From Cardinal Timothy Dolan’s latest blog post.
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Contrary to what you may have heard, Rome loves the Sisters! When you love someone, you show concern. And, recently, the Vatican expressed some concerns about theLeadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), a group that represents a lot of Sisters.
That expression of concern contained high praise for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, and even higher esteem for all the nuns in America. The concord between the Holy See (which asked for and initiated the Leadership Conference of Women Religious half-a-century ago) is strong enough for both sides to ask tough questions.
But the concern is real: the Holy See loves the Sisters so much they want them as strong, faithful, and influential as possible, and legitimately worries about features threatening their very identity as “daughters of the Church,” to borrow Elizabeth Ann Seton’s favorite description of her sisters.
Some say that Rome is too soft, and should have suppressed the Leadership Conference of Women Religious , because it is heretical; one letter even called them “Unitarians”!
The other extreme claims that the stuffy, oppressive, sexist Vatican is scared of these independent, free-thinking women, and should leave them alone.
But such caricatures hardly help. All that helps is humility in both partners, and a profession of faith that, in the end, it’s not about one side or the other, not about the grievances of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious or the worries of the Vatican, but it’s all about Jesus and His Church.
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Exactly, failing to act to correct somebody is not love – the willing of the good for another. There are many prudential questions relating to when you step in, but not ever stepping in is not love.
5 comments
While this statement of the LCWR is good and very balanced it still does not have the Cardinal address why he invited the current President to the Al Smith Dinner when at the same time speaking out against why his is doing with the HHS mandate I don’t get.
Cardinal Dolan posits a false model of a golden mean between two extremes. One of his supposed extremes is not an extreme in so far as it is simply the truth. That is, their own documents and statements for decades have shown that they are deeply, stubbornly heretical, and they do bear many similarities to unitarians. That is simply a fact. For the good of their souls and the “little ones” they have influenced, they should have been reined in decades ago. Dolan’s analysis of the situation and the lack of a response for the last four decades has nothing in common with the regular practice of the Church for the past nineteen centuries.
It is a good statement, but I hope that saving the sisters from themselves is only half of the reason for intervention. The other half is the huge scandal they cause and continue to cause. As women religious, this is especially destructive to the Church.
(((I know that the Catholic Church is sexist, and I quess there was a time in my life that I cared.)))
(((But such caricatures hardly help. All that helps is humility in both partners, and a profession of faith that, in the end, it’s not about one side or the other, not about the grievances of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious or the worries of the Vatican, but it’s all about Jesus and His Church.)))
Jeff, I sure hope that our Good Sisters and the Church can solve their little mis-understanding and do what GOD wants. Of course we all know that this will take good Christians to send a lot of good thoughts their way cause the last thing we want to do is revive Satanic panic. Let’s remember what “Jesus” said in so many words that only prayers can cure certain problems and/or situations.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2012/08/07/utah-charlatan-attempts-to-revive-satanic-panic/#disqus_thread
Pray! Pray and pray somemore folks!
Peace
Since the time Christ walked the earth, those Saints who walked the earth for over a milinia when confronted with assaults and heresy against the Church didn’t try to tame the heretics and those evil and confused clerics with la tee da love talk, but met them with talk of fire and hell if they didn’t have the courage to get back to the One True Church. I hope and I pray our smiling Cardinal isn’t overwhelmed by his position.