Priests come to nun's defense

Carol Marin
Chicago Sun Times
May 29, 2012

Father Leonard Dubi, a priest of 44 years, was one of two dozen men in Roman collars at St. Barbara’s Catholic Church on Sunday night. They were there to honor and support the embattled nuns of this country.

Even though it was Memorial Day weekend, even though plenty of people had been to church once already, and even though it was hot and steamy inside that old, beautiful, non-air conditioned church, about 150 came that night.

Nuns. Priests. Lay people.

“We ran out of programs,” said Fr. Dubi by phone on Tuesday.

These gatherings are happening all over the country as Catholics react to Rome’s attempt to reel in the Leadership Council of Women Religious, the umbrella organization that represents most religious sisters in this country.

The Vatican, in a scathing rebuke in April, appointed three bishops to “oversee” the women of LCWR. The sisters, in the view of the men who run the church, are too concerned about the poor and disenfranchised.

Not concerned enough about birth control, abortion and gay marriage.

The orthodoxies that absorb the Curia.

Many of the people in the pews see this as the last straw. And are saying so. And priests are giving voice to their own deep concerns.

Fr. Dubi is the Chairman of the Association of Chicago Priests (ACP), which wrote a letter to the sisters. In it, the priests praise LCWR for being the living embodiment of the reforms of Vatican II. And commend the sisters for being fearless in service “to the poor, the powerless, the marginalized, the forgotten, the rejected . . . the sick, the abandoned. . . . Perhaps (your mission) is too frightening to people and institutions accustomed to moving more slowly.”

..... Full story at Chicago Sun Times