It is clear that Pope Francis does not want to go back 60 years, to a time before the Council. He does not want to restore practices from a bygone era, or claim continuity with them. Significantly, he has named that era as one which has passed away.
Read moreTag: Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)
Guessing How Pope Francis Might Treat the U.S. Sisters
“The most we can hope for is that the Italian method is followed where it quietly slips to the background and life goes on,” Sister Simone Campbell said.
Read moreWhy We Are All Nuns: Catholic Pride; Universal Call to Holiness
by Jack Rakosky
Why are people interested in nuns? Why are we “all nuns”?
Systems Thinking, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the LCWR
Only one document was specifically condemned in the recent doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Council of Women Religious: a training manual called the Systems Thinking Handbook. Why? What was wrong with it?
Read moreVatican Declares “Year of Assault”
By Fr. John C. Sivalon, M.M.
“While said to be a time of renewal, the ‘Year of Faith’ is really dedicated to the idolatry of doctrine, power and hierarchy. The sisters in their communal service to the Church and world, who not only take a vow of poverty but actually live that vow without privilege, status or accumulation of wealth are a vivid and prophetic contrast to the inauthenticity of the call to retrenchment masquerading as renewal.”
Thank You, Sisters
“The Vatican document, no matter what you think of it, has saddened and demoralized many Catholic women, many generous Catholic sisters who have given their lives to the Church. So I think it’s a good time for us to say to them two words: Thank you.”
From a video by by Fr. Jim Martin, SJ
Cardinal Dolan on the Vatican to the Sisters
The Vatican says to the sisters, “We appreciate the dialogue, we want to keep it going. But let’s do it as friends, in a very reasoned dialogue. The sisters seem to appreciate the friendship and the invitation to dialogue.” – Cardinal Dolan
Read moreThe Preaching of the Sisters
“When you look around,” Sister Hiltrudis told the youth, “you are seeing the preaching that my sisters and I do. Your pastor preaches in his way, and we preach in ours.”
Read moreWhat Sisters Meant to Me
Even I was taken aback when gratitude was seen as out of bounds, when praise was mistaken for dissent, and when an occasion to support elderly sisters was used as an opportunity to mock women who had given their lives to God.
To sum up then: #Thank you. – James Martin, SJ
A Prayerful Reflection and Word of Gratitude for Our Roman Catholic Sisters in the US
“Catholic sisters consistently manifest the greatest sign and best hope of the already of God’s reign in Jesus Christ breaking into this world that I have ever known.” – Weldon Nisly, Mennonite Pastor and Benedictine Oblate
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