments...

Your characterization of the visitation as an "inquisition" tells the reader really all they need to know about your perspective and interest, or should I say lack of interest in the visitation process.

For decades, the religious of this country have become more and more liberal and have drifted further and further away from what it means to be a religious (ie, display the charisms of the order) and really, what it means to be a Catholic altogether.

I am guessing that this is the process of assessing just how bad things really are and then plotting a course towards correction.

Regarding the male nature of the church, since I don't see that changing any time soon, I recommend he Episcopal church as a good alternative. It has never been a democratic process and probably never will be, so why fight? Leave!

Let us help the elderly religious find peace

The human race will probably never harness sexual energies for a flawless participation in God's plans for us. with great awareness, we must continue to come to terms with ourselves sexually.

At the same time, we have an 80 year old pope bullying 80 year old women who are in many cases under medical care and beyond comment. Both men and women brought the church through a difficult and necessary era of change in history.

Structures are dying, people including this pope and the nuns are at the end of life, but the church will live on because of the frail as well as courageous human efforts of all of the church's "grandparents." They were and still are our theologians and educators and pastoral ministers.

I staunchly disagree with many of our grandparents everyday of the week. This present crisis ironically makes me realize that they gave me a church to disagree with, and taught me prayers that bring me to my knees quite often in the process.

People say celebrate the nuns, not investigate them. I say let's celebrate the human contributions of our grandparents, including an onrey 80 year old man who wants to know that his life mattered, too.

Frances Kissling of Catholics for Choice writes in Salon.com. “One sister I know is a clinic escort at her local reproductive health clinic; others are active in gay and lesbian ministries and one, close to 90, has been a leader in the movement for sex worker rights.” To NCR, are these women (sisters) faithful to the teachings of the Church? Or are these women the ones you praise "for working in places where on one else is willing to go?" The only thing the Vatican can be faulted for is not doing the visitation much earlier. I am afraid the horse is already out of the barn and the ladies of LCWR have already spread their errors.

There should just be one model of church in the Catholic Church. You can debate the model but it needs to be consistent throughout the Church. I think the problem with the liberal orders is that they neither serve the Church nor work within her one model. So what is the point of these nuns anyway?

There is debate on this site about the Cincinati nun who rejects the infallible teaching of the Church on priestesses. How much else does she reject? This is not clear but from her resume, one has to wonder what her apostolate in the Catholic Church really is. A doctorate on feminist theolgy which is just garbage. How does that training help her in the Church? The radical egalitarianism of feminist theology is just as wrongheaded as liberation theology.

The Vatican cracked down on liberation theology (mostly male malfeasance), now it is turning to feminist theology. That's all there is to this. The nuns in the Catholic Church should be 100% Catholic and true to their vows. No one dusputes their poverty & chastity & good works but their vow of obedience & their orthodoxy leaves something to be desired. The liberal nuns seem to feel they can defy the Pope even. There has been a disgraceful history of this, starting with Sr Theresa Kane's disrespect to JPII. Time to pay the piper now sister dearests!

Yes, We do still tolerate "an exclusively male monarchy that operates by its own rules, (and) believes itself ccountable to virtually no one" because that is what Christ set up rather than the feminist, pseudo-democratic, cabal that you would prefer. We in the Catholic Church take our cue from Christ alone, not from every passing fad that happens to sweep through society. This will continue until the end of time whether you like it or not - so get used to it or ship out.

After forty years as a Roman Catholic, including twenty years as a priest, I left the Church some years ago because it had deteriorated into mindless orthodoxy, on the one hand, and even-more-mindless victim-thinking, on the other. NCR does no service to the people of God by lionizing communities who understand the past far better than the present, and whose irrelevance to the modern men and women NCR purports to represent is manifest in their decline. The question here is not whether Rome is right to impose an investigation, but whether a model of religious life that is failing can be saved without intervention by someone capable of viewing that model for what it is and determined to save it from itself.

You are right on two counts. Yes, it it shameful to launch costly investigations against the sisters who are not the source of the major evil that has plagued the US Church but whose upright lives have more often than not stood in stark contrast to it. Yes again, it is the men, who for whatever reason, knowingly or unknowingly, aided and abetted criminals in their rampaging abuse of innocent children. Any bishop against whom evidence can be brought of quietly moving known criminals to new postings should be investigated by the proper judicial authorities. One would hope that the Vatican would encourage the latter exercise which is much needed to purify the Church. But you are wrong to imply that this a matter only for US Catholics. What is happening here is just the beginning of a new campaign to return the Church to the 40's style of Catholicism that weak and fearful prelates find so reassuring. Catholics the world over have a stake in this fight.

A number of comments:

First Jean, I could not agree with you more. While I agree with the content of this article, the opening statement of "It makes little sense to mature Christians today that...." is disengenuous at best. It is beneath NCR to insult those who disagree with them. This statement caught my eye immediately and I just groaned. Can't we get away from this!!!

Second - Paulte writes "There is debate on this site about the Cincinati nun who rejects the infallible teaching of the Church on priestesses. How much else does she reject? " The Church has not infallibly taught that women can't be priests. There are only TWO infallibly taught teachings of the Church and they both concern Mary. The church has not taught that everything out of the mouth of the Pope is infallible - it is not.

David Lorenz

Women religious have moved beyond the boundaries of acceptable Catholic theology. They have become the Catholic untouchables where we dare not question their motives or ministries. Anytime any segment of the church is delcared off limits then we have returned to the Dark Ages. The Holy Spirit must purify the entire church and that includes the false religious actions of many sisters who longer beleive what the Catholic Church teaches, including the church's position on women priests, on same sex marriage, on abortion and on salvific mission of Jesus Christ and the Church.

We as the People of God have a right to know if they still beleive in Jesus which one of their own sisters presented at LCWR declaring that some of them do not. Those were not my words but the words of Sr. Laurie Brink, OP, who declared that some women religious no longer embrace what we call Christinaity where they have moved beyond Jesus and the Church. This movement beyond Jesus and the Church demands an investigation. Who does NCR think that we are? stupid.

They have gotten away with their wacko theologies, with their practices of the occult, with their pretending that they accept church teaching without any Roman interference for the past 40 years, and now NCR declares that these untouchables are supposed to be without sin.

Blah, Blah and Blah.

Further, if there has been a definable, ongoing source of scandal to the church in recent years, it is within a hierarchy on several continents that has tolerated abuse of children and the rape of women religious by priests, and has protected the perpetrators of such deeds.

Again, the persistent use of the abuse scandal and the handling of same by the male diocesean hierarchs and religious superiors is both disingenuous and becoming very tiresome to abuse survivors and their advocates.

In the parish of my youth, where the pastor was notorious for abusing adolescent girls sexually, at least two of them went to my 8th-grade teacher for help. Did this Holy Family Sister, an example of the very heart of the LCWR, take a stand, call the police, warn parents, etc.? Did this woman who'd been inviting parents to come and discuss their perceptions of women in religious life with the community of laity as feminism blossomed stand up for these young women in any significant way?

NO! She told them "just try and stay away from him."

It was ten years before the offending priest was arrested; in the ensuing years, he molested at least a half-dozen more girls.

Okay, that is anecdotal, but it certainly demonstrates the sort of myopia which in more recent years has caused the LCWR to behave as though they were not part of the problem with the enabling and perpetration of sexual abuse by priests and religious.

Similarly, survivors of direct sexual and emotional abuse by nuns themselves have found (ask SNAP) an equally impenetrable wall of resistance to social justice and to outreach.

The good sisters (and collectively as the LCWR) just haven't had any time to give to survivors. There are visible and vocal exceptions, but they have been as few and far between as their male counterparts. When survivors have, year after year, been asked to address the LCWR conference, the door has been closed.

Where sisters have served as, for example, chancellors of dioceses or superiors general they have, with few exceptions, toed a "corporate line" just as stubbornly as their male counterparts.

And so the sisters, while they have a certain degree of sympathy for the injustice of the current investigation find in abuse survivors a rather limited degree of support from that constituency.

In light of that, a number of survivors and advocates truly resent the use of their plight, perpetrated in part by religious sisters, as an argument against their current difficulty, no matter how unjust it may be from an otherwise objective point of view.

Abuse survivors ought not to be made the rhetorical "Poster Children" for this particular cause.

If the sisters in this organization don't know why they are being investigated, that's just plain scary!

You don't agree with Church doctrine on many key issues and your keep flapping your mouth about it and you expect everyone else to support your whining and wailing!

Ladies, grow up, it's the 21st century, leave your angry, victim stance behind and move on! Talk about being stuck in a time warp!

Joseph2 : Truth is truth. The pope holds ancient notions of ancient church fathers that women do not image God and can never be priests. I have read all the pope's books.

Truth is truth, JPII and BXI as prefect ignored from 1979 till 2003 all requests to investigate the crimes of pedophilia inflicted on Legion of Christ schoolboys and seminarians by founder, Marciel Maciel Delagodo. The victims wrote directly to the pope. Finally canon lawyers legal submissions on behalf of the victims could no longer be ignored by the Vatican.

Truth is truth. Written directives emanating from the pope were sent to dioceses to silence victims and to move guilty pedophile priests from parish to parish even from country to country. ABC news showed a copy of the written directives from the Vatican on the news and this is written extensively in many books about the church clergy sex scandal too.

You call 'hate speech' anyone who presents what is greviously wrong in the church. You want to ignore the truth, and be complicit in the continuation of abuse of others then. Minimalizing what is wrong, hiding what is wrong is despicable on your part.

I've read Mulieris Dignitatem, OS, The Pope's Letter about men and women, Sister Butler's writing about women priests. They are proof that the pope (and JPII) have either not read the New Testament or do not understand it.
I have also read Benedict XVI's books, including the Jesus one, which I think was his latest one. More proof he does not really read or understand the bible. Hey, this is too important not to face reality here. The popes' lack of theological understanding is wrecking so much of the Catholic church, we have to think about this and face it. He needs our help because he is destroying the church.

1. False that pope claims only males represent God and Jesus. Jesus doesn't agree with that. Jesus in John 4 says the samaria woman represents him to the public of Samaria and harvest souls way better than the males do. She is the Jesus to the public, is apostle to those gentiles, does the role of preacher and Gospel teacher, apostle, a role of a priest and apostle, the Jesus to the people. Clearly represents Jesus, and a woman. Quite a woman, no doubt about it.

2. False that the pope claims there are no female apostles and only twelve males. Ridiculous of the pope not to know about Samaria woman, woman apostle Junia, who is called Foremost and Most Outstanding Among the Apostles by St. Paul, and Mary Magdalene is an apostle, and Susanna, Joanna, Mary Bethany, Salome and other women. Seven women apostles are named in the bible. Twelve men are named too, and the list of men varies from Synoptic Gospel to gospel, check it out. Twelve tribes of Isreal, the number twelve is used to help convince Jesus's fellow Jews.

3. Both sexes can be parents, it takes two to tango, so the nonsense that women can be moms and not priests is silly. Men can be dads, a parent. Because a man is also a sexual person that must follow he can not be a priest too. Yep, whether a woman remains celibate virgin, because she has a mom potential she can never be a priest. So it follows, because a man even if he remains a celibate virgin has a dad potential, he can never be a priest. A man has sperm and a woman has an egg. This reasoning of potential parenthood thus signifies no man or woman can ever be ordained. Now that is silly.

See how this sex argument does not hold up to reasonable scrutiny. No reason not to ordain women.

4. Jesus says God is Spirit, not man. Spirit. So the gender of person does not prohibit women from being ordained.

5. Jesus had women anoint his head and his feet, men did not anoint him. When Mary Bethany anointed him, no one protested. Check it out. Women are like a bishop to Jesus. Women are as accepted as men are to Jesus.

6. Jesus makes women seminary theology students, no male or female in Christ, no limits on women. He teaches Mary Bethany and Samaria woman. So much for no women in the seminary training to be priest. Jesus did train women to do role of priest, apostle.

7. Jesus never dismissed, excluded or silenced women. Paul said that, not Jesus. Jesus praised women publically preaching, apostolizing. Check out John 4. Check out when Canaanite mom argues with Jesus (how great is your faith....not be silent in public.)

Those documents are not of the teachings and way of Jesus. They do not hold up to any scrutiny. Pontifical biblical study also proved there is no biblical reason not to ordain women. There is lot of proof that women should be ordained. The documents do not support excluding women from being priests at all.

In addition, God in the image of women, and of mother too? Not just male image of God? Yep.

In Old Testament and in the New Testament. Hey, Jesus refers to himself as Mother Hen gathering us chicks under her wing, as Bakerwoman making the Bread of Life, adding the leaven. Being the patient, Widow ceaselessly searching for the lost coin. Can not get more feminine images of God than that, and told by Jesus in the NT too.

Jesus says he is the image of the child, the powerless, the poor, the marginalized, the other. That is women too. The servant of God and of us. Not "man". Servant of God and us.

Genesis says God made man and woman in God's image and it is good, be fruitful and multiply. Hey, both sexes image God. So the popes' claiming only men do have got in wrong both Old and New Testament wise. Cheers, from Bryan.

Jesus giving the keys to Peter does not lock out the women.

This "investigation" is long overdue. The only thing that ironically resonates in this biased article is the section that says that some of these nuns can be found "...among people where you will often find no one else willing to go". Indeed. How about at abortion mills, not to pray or denounce abortion, but to actually escort women inside to have their baby killed. LifeSiteNews reports that a nun in Illinois has been doing just that for years and she is a coordinator of the National Coalition of American Nuns, a group that supports abortion, contraception and same sex "marriage".
In addition they declare the Catholic Church "immoral" for opposing such agenda. So much for "women who have remained faithful to the Church's deepest mission".
To those people who point their finger to the priests' scandal--does one evil justify another? The Vatican is entirely justified in making sure that all people in the religious life (priests and brothers had their own "investigation") are in unison with the Catholic Church. If you don't like what the Catholic Church teaches (it's really funny, by the way, to read that the Holy Father has a "disordered idea of Christianity"!!) find another Church.

From its beginning, throughout its history until the present time, the hierarchical Roman Catholic Church has been a "church of distrust." The imposed hierarchical "visitation" on women religious is fatally flawed by this fundamental and persisting problem.

The issue is first and foremost the elemental distrust that roots in the Garden of Eden myth. The Story is too literally rooted in male-electionist connotations that are fictions-made-dogma. My sense is that until this fatal flaw is recognized and all aspects of mutual male/ female distrust are removed, the conversion of the church to a trusting and trustful community cannot happen.

Words matter. A fundamental bar to trust is the hierachical rhetoric of idolatry and male self-electionism; distrust persists because the hierarchy still believes in male elitist electionism. To understand what I'm trying to say please check out the posting below. Let's pray that our church may yet become a Church of Trust — better yet let us personally become trustful and trusting persons.

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474977878766