LCWR will continue dialogue, but not compromise mission

Joshua J. McElwee
National Catholic Reporter
Aug. 10, 2012

The organization which represents the majority of U.S. Catholic sisters said Friday afternoon it would continue discussions with church officials regarding a Vatican-ordered takeover, but “will reconsider” if it “is forced to compromise the integrity of its mission.”

The statement by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents some 80 percent of U.S. sisters, came at the end of the group’s annual assembly, held this week in St. Louis.

The sisters were responding to an April 18 mandate by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that ordered the group to revise and place itself under the authority of three U.S. bishops.

Reading aloud from a prepared statement, which came after approval from the 900 sisters gathered at the assembly, LCWR’s president, Franciscan Sr. Pat Farrell, said LCWR membership wanted to use the occasion of the Vatican order “to explain to church leaders LCWR’s mission, values and operating principles.”

As part of the Vatican’s mandate, LCWR has been ordered to place itself under the authority of an “archbishop delegate,” Seattle’s Archbishop Peter Sartain.

LCWR national board is expected to meet with Sartain in St. Louis Sunday for about two hours. The focus of that meeting “will be on beginning to process with him and see how that unfolds,” Farrell said at a press conference.

The LCWR expect “open and honest dialogue” with Sartain that “may lead not only to increasing understanding between the church leadership and women religious, but also to creating more possibilities for the laity and, particularly for women, to have a voice in the church,” the statement said.

“Religious life, as it is lived by the women religious who comprise LCWR, is an authentic expression of this life that must not be compromised,” it said.

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At the last executive session, held Friday afternoon, “99.9 percent” of the members present stood and clapped in approval when a final draft of the release was read aloud, said Sr. Nancy Corcoran, a member of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Corondolet of St. Louis who represents her order as an LCWR member.

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LCWR members, the statement reads, recognize that many lay people had urged the group to help “reconcile the differences that exist within the Catholic church” and create “spaces for honest and open conversation on the critical moral and ethical questions that face the global community.”

LCWR’s members also urged their officers “not to allow the work with CDF to absorb the time, energy and resources of the conference nor to let it distract the conference from the work its mission requires,” reads the statement.

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Asked what she hopes to receive in dialogue with Sartain, Farrell said LCWR wants “to be recognized and be understood as equal in the church.”

“And really we do want to come to the point of having an environment … for the entire Catholic church to search for truth together, to talk about issues that are very complicated. And there is not the environment right now.”

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Farrell said during questioning from the press that “dialogue on doctrine is not going to be our starting point.”

“Our starting point will be about our own life and about our understanding of religious life,” Farrell continued. “And the documents, in our view, misrepresent that.”

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entire article at National Catholic Reporter