DON VINCENZO writes:

I previously wrote of the unprecedented action by the Leadership Council of Women Religious (LCWR), those who were formerly called “Sisters” and “Nuns” within the Catholic Church, in betraying their status as guardians of the Faith by their adoption of questionable tactics in carrying out their religious duties. When these women religious began a “Get On the Bus” Tour that supported the policy of the Obama Administration, the most anti-Catholic in our history, to seek amnesty for illegal aliens, anyone who examined the LCWR’s efforts would have had serious problems distinguishing this group of Sisters and Nuns from political operatives.

This type of behavior by the LCWR, however, was not new, and had come to the attention of the Vatican earlier. In 2008, an investigation, begun by the Congregation for Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), and approved by Pope Emeritus, Benedict XVI, was opened into the doctrinal and dogmatic abuses that now pervaded the group. That report, issued last year, found serious problems with the LCWR in this regard, but precious little was done to follow up and determine if the LCWR had done anything to reverse its untraditional behavior. Instead, a follow up Vatican “Study” was begun, one that sought to examine the 341 religious communities to determine why the numbers of Women Religious had precipitously declined in numbers, and why they acted as they did. The results of the second study, Final Report on the Apostolic Visitation of Institutes of Women Religious in the United States of America, was released on December 16.

To describe the wording of the new report as anything but a whitewash would be an understatement. There is no effort to criticize the LCWR for its actions, only a call that they recognize their duties as Sisters, a responsibility that seems to have been noticeably absent in the collective minds of the LCWR’s leadership for decades. The current report thanked the 50,000 nuns for “selflessly tending to the spiritual, moral, educational, physical and social needs of countless individuals, especially the poor and marginalized,” acknowledged that nuns feel underappreciated, and reminded them “not to displace Christ” (emphasis mine) while they do their work in the community. But it got even worse. Pope Francis, who met a delegation of American nuns Tuesday morning, promised to appoint women to decision-making roles in the Vatican. So what else is new?

I believe that the catastrophic decline of women religious (down more than 75% since 1965), is not only represented in numbers, but in their current collective mindset, something almost as grave as the loss of priestly vocations (down nearly 35% since ’65). In both situations, the modernism that the earlier Church and popes fought against has become a major component of its current existence, with the accompanying loss of the transcendental. While this may not apply to all Women Religious, far too many have become Social Workers, and not Sisters or Nuns as previously understood. A Latin expression says it all: corruptio optimi pessima est – corruption of the best is the worst.