Mirror of Justice

Today is the feast of St. Thomas, the Apostle. I was taken by a passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, the first reading. Saint Paul exhorts: “You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and the prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred to the Lord.”

I am mindful that our dear friend and colleague at MoJ, Michael Perry, has again drawn our attention to the pages of The New York Times, which has recently presented an article on the multiple visitations by Roman authorities to women’s religious congregations in the United States. Of course, we need to recall that the Holy See recently concluded a corresponding visitation of the seminaries and men’s religious community formation houses in the United States. Although I have much fondness and sincere, profound respect for Michael, I do not share his apparent perspective on The New York Times article to which he has most recently brought our attention.

I have served for many years as a chaplain to houses of women religious in the United States and abroad. From this perspective, I have witnessed that many women religious in the United States are not like those quoted in The New York Times article to which Michael has referred us. From the outset, I am a bit skeptical of The New York Times implication that women religious were the “often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country.” Indeed, they were unsung heroines, as were many lay people, priests and religious brothers. But the insinuation of the Times must be countered by the fact that amongst the native saints of the United States, there are more religious women who have been canonized than men. By my count, there are five American women (and religious) saints [Elizabeth Ann Seton; Rose Duschesne; Katherine Drexel; Frances Cabrini; and, Mother Theodore Guerin] to three men who have been beatified [John Neumann; Isaac Jogues; and, Rene Goupil—arguably, Canada can also claim Jogues and Goupil]. So, I am skeptical of the Times’ claim about unsung heroes and heroines. My point is that many people, men and women, lay and religious and clerics, have been unsung heroes and heroines of the Church in the U.S. So the point the Times wants to make is eclipsed by the facts of the Church’s history in the United States.

So we come to the matter of authority which is important to the Church and most other institutions, both temporal and legal and divine. I respect the Times’ claim to its own authority in the fields where it is competent, but its competence is not without limit for there are occasions when it likes to extend its authority to places where its competence is thin. This article to which Michael refers us is an illustration of this meta-competence.

In any event, I know from my chaplaincy to American women religious that many, not just some American women religious, are grateful that the Church’s Roman authorities are beginning to pay attention to the problems that exist within religious life in the United States. I think the concern concentrates largely on the fact that the idea of religious life has been compromised by some [this includes both male and female members of religious communities] who view themselves beyond the authority of the Church and of their own Constitutions. The Holy See is not, as the Times suggests, trying to push women or any religious back into “convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb” not “ordering” [the Times’ word] but, rather, reminding them that “their schedules” should focus on “daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions.” This is their charism that explains why these orders were founded and recognized in the first place. To “sojourn” is alien to what they are about and why these orders were established.

And, this is where St. Paul’s wisdom, to which I previously referred, comes into play. He reminds the faithful of the early Church that the time for being a stranger and sojourner is a thing of the past. Yet, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious appears to be focused primarily on an existence beyond the Church that entails sojourning to unspecified destinations. It would seem that some members of this organization’s leadership (of leadership) have forgotten St. Paul’s counsel. For example, in 2007 at the Leadership Conference of Women’s Religious, the keynote speaker, Sister Laurie Brink exhorted,

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.

In her own words, Sister Brink claims that sojourning is still necessary. All right. But, beyond the Church? Beyond Christ? Beyond Christianity? My friends at MoJ, this is a problem of grand proportion. But the problem does not stop here.

As I read further on in the pages of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious’s website, numerous statements echoing the sentiments of Sister Brink proliferate. But I see no statements reflecting the views of many women religious who continue to labor for Christ, the Church, and God’s people in fidelity to their Congregations and Peter. The Times appears disinterested in the dissenting but not the faithful views.

I guess that is why the Times believes it has the self-conferred emancipation to describe Mother Mary Clare Millea, the head of her congregation and a principal in the Holy See’s examination of women religious in the United States, as “an apple-cheeked American with a black habit and smiling eyes”, and another American woman religious who “has urged [her] fellow nuns not to participate in the study”, as a “professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California.” Perhaps the Times is also more interested in sojourning to a destination that becomes increasingly unclear but also uniformed by reporting this story about the Church and her authority in the fashion that it did.

RJA sj