DOCTRINAL INVESTIGATION OF U. S. NUNS

 

above picture is the Sinsinawa Dominican Retreat Center and Motherhouse, Sinsinawa, WI.

Recently, Cardinal Levada announced that there would be a doctrinal investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).  It will be headed by Bishop Blair of Toledo.   There was concern voiced because of many of the annual addresses given to the conference at their meetings seemed not quite orthodox.  Lest you think this is a witch hunt, take a peek at what Sr. Laurie Brink, a Sinsinawa Dominican said at the 2007 Annual Address to the LCWR:

 

The dynamic option for Religious Life, which I am calling, Sojourning, is much more difficult to discuss, since it involves moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus. A sojourning congregation is no longer ecclesiastical. It has grown beyond the bounds of institutional religion. Its search for the Holy may have begun rooted in Jesus as the Christ, but deep reflection, study and prayer have opened it up to the spirit of the Holy in all of creation. Religious titles, institutional limitations, ecclesiastical authorities no longer fit this congregation, which in most respects is Post-Christian.

When religious communities embraced the spirit of renewal in the 1970s, they took seriously that the world was no longer the enemy, that a sense of ecumenism required encountering the holy “other,” and that the God of Jesus might well be the God of Moses and the God of Mohammed. The works of Thomas Merton encouraged an exploration of the nexus between Eastern and Western religious practices. The emergence of the women’s movement with is concomitant critique of religion invited women everywhere to use a hermeneutical lens of suspicion when reading the androcentric Scriptures and the texts of the Tradition. With a new lens, women also began to see the divine within nature, the value and importance of the cosmos, and that the emerging new cosmology encouraged their spirituality and fed their souls.

As one sister described it, “I was rooted in the story of Jesus, and it remains at my core, but I’ve also moved beyond Jesus.”

The Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative for these women. They still hold up and reverence the values of the Gospel, but they also recognize that these same values are not solely the property of Christianity. Buddhism, Native American spirituality, Judaism, Islam and others hold similar tenets for right behavior within the community, right relationship with the earth and right relationship with the Divine. With these insights come a shattering or freeing realization—depending on where you stand. Jesus is not the only son of God. Salvation is not limited to Christians. Wisdom is found in the traditions of the Church as well as beyond it.

Sojourners have left the religious home of their fathers and mothers and are traveling in a foreign land, mapping their way as they go. They are courageous women among us. And very well may provide a glimpse into the new thing that God is bringing about in our midst. Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God? A movement the ecclesiastical system would not recognize. A wholly new way of being holy that is integrative, non-dominating, and inclusive. But a whole new way that is also not Catholic Religious Life. The Benedictine Women of Madison are the most current example I can name. Their commitment to ecumenism lead them beyond the exclusivity of the Catholic Church into a new inclusivity, where all manner of seeking God is welcomed. They are certainly religious women, but they are no longer women religious as it is defined by the Roman Catholic Church. They choose as a congregation to step outside the Church in order to step into a greater sense of holiness. Theirs was a choice of integrity, insight and courage.

Like Hagar wandering the wilderness with neither guide nor Israel’s God, the congregations that choose the way of the sojourner may leave the land of religious familiarity, but they will also become a great nation, for women and men are hungering for their leadership, insights and inspiration."  (End of Sr. Laurie's comments)

So there you have it.  Any questions why the Vatican needs to investigate?  It's really sad.  I was taught by Sinsinawa Dominicans--many good scholars and nuns--but they truly have declined.  No vocations, and even though they are working hard to promote the cause of Venerable Samuel Mazzuchelli, O.P. as a saint, they still construct labyrinths at their retreat center and embrace a rather radical agenda.  They were great once.  Other communities, like the Nashville Dominicans are doing fantastic, but Sinsinawa, nestled in the hills of southwest Wisconsin has come upon hard times.  May the investigation go well, and help religious orders like the Sinsinawa Dominicans to renew and re-establish their great tradition.

 

Comments

[Michael Wirth]

Sorrow is the first emotion I felt on reading this. Then anger as I thought about all the others who are infected by this New Age paganism.

How fitting the word's of Jesus from the Office of Readings for today:

""Write to the angel of the church in Thyatira and say, “Here is the message of the Son of God who has eyes like a burning flame and feet like burnished bronze: I know all about you and how charitable you are; I know your faith and devotion and how much you put up with, and I know how you are still making progress. Nevertheless, I have a complaint to make: you are encouraging the woman Jezebel who claims to be a prophetess, and by her teaching she is luring my servants away to commit the adultery of eating food which has been sacrificed to idols. I have given her time to reform but she is not willing to change her adulterous life. Now I am consigning her to bed, and all her partners in adultery to troubles that will test them severely, unless they repent of their practices; and I will see that her children die, so that all the churches realise that it is I who search heart and loins and give each one of you what your behaviour deserves.
“But on the rest of you in Thyatira, all of you who have not accepted this teaching or learnt the secrets of Satan, as they are called, I am not laying any special duty; but hold firmly on to what you already have until I come.”"

I used to wonder how people could fall away from the Lord and end up like this - and then I lived long enough to do it myself.

I have to share a quote from the Cure' of Ars that speaks to all this:

"The more we postpone getting out of sin and turning to God, the greater the danger we run of dying with our sins on us, for the simple reason that bad habits become more and more difficult to shed. Every time we despise a grace, our Lord is going further away from us, and we are growing weaker, and the devil gets more control of us. So my concusion is that the longer we remain in sin, the greater the risk we run of never being converted"

What a profound difference between his simple words of exhortation and Sr. Brink's haunting question:

"Who’s to say that the movement beyond Christ is not, in reality, a movement into the very heart of God?"

Who indeed?

****Great comment, Mike. I especially like the quote from the Cure of Ars.

[Andy Coan]

Maybe not a witch-hunt, but it sounds like they may well find a few. It's a sad state when anyone can espouse this kind of "doctrine" and still feel they can call themselves 'Dominican.' I pray Christ would gather them back into his Church.

****I think for some of these congregations of women religious--they will need to simply die a natural death. Other groups of women religious are doing very well, but they wear habits, have an orthodox outlook, and live in community. It's a tough time we live in, but look for a new spring--there are signs it is happening.

[JP]

We have two orders of Sisters where I live. One of the local priests once said to me that the best thing that could happen is for the last of the ladies to die...so far have the orders wandered from their mandate. It is a sad commentary.

One order runs a retreat house that no longer bears any Christian symbolism. Their list of talks throughout the year are seldom other than New Age nonsense.

They will die a natural death. There are no young women clamouring to fill these convents.

[K. Van Keith]

We need to pray for these religious women because even as the ship is sinking they just don't get it.

They have careers, not the vows within religious life. It's all about them, not Christ or the Church.
That is why young women are not responding to this so called "new form" of religious life.