Noting that the situation is “grave,” the CDF document is severely critical of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious’ (LCWR) positions on Church teaching, discipline, and morals. And well it should be. These leaders, who have no authority outside their own congregations, hold annual conferences in which they defy the teaching of the Church on consecrated life and discipline, women’s ordinations, abortion, and homosexuality. They have abandoned their founders’ principles and lost their Christ-centered focus. Social work of their own preference has replaced the contemplative life and the liturgy of the hours. They are defiantly disobedient to hierarchical authority and disrespectful to the pope. In short, they have become radical feminists under the guise of the name “Catholic.” I was stunned to read that this organization represents 80% of women religious in the US, or so their 1500 members claim. No wonder the modernized convents are depleted with no vocations to replace and care for the aging nuns and sisters. Thanks be to God, a new generation of nuns has arisen and is growing strong — nuns who, in the spirit of their order’s founders, wear common habits and live a community life of prayer, harmonizing whatever social work and teaching they do with a life of union with Christ their Divine Spouse.
When interviewed about the CDF document Cardinal Burke said: “Who ever could have imagined that religious congregations of pontifical right would openly organize to resist and attempt to frustrate an apostolic visitation, that is, a visit to their congregations carried out under the authority of the Vicar of Christ on earth, to whom all religious are bound by the strongest bonds of loyalty and obedience?”
“Who could imagine that consecrated religious would openly, and in defiance of the bishops as successors of the Apostles, publicly endorse legislation containing provisions which violate the natural moral law in its most fundamental tenets, the safeguarding and promoting of innocent and defenseless life, and fail to safeguard the demands of free exercise of conscience for healthcare workers?” he added. Read full report here.
