Pope’s ire aimed at wrong target
Opinion by Joan Vennochi, columnist, The Boston Globe
April 22, 2012
Pope Benedict XVI can’t wait to crack down on “radical feminist” nuns.
But will he ever really crack down on protectors of pedophile priests?
A Vatican-led investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious cites the nuns’ silence on abortion and same-sex marriage.
How bad is that up against the silence of church officials, from parish priests to the Vatican, who ignored and concealed child sex crimes?
By ironic coincidence, news about the Vatican’s effort to rein in the conference – the largest and most influential group of Catholic nuns in the United States – broke the same day the Rev. Bradley M. Schaeffer resigned from the Boston College Board of Trustees after growing public criticism over the role he played in supervising a former Jesuit priest who allegedly molested dozens of children over a span of 40 years.
Bradley M. Schaeffer, SJ
The juxtaposition of the two events exposes a familiar church mindset.
Perceived threats to his authority swiftly grab the pope’s attention.
Accountability for long-ago threats to children is still something to dodge.
The Vatican launched an investigation of the nuns in 2008, concerned by what it views as the group’s increasingly liberal tilt.
An American bishop [Archbishop J. Peter Sartain] is now charged with reeling them in, after the investigation revealed “serious doctrinal problems” relating to “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”
The nuns were also reprimanded for public statements that put them at odds with Catholic bishops during the 2010 debate over health care reform.
This follows Benedict’s recent condemnation of dissident priests.
During a Holy Thursday Mass, the pope publicly rebuked a group of Austrian priests who challenged the church on priestly celibacy and the ban on female priests; disobedience would not be tolerated, he said.
"Holy Thursday" by William Blake
What he does tolerate is a worldwide network of priests who enabled sexual abusers.
Unlike dissidents, they are not called out in St. Peter’s Square and no one is put in charge of reeling them in.
They are free, like Schaeffer, to end up on the boards of prominent Jesuit institutions — until public pressure forces them out.
As reported by the Globe’s Michael Rezendes, Schaeffer was the leader of the Jesuits in the Chicago area when an anguished father came to him in 1993 with concerns about an inappropriate relationship between Donald J. McGuire, then a Jesuit retreat leader, and the man’s young son.
Marquette University President At Center Of Ethical Controversy
Schaeffer neither investigated the complaint nor contacted police. Instead, he sent McGuire for treatment of a sexual disorder.
Afterwards, he acknowledged he knew the treatment did not cure McGuire.
Today, McGuire is serving 25 years in federal prison on child sex-abuse charges, while the Jesuits face a lawsuit for their failure to protect one of McGuire’s alleged victims.
Meanwhile, Schaeffer landed on the BC Board of Trustees and became the head of a BC-affiliated study center for future Jesuit priests.
Bradley Schaeffer, SJ, rector of the Blessed Peter Faber Community; B.C. president William Leahy, SJ; Cardinal Seàn Patrick O'Malley, OFM Cap, Archbishop of Boston; Steven Dillard, SJ, secretary for formation for the US Assistancy; Thomas Smolich, SJ, president of the Jesuit Conference
When first pressed by the Globe, Schaeffer declined to answer questions about his role in the McGuire matter.
Instead, he issued a statement through the Jesuits’ Chicago Province, saying he was sorry that his actions had not been enough to stop McGuire “from engaging in these horrific crimes.”
Officials at BC, meanwhile, said they planned to take no action against Schaeffer. They said the university had no knowledge of the McGuire case or of Schaeffer’s role in it when he was elected to the board in 2004.
That doesn’t wash with Anne Barrett Doyle of Bishopaccountability.org.
“These are the most powerful people in Boston,” she said of the BC trustees. “They knew or should have known that Schaeffer had supervised Father McGuire.”
Schaeffer stepped down after the Boston College independent school newspaper, The Heights, called for his resignation and a group of faculty members met with Boston College President William P. Leahy to make a similar argument.
He continues to serve in the study center and is still a board member at Georgetown University, Loyola University Chicago, and Brebeuf Jesuit, a prep school in Indianapolis.
Benedict has apologized for the clergy sexual-abuse scandal and launched ongoing investigations of widespread allegations.
But he does not jettison all those who broke the church’s sacred covenant with children.
There are too many and the chain of accountability leads directly to him.
It’s much easier to condemn naughty nuns.
http://clericalwhispers.blogspot.ca/2012/04/popes-ire-aimed-at-wrong-target-comment.html
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Source: Catholic News Agency
Vatican describes talks with US sisters as 'open and cordial'
By David Kerr
Sister Pat Farrell, then President of the LCWR, and Executive Director Sister Janet Mock leave the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome on June 12, 2012
Vatican City, Jun 12, 2012 / 11:11 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has described talks with the Leadership Conference of Women Religious as open and cordial.
“The meeting provided the opportunity for the Congregation and the LCWR officers to discuss the issues and concerns raised by the doctrinal assessment in an atmosphere of openness and cordiality,” said a statement issued by the Vatican press office June 12.
In April 2012 the Vatican called for a reform of the body after a four-year audit or “doctrinal assessment,” which concluded there was a “crisis” of belief throughout its ranks.
On June 12, Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell and St. Joseph Sister Janet Mock, who are respectively the president and executive director of the conference, went to the offices of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome and met with officials there for approximately 90 minutes.
Cardinal William J. Levada
Archbishop James Peter Sartain of Seattle
“We are grateful for the opportunity for open dialogue and now we will return to our members to see about next steps, and that is all we have to say,” Sr. Farrell told CNA upon leaving the meeting. They said they will now take the matter to their annual assembly in St. Louis this coming August.
Earlier this month the group, whose leaders represent approximately 80 percent of women religious in the U.S., described the Vatican’s doctrinal assessment as “based on unsubstantiated accusations” and “a flawed process that lacked transparency.”
Cardinal Joseph Aloisius Ratzinger led (1981-2005) the CDF, the modern embodiment of the Roman Inquisition
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) was originally the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition
In their statement today the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith reminded journalists that the religious conference “is constituted by and remains under the supreme direction of the Holy See” according to canon law.
They also explained that the purpose of the doctrinal assessment had been to “assist the LCWR in this important mission by promoting a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ” and also on “the teachings of the Church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the Magisterium.”
The assessment had found serious theological and doctrinal errors in presentations at the LCWR’s annual assemblies in recent years, with many showing “scant regard for the role of the Magisterium.”
Concern has also been expressed at the conference’s choice of new-age author Barbara Marx Hubbard as the keynote speaker for the annual assembly this August. A non-Catholic, Hubbard advocates a worldview entitled “conscious evolution.”
Barbara Marx Hubbard is welcomed by LCWR members to their Aug. 7-11, 2012 annual assembly in St. Louis, Mo.
Her talk to the assembly is billed as helping religious communities become “open to the new levels of consciousness, even as that revelation exceeds the boundaries of present day understanding of one’s faith.”
Tags: Vatican, LCWR, Women Religious, CDF
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/vatican-describes-talks-with-us-nuns-as-open-and-cordial/
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Source: Catholic Online
Rome Reiterates Concerns: LCWR Leaders Express Concern Over Call to Reform
By Deacon Keith Fournier
June 14, 2012
the current doctrinal and pastoral situation of LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern
The Holy See has acted pastorally, out of Christian love, and in keeping with its proper role to guard the deposit of faith. The National Catholic Reporter's biased and inaccurate reporting concerning this entire matter has contributed to the secular media's feeding frenzy and thereby contributed to placing the leaders of the Catholic Church in a bad light. That is not responsible Catholic journalism.
VATICAN CITY (Catholic Online) – The much anticipated meeting between two representative leaders of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), LCWR president Sister Pat Farrell, OSF and executive director Sister Janet Mock, CSJ, and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) occurred on Tuesday, June 12, 2012.
The purpose of the meeting was to allow the leaders of this American group an opportunity to discuss the Vatican’s call for their reform and express their concerns. The call from Rome for the much needed reform was set forth with clarity in a Doctrinal Assessment issued by the Congregation after a multi-year visitation and review. An eight page summary was released by the CDF and can be read here. The leadership of the organization did not agree with the outcome – and has been quite vocal about it.
Palace of the Holy Office (of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith), Vatican City
One line included in the statement expresses the heart of the specific findings, “the current doctrinal and pastoral situation of LCWR is grave and a matter of serious concern.” Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain was chosen by the Congregation to oversee the implementation of the much needed reform of this organization of women religious. He was present in Rome at the meeting on Tuesday Jun 12, 2012, along with the Prefect of the Congregation, Cardinal William Levada.
Unfortunately, some even in the Catholic Media, such as the National Catholic Reporter, have presented this very serious matter as some sort of battle between a “dated” Rome and some purportedly “liberated” sisters. That newspaper fostered dissent, fomented a party spirit and pushed its own dissenting agenda with irresponsibility.
The National Catholic Reporter’s biased and inaccurate reporting concerning this entire matter has contributed to the secular Media’s feeding frenzy and thereby contributed to placing the leaders of the Catholic Church in a bad light. That is not responsible Catholic journalism.
The truth concerning the entire matter was well expressed by the good Bishop Blair of Toledo in an article he wrote for his Diocesan newspaper entitled “Reality Check, the LCWR, CDF and the Doctrinal Assessment”. It should be read by anyone seeking to know what really happened and what is at stake here. [Video version]
Leonard P. Blair, Bishop of Toledo, Ohio
Without this much needed correction and reform, the issues raised by the Congregation will continue to confuse the faithful, harm the members of the LCWR and impede the much needed witness to the truth offered by the Catholic Church in this age of moral relativism. The Holy See has acted pastorally, out of Christian love, and in keeping with its proper role to guard the deposit of faith.
The official Vatican statement on the meeting was short and blunt: “Today the Superiors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith met with the President and Executive Director of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in the United States of America. Most Rev. Peter J. Sartain, Archbishop of Seattle and the Holy See’s Delegate for the doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR, also participated in the meeting.”
J. Peter Sartain installed as Archbishop of Seattle on Dec. 1, 2010 at Saint James Cathedral
“According to Canon Law, a Conference of Major Superiors such as the LCWR is constituted by and remains under the supreme direction of the Holy See in order to promote common efforts among the individual member Institutes and cooperation with the Holy See and the local Conference of Bishops (Cf. Code of Canon Law, cann. 708-709).”
“The purpose of the doctrinal Assessment is to assist the LCWR in this important mission by promoting a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the Magisterium.”
The two representatives of the LCWR issued this statement: “On June 12, LCWR president Sister Pat Farrell, OSF and executive director Sister Janet Mock, CSJ, met with Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and Archbishop Peter Sartain.
William Levada, Archbishop of Portland, Oregon (1986-1995), Archbishop of San Francisco (1995-2005)
“The meeting had been requested by the LCWR to address what the conference considered deficiencies in the process and the results of the doctrinal assessment of the organization released by the CDF in April.
“It was an open meeting and we were able to directly express our concerns to Cardinal Levada and Archbishop Sartain,” said Sister Pat Farrell.
“Sister Pat and Sister Janet will now return to the United States to discuss the meeting later this week with the LCWR board. As previously stated, the conference will gather its members in regional meetings and in its August assembly to determine its course of action in response to the CDF assessment.”
Archbishop J. Peter Sartain celebrates Mass at the Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls in Rome, 2012
We ask our readers around the globe to pray that this organization rise to the moment with humility and allow the needed reform to bear the good fruit intended – for the sake of their members, the Church and the world into which she is sent. The meeting on Tuesday was described as “open and cordial”. Hopefully it will lead to authentic reform.
The proper course of action for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is fidelity to the magisterium of the Catholic Church. They said “yes” to the Lord when they professed their vows. He continues His redemptive mission through the Church of which they are members and to which they owe their loving response of service.
http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=46613
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Source: The Catholic Sun
LCWR reform is not criticism of religious orders, archbishop says
Catholic News Service | June 14, 2012
A Vatican-ordered reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is not directed at women's religious orders or at any individual sisters, nor is it a statement on the general quality of religious life today, said Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, who is overseeing the controversial measure. Archbishop Sartain is pictured celebrating Mass in 2011 in Rome. (CNS photo/Paul Haring)
VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A Vatican-ordered reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is not directed at women’s religious orders or at any individual sisters, nor is it a statement on the general quality of religious life today, said the American archbishop overseeing the controversial measure.
“The impression is given that the Holy Father or anybody involved is saying something negative about religious women in the United States, which is not the case,” said Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle. “This particular task is not about making comments on any particular religious order or religious women in general.”
The archbishop spoke to Catholic News Service June 14 in Rome, two days after meeting with U.S. Cardinal William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine for the Faith, and the LCWR’s top two officials, Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell, president, and St. Joseph Sister Janet Mock, executive director. None of the parties has revealed details of what they discussed.
Cardinal William J. Levada, Prefect (2005-2012) of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
In April, the doctrinal congregation appointed Archbishop Sartain to provide “review, guidance and approval, where necessary, of the work” of the LCWR, a Maryland-based umbrella group that claims about 1,500 leaders of U.S. women’s communities as members, representing about 80 percent of the country’s 57,000 women religious. His tenure in that role is to last “up to five years.”
The appointment came the same day the congregation released an eight-page “doctrinal assessment” of the LCWR, citing “serious doctrinal problems which affect many in consecrated life,” and announced a reform of the organization to ensure its fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas including abortion, euthanasia, women’s ordination and homosexuality.
On June 1, the LCWR’s national board criticized the Vatican’s action as “based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency,” saying it had “caused scandal and pain throughout the church community and created greater polarization.” The reform has also been the target of Internet-based protests and of generally unfavorable commentary in the press.
LCWR members gather to pray for the preservation of wetlands
“The task that’s been given to me and my brother bishops and others who will eventually help us is specifically about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, that organization precisely,” he said, “because it has great importance for the relationships among the member religious communities and between those specific religious communities, the Holy See and the bishops’ conference of the United States.”
The archbishop dismissed a question as to whether the reform of the LCWR might be considered part of the larger process of clarifying the church’s understanding of religious life in the light of modernizing reforms that followed the Second Vatican Council.
“This is specifically about the LCWR,” he said.
Dominican Sister Mary Hughes, past president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, left, joins Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell, outgoing LCWR president, and Franciscan Sister Florence Deacon, president-elect, as supporters offer a blessing at a rally. Laypeople and religious held the rally during LCWR’s 2012 assembly in St. Louis.
Archbishop Sartain defended the Vatican’s emphasis on the conference’s approach to doctrine, saying that a proper appreciation of church teaching is vital even for communities focused on practical service.
“For the Christian life, we’re always trying to delve more deeply into the truth who is Christ, into the mystery of Christ,” he said. “Sound doctrine … helps us to understand that truth and then to delve into it more deeply in prayer, and to live it more fully in our life every day.”
The archbishop said that the need for sound doctrine “receives a particular focus for priests and religious,” because they have a “vocation in the church, and so therefore their witness, their teaching and their own life of prayer, all those things should be centered in what the church believes and then also be a reflection of what the church believes.”
Such a focus on sound doctrine applies to all clergy and religious, he said, “whether they are directly involved in catechetical work, in preaching or teaching, or whether they’re involved in hospital work or whatever it might be.”
— By Francis X. Rocca, Catholic News Service
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Source: CathNewsUSA / The Boston Globe
The LCWR, CDF and the Doctrinal Assessment
American nuns say questions not defiance
Leader decries Vatican’s view of US group By Rachel Zoll | Associated Press
June 19, 2012 | 96 comments
Sister Pat Farrell (right), president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and Sister Janet Mock, the executive director, met with Vatican officials on June 12.
Sister Pat Farrell, president of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, said Monday that Catholics should be able to search for answers about faith without fear.
“I don’t think this is a healthy environment for the church,’’ Farrell said in a phone interview. “We can use this event to help move things in that direction – where it’s possible to pose questions that will not be seen as defiance or opposition.’’
Pat Farrell, OSF, President () of LCWR, and Janet Mock, CSJ, Executive Director of LCWR
Farrell’s remarks are her first since she met last week in Rome with the Vatican orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which concluded in April that the group had strayed broadly from church teaching.
The Vatican has appointed three American bishops to conduct a full-scale overhaul of the organization, sparking protests globally in support of the sisters.
Members of the LCWR on a march in Louisiana
In the Rome meeting, Farrell said she did not ask Vatican officials to drop their demand for reform. “I think we could clearly see in the tenor of the conversation that that was not an option,’’ she said.
She characterized the meeting as frank and open but difficult, and said she did not leave feeling more hopeful about what is ahead.
The Vatican has directed the bishops to oversee rewriting the statutes of the Leadership Conference, reviewing its plans and programs including approving speakers, and ensuring the group properly follows Catholic prayer and ritual.
“I don’t yet feel that we’re any further than just the initial conversation,’’ Farrell said.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, based in Silver Spring, Md., represents about 80 percent of the 57,000 nuns in the United States.
After an investigation starting around 2008, the Vatican office concluded that the nuns’ group had failed to emphasize core teaching on abortion, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes’’ that undermine Catholic teaching on the all-male priesthood, marriage, and homosexuality.
The Leadership Conference has called the claims unsubstantiated and the investigation flawed. Farrell said the conference “cooperated to the best of our ability’’ with the doctrinal assessment, but said the group was not shown the final report before it was sent to the Vatican.
Vatican officials and US bishops have stressed that the Vatican orthodoxy office report targeted the leadership of the nuns’ group, not individual orders of religious women. But in a statement Monday, the board of the Leadership Conference said the Vatican crackdown had been felt by “the vast majority of Catholic sisters’’ and lay Catholics globally.
At a meeting last week of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops in Atlanta, protesters presented church leaders with petitions signed by more than 57,000 people condemning the Vatican inquiry.
Farrell said the nuns’ group would decide its next steps in regional meetings that will culminate in a national assembly in August.
In a separate development Monday, the Vatican’s number two official blamed the media for fueling the scandal over leaked Vatican documents.
Tarcisio Bertone, S.D.B., Cardinal Secretary of State and Camerlengo
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state, told an Italian Catholic weekly that journalists reporting on the leaks scandal are “pretending to be Dan Brown ... inventing stories and replaying legends.’’ Brown wrote The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons the best-selling fictional accounts of power struggles and scandals inside the Catholic Church.
The Vatican has been on the defensive ever since sensitive documents alleging corruption and exposing power struggles began appearing in the Italian media in January. A recent book containing dozens of documents from Pope Benedict XVI’s own desk has compounded what many see as a plot to undermine Bertone’s authority.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2012/06/18/american-nuns-leader-says-catholics-should-able-ask-questions-without-fear/fvTRaW4uqkQxAyifqKso8L/story.html
Transfer of leadership
2010 LCWR Retreat
2011 LCWR Retreat
Florence Deacon, President of LCWR, Director of the Sisters of St. Francis (St. Francis, Wisconsin)
Published on Apr 19, 2012 – A new Vatican report criticizes the largest group of U.S. Catholic nuns – the Leadership Conference of Women Religious – for promoting "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith." PBS NewsHour's Judy Woodruff discusses the charge with Christendom College's Donna Bethell and Fordham University's Jeannine Hill Fletcher.
Boston Catholic Child Sex Abuse, TV Discussion of Settlement Offer (Sept. 9, 2003)
In September 2003, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston makes an $85 million settlement offer to a group of 542 clergy abuse victims. Most of the funds would come from church insurance policies, with some additional monies coming from sale of church property. Victims' attorneys would get about 30%. Beyond payment, the settlement will also include psychological counseling for victims. This video is a taken from the New England Cable News program NewsNight, with guests Phil Saviano, victim/advocate and New England SNAP coordinator; Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org; and Philip Moran, legal counsel for the Catholic Alliance.
"There Is a War" – Leonard Cohen
"Story of Isaac" – Leonard Cohen
"Sisters of Mercy" – Leonard Cohen
"Third Secret" – Legendary Pink Dots
EWTN Theology Roundtable - Doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR
Cardinal Levada: 'We Should Hold Ourselves to a Higher Standard'
Air date: April 27, 2010 – Cardinal William Levada, the head of the office that handles sex abuse claims, speaks to PBS NewsHour's Margaret Warner in his first television interview about the scandal rocking the Catholic Church.
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