7.02.2009

national press

For some reason, the Vatican visitation/investigation of American Catholic Sisters just made the secular press ... and the New York Times.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Was it not the Vatican who directed the vast changes in Religious Life? Now they question it.

Pachyderm said...

I am praying for you and all my other nun friends in the US, Sr Susan. I trust and believe that God's hands can work through the visitation and God's Spirit can and will breathe on the congregations involved.

Pax
Robyn TSSF

Susan Rose Francois, CSJP said...

All I know is that I was attracted to the quality of life of religious life today, and my community in particular.

I have to hope and believe that the Holy Spirit is in the mix and all will be well.

Interestingly, I'm not too worried about it. Maybe that's because I've experienced the dedication to God, Church, Community, the poor and vulnerable, and following in the footsteps of our founders and Jesus himself.

We'll see ... I just wonder what prompted the NYT to cover it at this late juncture?

Garpu said...

And...for some strange reason I just found out about it today. Why, yes, I have been buried underneath my dissertation-shaped rock...

Thomas said...

Hello Sister,

I was surprised (and, admittedly, confused) reading the article -- and the tone it took. Isn't there some kind of audit or review process the Vatican has in place to periodically "check in" anyway? Would this be more routine than what I gathered from the article?

Susan Rose Francois, CSJP said...

Garpu - I think maybe the reason folk don't know a lot about it is that the Sisters are taking a kind of - let's live our lives and not freak out about it - approach to it. No one is really broadcasting this out to the world - "Look, look, the Vatican is attacking is" - because I think we know in our heart that we are following in the steps of our founders and Jesus and presume that it will all work out. The Holy Spirit is in the mix after all.

(and good luck with the dissertation!)

Thomas - that's a good question. I don't know specifically what the process is. I do know that the Leaderhip Conference of Women Religious go to Rome each year for a visit. And we all work with the Bihops in the dioceses where we live. I think that's probably the standard "check-in" process. As the NYT said, this whole thing is definitely not routine and is normally the type of thing prompted by some kind of scandal.

It will take a while. And the report of course will be confidential anwyay. So we'll have to see what happen. We Americans often forget that the Church is not a democracy.