VATICAN CITY (CNS): After meeting with top officials of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious of the United States said she was thankful for the chance to have an open dialogue about a recent Vatican-ordered reform of the organisation.
LCWR president Franciscan Sister Pat Farrell, LCWR president, and executive director St Joseph Sister Janet Mock met with prefect of the doctrinal congregation Cardinal William Levada and Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle on June 12 to talk about the mandate.
“We are grateful for the opportunity for open dialogue, and now we will return to our members to see about the next step” and decide how to proceed in light of discussions with the doctrinal office, Sr Farrell told journalists after the meeting.
The LCWR will have an assembly in August, she said, and “we have no plan other than to take what came from the meeting today to our members” and decide as a group what the next step should be.
“We were able to directly express our concerns to Cardinal Levada and Archbishop Sartain,” Sr Farrell said in a statement released by the LCWR headquarters.
The Vatican statement about the meeting said the encounter “provided the opportunity for the congregation and the LCWR officers to discuss the issues and concerns raised by the doctrinal assessment”.
The Vatican said the gathering took place “in an atmosphere of openness and cordiality”.
According to canon law, the Vatican said, the LCWR “is constituted by and remains under the supreme direction of the Holy See in order to promote common efforts” and co-operation.
“The purpose of the doctrinal assessment is to assist the LCWR in this important mission by promoting a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ and the teachings of the Church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the magisterium,” the Vatican said.
The June 12 meeting came after the doctrinal congregation announced in April that a major reform was needed to ensure the LCWR’s fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas including abortion, euthanasia, women’s ordination and homosexuality.
The call for organisational reform came with an eight-page “doctrinal assessment” that cited “serious doctrinal problems which affect many in consecrated life”.
The problems, it said, were revealed in an assessment originally ordered by the Vatican in April 2008.
The doctrinal congregation appointed Archbishop Sartain to provide “review, guidance and approval, where necessary, of the work” of LCWR, a Maryland-based umbrella group that claims about 1500 leaders of US women’s communities as members and represents about 80 per cent of the country’s 57,000 women religious.
In a written statement released on June 1, the national board of the LCWR said it felt the assessment that led to a Vatican order to reform the organisation “was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency”.
The LCWR board called the sanctions “disproportionate to the concerns raised” and said they “could compromise” the organisation’s ability “to fulfil their mission”.
In an interview with Catholic News Service in Washington in early June, Sr Farrell said the organisation planned to move slowly and prayerfully, “one step at a time”, in collaboration with LCWR members at the regional and national levels.
