End of an Inquisition?

THE VATICAN REPORT on the three-year investigation of U.S. Catholic sisters landed softly in the national media in December, as major stories combined with Christmas to fill the news cycle. Good timing, if the intent was to bury it. But the story isn’t over.

Some years ago, two Vatican offices, under the leadership of Pope Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, launched separate investigations of U.S. women religious, first of the individual orders and later of their leaders’ membership organization.

Why? The general consensus seems to be that high-ranking conservative U.S. bishops were angry at sisters who had generally served as obedient poorly paid minions to do their bidding, but who now were infected with a certain “feminist” outlook on life.

A September 2008 conference on religious life, held at Massachusetts’ Stonehill College, gathered conservative voices critical of how U.S. sisters had “modernized” following the Second Vatican Council. Within a few months, a Vatican office (the “Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life”) announced it would survey every group of “active” (vs. contemplative) U.S. Catholic sisters.

In addition, in January 2009, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the church’s doctrinal watchdog, announced it would conduct a “doctrinal assessment” of the U.S. sisters’ major leadership organization, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious—claiming that LCWR diverged from church teaching on homosexuality, women’s ordination, and the centrality of Jesus in belief. The as-yet-unreported investigation of the 1,500-member LCWR entailed a review of publications and speakers’ texts and significant back-and-forth between LCWR and Vatican representatives.

During the communities investigation (now completed), the 325 women’s religious orders received a detailed questionnaire about their lives and livelihood. Later, teams visited 90 motherhouses and prepared individual reports. An overall (secret) visitation report then went to the Vatican.

The Vatican’s December 2014 report responds to the secret visitation report. While tossing nosegays at the sisters, its undercurrent of criticism dovetails with the doctrinal investigation and conservative calls to return to older traditions. The report advises sisters “not to displace Christ from the center of creation and of our faith,” and says those coming to religious life seek “formative communities” and “externally recognizable” signs—code words for convents and religious habits. Even so, the report acknowledges that Pope Francis asks for “still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the Church.”

This collision of perspectives is a collision of history and vocation. Women in the early church—widows, virgins, and deacons—actively ministered in the community. As these three categories collapsed—widows and virgins entered monasteries headed by abbesses ordained to the diaconate—external ministry by women faded. Alternative volunteer ministries outside the cloister eventually developed into active “apostolic” life for women with its public ministries of education, health care, and the like. Individual religious orders answered contemporary needs, self-supporting in their establishment and running of schools and hospitals. Contemplative cloistered nuns remained, but apostolic women religious served the world, living even more public roles following Vatican II.

Today, most U.S. sisters live the updated lives mandated by Vatican II, and the interventions into their lives and leadership demonstrate that not all quarters of the church take kindly to their expanded horizons. Disagreement on what constitutes authentic religious life exists within their ranks: About 20 years ago, a second, conservative leadership group, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, arose. Its member orders were also investigated, but its leadership council was not.

The two investigations raised public support for the U.S. sisters, while U.S. bishops, already painted by media as dishonest harborers of priest-pederasts, suffered greater backlash. Unlike priests, most of whom do not belong to religious orders and are supported by parish donations, sisters earn salaries to support themselves and their ministries. Women are not likely to gain hierarchical power any time soon, but the Vatican of Pope Francis has somewhat uncomfortably at least recognized they do the real work of the church.