Msgr. Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's top prosecutor on abuse cases, was named an auxiliary bishop in his native Malta on Oct. 8. On Thursday, the pope was also set to name American Archbishop Joseph Tobin, the Vatican's leading voice for reconciliation with women religious, as the new archbishop of Indianapolis.

The question now is whether the positions these two figures represent are also on the way out. Some are reading their departures as classic cases of promoveatur ut amoveatur, meaning promoting someone to get rid of them and, by extension, their ideas. Vatican officials say it's not so, insisting there are more effective ways of muzzling someone than the new gigs both men are getting.

Especially with Tobin, it's hard not to see office politics at work. He's only served as secretary of the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (popularly known as the Congregation for Religious) since August 2010, while Vatican officials normally have at least a five-year term. When rumors of his move to Indianapolis heated up in October, several commentators speculated it was related to his "soft" line on religious women in the United States.

Italian commentator Marco Tosatti wrote Oct. 1 that some in the U.S. church "did not appreciate Tobin's role in clearing up misunderstandings with 'rebel' nuns. American bishops did not find his conciliatory statements very helpful as they were hard at work trying to resolve a difficult problem."

"They saw his attitude as a break with the position taken by the previous prefect [of the Congregation for Religious], Cardinal Franc Rode, who was concerned about the 'new age' drift of many U.S. nuns," Tosatti wrote. Continue reading

Image: Indiana Public Media

The giant banner on their bus proclaimed, "Sisters driving for faith, family and fairness," and a gushing media noted that the sisters' fans along the way greeted them like rock stars.

However, it turns out that the sisters who organized the June 18-July 2 tour — from the sisters' lobbying group Network — also were driving for their own agenda.

As a Washington Post headline put it: "The Nuns on the Bus tour promotes social justice and turns a deaf ear to the Vatican."

The Nuns on the Bus tour did treat issues of poverty. But the tour also was designed to respond to the doctrinal assessment by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) that found numerous doctrinal errors in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). The LCWR is a superiors' organization of about 1,500 sisters who lead orders that include 80% of the sisters in the country. Read more

Sources

• Ann Carey in National Catholic Register
• Image: PR Watch

Ann Carey is the author of Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities.

In an article in the New York Times, Ms Butler outlines something of this history and points out that "some bishops, dismissive of the laity, underestimated the loyalty secular Catholics felt for their nuns".

• Read Anne M. Butler's article
• Image: Sisters of St Benedict

Anne M. Butler is the author of the forthcoming book "Across God's Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920."

Dealing with U.S. women religious, these bishops' actions appear governed more by a desire to enforce obedience than to develop fidelity in our sisters.

Catholics see through this guise. They are upset, fed up with the likes of this behavior. They are speaking out. Soon they will be on the streets making their voices heard. You can count on it.

What the bully bishops claim to be matters of orthodoxy are really matters of pastoral style. They are the results of an unwillingness among our bishops to enter into sincere and mutually repectful dialogue with the women. None of the issues at hand has anything to do with the Creed. They stem from the actions of a small group of misdirected and fearful men determined to take catholic out of Catholic while judging, silencing and demeaning those who stand in their way.

Most of our bishops are not part of this clique. Most find themselves in near-impossible situations, part of a culture that demands they accede, at least publicly, to these abusive actions, knowing full well they are draining life and spirit out of the very women — these exemplary, faithful women — who sustain their diocesan and parish communities.

Against the best interests of their local churches, our bishops keep their silence, cognizant that if they speak up in support of the sisters, they will be removed from their positions, as have other bishops who have spoken out against the bullying.

This is an especially difficult time for Catholics who recognize the need and place for legitimate church authority in a world in need of Gospel guidance. Catholics and others cannot help but see the episcopal attacks on our sisters in the context of decades of sexual abuse cover-up. Why, they ask, point the finger at the women when the times demand deep critical self-introspection? Continue reading

Sources

• Thomas C Fox in National Catholic Reporter
• Image: The Guardian

But, says John L Allen Jr in his National Catholic Reporter column, "At least part of the original momentum for the overhaul actually came from America, not Rome".

• Read John L Allen Jr's column.
• Image: The Catholic World Report

It is important to note that LCWR is one of two umbrella groups of American active sisters authorised by the Vatican; the other, the Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR) was founded in 1992. LCWR is by far the larger organisation, representing congregations containing approximately 90 per cent of sisters in the US. CMSWR is generally regarded as more "conservative" or "orthodox," and - should the LCWR sisters resist cooperation with the Vatican initiative - may become the only officially authorised group of this sort. It required, among other things, that its members wear religious garb, live in community, and emphasise corporate and institutional ministries. This is a model of religious life that many in orders belonging to LCWR have not adhered to for decades.

US sisters have faced other crises in the past. Two notable ones were the suppression of the Los Angeles, California, IHM Sisters in the late 1960s, and the attempt by Rome to discipline the so-called "Vatican 24" (more than that number of sisters, actually, who signed a 1984 statement published in the New York Times that "faithful Catholics" held a "diversity of opinions" about abortion). But this situation is different. First, it has direct, canonical implications for the relationship of the overwhelming majority of US sisters to the institutional church hierarchy. Second, and perhaps more importantly, the Vatican is not in control of the conversation - they cannot control the social media and the internet. Continue reading

Margaret Susan Thompson is professor of history at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, New York, and has written extensively on the history of Catholic sisters in the United States

Sources

• The Tablet
• Image: Sisters of Providence