Some Communities Not Receiving Visitation With Open Arms...

[eagle_eye222001]

[quote name='TeresaBenedicta' post='1796644' date='Mar 3 2009, 06:23 PM']I suppose I don't understand their vision of this "renewed" religious life. Why not simply consecrated single life? It would seem to match better with their vision of what they want to do with religious life. I mean... if they want to get rid of habits, community life, common prayer, and obedience to a superior... It seems like they've gotten rid of religious life altogether. Why not simply be a group of consecrated singles?[/quote]

My whole point.

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Listening to: [url="http://www.foxytunes.com/artist/linkin+park/track/given+up"]Linkin Park - Given Up[/url]
via [url="http://www.foxytunes.com/signatunes/"]FoxyTunes[/url]

[littlesister]

There are new forms of religious life out there, with wonderful goals and engaged in wonderful and necessary works of ministry. Their courage and their zeal are admirable. If they are of God, they will last.

The "founding gift" spoken of in many documents is important. Comunities that lose sight of it or choose to interpret it too broadly do not flourish, because they have lost their focus. As one commentator put it, "Who, riding into battle, is going to follow an uncertain trumpet?" The suffering of a lifelong friend or two who tried to defend that focus and paid dearly for it has been heartrending to witness.

All religious are vowed to Christ. Christ lives in his Church. Its voice is his voice. Among the simple and basic general requirements for being considered a community are common life and common prayer. Community works play into it. Lone-Ranger ministries are a specialty of secular institutes. Canon Law itself talks about identifiable garb, which is not necessarily a habit designed in past centuries.

Rome is clearly concerned about religious life and those in it. After living this life for a long time, what sophisticated, articulate (and yes, defensive) criticism from our side is supposed to achieve escapes me.

'Nuf said.

[CatherineM]

When I first saw this on CathNews, I was pretty disappointed. If you are truly in communion with Rome, why would there be any fear? "Uninvited Guests," really bothered me. If someone from the Vatican wants to come visit me, I'd welcome them with open arms, as long as I had a chance to clean house first. The difference is my house is capable of being cleaned pretty quickly. Theirs may not be, figuratively. What really bothered me is how she said the investigation of the seminaries was aggressive and dis-honest. I was really angry about that actually. Where does she get off saying that? The training of our future priests is one of the most important things we do, and we should be worried about it.

I think this discussion should be in open mic.

[cmotherofpirl]

ok.

[TeresaBenedicta]

[url="http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/rebels-without-clue.html"]http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/rebe...thout-clue.html[/url]

A good reflection from Fr. Philip Powell on the letter.

[CatherineM]

[quote name='TeresaBenedicta' post='1796829' date='Mar 3 2009, 08:56 PM'][url="http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/rebels-without-clue.html"]http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/rebe...thout-clue.html[/url]

A good reflection from Fr. Philip Powell on the letter.[/quote]

Excellent response. He absolutely hit it on the nose when it comes to describing my former pastoral assistant (God rest her soul).

[DameAgnes]

I think this is about more than just wearing the habit.

First Things jumps into the fray here

[url="http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1328"]http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1328[/url]

[Lil Red]

[quote name='TeresaBenedicta' post='1796066' date='Mar 3 2009, 12:19 AM'][url="http://ncronline.org/news/women/we-have-given-birth-new-form-religious-life"]http://ncronline.org/news/women/we-have-gi...-religious-life[/url]

[/quote]
+J.M.J.+
[url="http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/rebels-without-clue.html"]Fr. Powell[/url] links her and her kind to having a personality disorder. i'm inclined to agree with him in my uneducated opinion!

edit to add part of his blog post:
[quote]Sandra and sisters like her have spent the last forty years establishing themselves as oppositional-defiant figures in the Church. Their entire identity as Catholics, religious, women, and human beings is so deeply entangled in being O-D to the Church that they no longer know how to exist outside their comfortable (i.e., well-funded, tenured) bubbles of oppositional nastiness.

If I had to bet this month's stipend on a sure thing, I would bet on this: Sandra and her sisters are thrilled to hear about this visitation! It gives them something to oppose, something to rally against, something TO DO that ratifies their already self-confirming identity as courageous ecclesial rebels. There will be workshops, conferences, websites, petitions, "calls-to-action," oh but the phone trees and email lists will be lit up, rallying opposition to the visitation.

Why?

Because in the absence of any identifibly Catholic characteristics in their "religious lives," Sandra, et al only have the reassuring warmth of their communal temper tantrums and the thin gruel of their rebellion to sustain them in the few winter years they have left. Without this Evil Vatican Visitation--heck, without the Evil Vatican!--Sandra and her goddess-worshipping sisters, would be rebels without a cause.[/quote]

[CatherineM]

I don't think it is so much that the individuals have a mental illness or disorder, but their organizations can be dysfunctional.

[Lil Red]

[quote name='TeresaBenedicta' post='1796829' date='Mar 3 2009, 07:56 PM'][url="http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/rebels-without-clue.html"]http://hancaquam.blogspot.com/2009/03/rebe...thout-clue.html[/url]

A good reflection from Fr. Philip Powell on the letter.[/quote]
+J.M.J.+
dang you beat me to it!! that'll teach me to read a whole thread through

[Lil Red]

[quote name='DameAgnes' post='1797236' date='Mar 4 2009, 09:09 AM']I think this is about more than just wearing the habit.

First Things jumps into the fray here

[url="http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1328"]http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/?p=1328[/url][/quote]
+J.M.J.+
good article, thanks!

[MithLuin]

The following was left by Paul Quist in one of the comments at the first blog linked (What Does the Prayer Really Say?):




Sr. Schneiders was the keynote speaker for the 1994 Anthony Jordan Lectures, here in Edmonton at Newman Theological College. Subsequently her diatribe was published under the title “Beyond Patching.”

To give you the gist, here are a couple excerpts:

[quote name='"Sr. Sandra Schneiders"']“…the issue of feminist spirituality is for most Catholic women whose consciousness has been raised a much more serious issue than questions of institutional reform. It raises questions of whether the of the Judeo-Christian tradition can be God for a self-respecting woman; whether Jesus is a savior or an oppressor of women; whether sacraments can be experienced as symbolic encounters with God or only as the sacred ritualization of male domination; whether one can find oneself as a person and grow healthily in a community in which one’s personhood and Christianity will never be fully recognized. The agony of the Catholic who is a feminist is experienced primarily in the area of spirituality.” 94.

“If the real life energy of the church is diverted into the swelling torrent of feminist spirituality, the patriarchal institution will soon be a dried up river bed, an arid trace of a lifeform that refused to change and so remains as a more or less interesting crack in the surface of history. Like other lifeforms that could not change, the patriarchal church will become an interesting historical fossil while the real church moves into the future as a discipleship of equals” (p.108-109)[/quote]

Now you know.
Pray for the visitation!
Paul




I don't think the Vatican is going to move to crush these orders; I don't think they have to. Most of them are going to die natural deaths in the near future anyway. It's just a matter of waiting it out. But it certainly is an opportunity to comment on certain practices and make [i]some[/i] changes. Not all CMSWR groups are good and all LCWR groups are bad. That's too...simplistic. But I do think that more of the LCWR groups are going to die out in the near future. My sister wouldn't look at any communities that weren't CMSWR; she'll be joining a community in August - she's 25. My cousin joined the Nashville Dominicans several years ago. These are the groups that are going to keep on keeping on. Sr. Sandra can "be peacefully about [her] business"...but not for much longer.

[CatherineM]

[quote name='MithLuin' post='1797486' date='Mar 4 2009, 04:22 PM']The following was left by Paul Quist in one of the comments at the first blog linked (What Does the Prayer Really Say?):

Sr. Schneiders was the keynote speaker for the 1994 Anthony Jordan Lectures, here in Edmonton at Newman Theological College. Subsequently her diatribe was published under the title “Beyond Patching.”[/quote]

Glad to say she wouldn't be speaking at my school now. New Archbishop in charge. This year's lecture starts on Friday, and it is the Vancouver Archbishop speaking. His personal motto is "To Serve The Truth."

[Brother Adam]

[quote]There is nothing wrong with celebrating the actions of a community one loves and serves, but Sr. Schneiders’ tone is rather elitist, which is incongruous with the life of humility and obedience to which a sister–even a progressive one birthing new forms of the life–is presumably vowed. Coupled with the cynicism that dismisses out-of-hand the possibility that the visitation could be anything less than a hostile takeover (with an ever-present threat, apparently, of “violence”), Schneider’s “new form of Religious Life . . . Religious who are not cloistered and ministers who are not ordained” sounds like it promotes a selective sort of openness–one so narrow that the Holy Spirit may have to smell of elderberries in His breath and slide in sideways to get access.[/quote]

Yes, and it is not only the "liberated" Sisters who have the same attitude, it is the whole 1970's femi-rage movement and those who still think they have "it", when in fact the young and old alike are crying out for genuine feminism (and genuine masculinity to boot). I see the same attitude as Sister in married women, as well as priests and married men. They cannot see that you can not reproduce a dissident opinion (femi-rage for example) in mass when that dissident opinion is based on fleeting emotions of superiority (especially when the very root of what you are suppose to try to preach is humility and servitude to the cross). There is a reason why liberal non-habited orders are near death and those faithful orders find themselves filled to the rim with more knocking at the door in exuberance and joy wanting to get in.

[littlesister]

Bump.