[Vision2020] Nuns' Leader Decries Church Environment of Fear

[Art Deco]

Nuns' Leader Decries Church Environment of Fear

By RACHEL ZOLL AP Religion Writer
NEW YORK June 18, 2012 (AP)

 The leader of the group representing most American nuns challenged the
Vatican's reasons for disciplining her organization, insisting that raising
questions about church doctrine should not be seen as rebellion.

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."

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.

In the Rome meeting, Farrell said she did not ask Vatican officials in 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 the
talk feeling any more hopeful about what's ahead.

The Vatican has directed the three American 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 U.S. nuns.

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 Leadership 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 U.S. bishops have stressed that its report targeted
the leadership organization, 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 U.S. 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.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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