A good part of the media played up the Vatican\u2019s recent Apostolic Visitation of American women religious like the sisters\u2019 gallant last stand against overwhelming force. They were the Communards of Paris, the Jews at Masada, General Wainwright\u2019s \u201cbattling bastards\u201d at Corregidor. No one came right out and said they were going to go down gloriously, but then, nobody offered a very detailed picture of what post-Visitation religious life would be like. There was always the dark, if irrational, insinuation that there wouldn\u2019t be any. <\/p>\n
According to National Catholic Reporter,<\/i> our sisters may just have squeaked through \u2014 somewhat like the Welshmen at Rourke\u2019s Drift.<\/strong><\/a> Sister Kathleen Popko, presisdent of the Sisters of Charity, told a conference of the government and management of the Catholic Health East System that she found the experience beneficial:<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Popko said the visitation has underlined some important insights about religious life. She defined women\u2019s orders as \u201ca prophetic life form in the church,\u201d insisting that they are not to be seen as a \u201cwork force for ecclesial projects.\u201d<\/p>\n Women religious \u201cstrive to work collaboratively with the ordained leadership of the church,\u201d she said, yet they \u201care not agents of the church enforcing its teachings and policies,\u201d and \u201cmust not be co-opted for institutional purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n Popko conceded that putting the accent on the \u201cprophetic\u201d role is in some ways a prescription for conflict, but insisted that\u2019s nothing new. Perusal of the lives of founders in centuries past, she said, reveals that some were forced to leave their dioceses or were removed from leadership, while their fledging communities had their assets taken away or faced other sanctions for \u201cinsubordination to the clergy.\u201d<\/p>\n Popko identified five major lessons from the visitation.<\/p>\n First, she said, the visitation has taught women religious to \u201clook inward.\u201d In responding to the Second, Popko said, it\u2019s important \u201cto network and collaborate,\u201d adapting a \u201cflexible but common approach\u201d when confronted with new challenges. Today, she said, the spirit among women\u2019s orders is \u201cthe most unified it\u2019s ever been in U.S. history,\u201d a unity she said \u201chappened at the grass roots.\u201d<\/p>\n Third, Popko urged, \u201cDo not stand alone.\u201d Instead, she said, women\u2019s orders have drawn upon canon lawyers, theologians and other experts who have helped them develop a better-informed response to the visitation \u2014 including, for instance, how to reply to requests for financial data and other internal information.<\/p>\n Fourth, Popko said, \u201cMaintain engagement,\u201d including with the clergy, the bishops, and various currents within the laity. In responding to the visitation, she said, women\u2019s orders \u201cdid not rupture relationships. We\u2019ve kept the conversation going.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n A lot of Church-speak is still Greek to me \u2014 even when it\u2019s Latin or English. A dialogue, for expample, has always sounded like a game whose rules are obscure, but which, depending on the wits of the parties, can amount to either a slow grinding-down of the weaker by the stronger, or a slippery subversion of the stronger by the weaker. But if I sometimes miss the words themselves, I can usually pick out general tunes, like defiance and accomodation. Popko\u2019s speech seems to strike a nice balance between the two.<\/p>\n That alone make it newsworthy. For the past 40 years, the Leadership Council for Women Religious seems to have struggled to find just the right spot on that continuum. At times it\u2019s hove hard to the side of defiance,<\/strong><\/a> as when LCRW president Sister Mary Whited compared herself and her sisters to \u201cOld Testament midwives, who refused to act on Pharaoh\u2019s orders so that they could bring new life and hope to the people.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s a rattling saber right there. You don\u2019t normally start comparing people to Pharaoh until you\u2019re ready to haul down their statues and melt them for cannon. To declare war without the means of prosecuting it seems, well, a little silly.<\/p>\n Worse, Fr. Michael H. Crosby OFM (Cap), when addressing a joint conference of the LCRW and the Conference of Major Superiors of Men: condemned, \u201cthe sinful, structural, and systemic violence that has come to be canonized in a certain understanding of holiness that is increasingly promoted by the highest clerics and their house prophets in our own church.\u201d <\/p>\n As I make these value judgements, I suppose I should lay my own cards on the table. I am a swing voter in all things. I generally swing toward the party that sounds sanest. In 2004, Michael Moore and the Truthers drove me right into the ranks of the GOP. Four years later, hearing Sarah Palin quote Westbrook Pegler on the virtues of small-town life, and accuse Obama of \u201cpalling around with terrorists\u201d made a donkey \u2014 and a proud one \u2014 out of me. A few months later, by which time Obama had become a socialist, a fascist, a Kenyan and a Muslim, I was about ready to join the Greens.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not the sisters\u2019 programme that alienates me so much as the language of revolution they occasionally see fit to employ. Revolutions, as Danton said, have a way of devouring their children. I\u2019m afraid I could end up like Danton himself \u2014 one day sporting a cap of Liberty; the next, sporting nothing above the clavicle. One group of self-righteous ideologues looks as bad as another.<\/p>\n Not that the sisters haven\u2019t got their reasons. If your side has no natural purchase, you\u2019ve got to fire yourselves up somehow, and words come cheaper even than beer. All the great rhetorical loogies-in-the-eye were coined by people who believed the odds were against them. Think of King Leonidas\u2019 \u201c\u039c\u03bf\u03bb\u1f7c\u03bd \u03bb\u03b1\u03b2\u03ad,<\/strong><\/a> Churchill\u2019s \u201cWe shall fight on the beaches,\u201d Dominic Behan\u2019s \u201cCome Out, Ye Black and Tans.\u201d<\/strong><\/a> After you\u2019ve won you can talk about charity toward all and malice toward none, but not before.<\/p>\n It\u2019s the last rule that makes me hopeful. If the sisters are now talking in terms of engagement, networking and collaboration, it might follow that something about the Visitation has left them feeling hopeful. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever been so happy to hear narcotic corporate gobbledygook in my life.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A good part of the media played up the Vatican\u2019s recent Apostolic Visitation of American women religious like the sisters\u2019 gallant last stand against overwhelming force. They were the Communards of Paris, the Jews at Masada, General Wainwright\u2019s \u201cbattling bastards\u201d at Corregidor. No one came right out and said they were going to go down […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":192,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[49,244],"class_list":["post-379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-catholicism","tag-women-religious"],"yoast_head":"\n
\nVatican investigation, she said, women\u2019s orders found a deeper \u201csense of dignity\u201d and of their own \u201ccompetence,\u201d rooted in their history and accomplishments. That experience, she said, has fueled \u201ca sense of cohesiveness and solidarity\u201d that will outlast the visitation itself.<\/p>\n