Brethren, Peace and Good to all of you in the Messiah, Jesus.
As soon as the Holy See published its Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR; see the full document here) I knew the Mainstream Media were going to have a field day with it, and that their sympathies would fall right behind the dissenting sisters.
Nevertheless, I will leave further analysis to the media professionals themselves, such as this one from the Get Religion site, which I invite you to read. Here’s an excerpt:
As the media fallout continues from the Vatican’s decision to rein in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious … I have been especially interested in the degree to which journalists are certain that this action was rooted in tensions caused by recent debates over health care, abortion and homosexuality.
The key word that interests me is “recent.”
I say this because, long ago, during my days in Denver, I covered quite a few events related to the work of liberal nuns, events that had to be creating files of complaints in somebody’s Vatican file cabinets. Nuns and feminism? Sure. Nuns and watered down forms of Wicca and neopaganism? Sure. Nuns and abortion rights? Sure.
In one memorable event, the famous duo of Sister Jeannine Gramick and Father Robert Nugent came to town for a New Ways Ministry mini-conference on fighting homophobia in the church. I registered as a reporter and took my tape recorder to the main sessions.
Big idea No. 1: Homophobia is a sin because it believes x, y and z. Big idea No. 2: Pope John Paul II needed to repent — the word “repent” was used — because he was clearly teaching doctrines x, y and z.
Thus, I wrote a story for the Rocky Mountain News stating that the conference leaders had said the pope was a homophobic sinner who needed to repent of teaching x, y and z. I backed this with lots of direct quotes.
The sister and the priest flipped out and told my editor they wanted a correction. They had not, you see, called the pope a “sinner.”
I played my tape for my editor who, in more colorful language, said something like this: That’s nuts. Of course they called the pope a sinner. Why did they say all that in public if they didn’t want to be quoted saying it?
To some degree, this anecdote captures what I think this whole breaking story is about (click here for MZ’s major post on the topic). For several decades now, all kinds of progressive nuns have been standing at podiums saying all kinds of interesting and/or unorthodox things and complaints have been stacking up in file cabinets at the Vatican. The key is that these events received very little attention in the mainstream press.
Please, continue reading here. Read also this one, and while you are at it, this one. Good stuff, all of it.
You all know where I stand on this issue. The smiley nun on the right confirms the necessity of the Holy See’s assessment of the LCWR, and strengthens my support for it.