LCWR nuns: “Catholic Church is pro-foetus but keeps silent on other essential issues”

Sister Pat Farrel, president of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious breaks the silence in a radio interview with NPR. The world moves on and doctrine cannot remain static she says

It seemed like a coincidence to many but the day after a change of guard was announced in the leadership of the Holy Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - Cardinal Levada was substituted by Cardinal Müller – nuns of the Leadership Conference for Women Religious (LCWR), the association which represents 80% of women religious in the U.S. and which is preparing a national assembly to be held in August have broken their silence and agreed to talk about their placement under the supervision of an external commissioner.

Neither was it a coincidence that the first one to speak was President Pat Farrel, number two of the Dubuque Franciscan Sisters Congregation in Iowa, in an interview with National Public Radio in one of its most popular programmes. The nun reiterated the association’s official response to the Vatican’s “unfounded” accusations which could potentially be destructive to the continuation of their mission. But she went further, saying: “There are issues about which we think there's a need for a genuine dialogue, and there doesn't seem to be a climate of that in the church right now."

Sister Farrel highlighted one fundamental question: is it possible to be part of the Church but be in favour of dialogue and discussion? “Questions there are much less black and white because human realities are much less black and white. That's where we spend our days." “I think one of our deepest hopes is that in the way we manage the balancing beam in the position we're in, if we can make any headways in helping to create a safe and respectful environment where church leaders along with rank-and-file members can raise questions openly and search for truth freely, with very complex and swiftly changing issues in our day, that would be our hope. But the climate is not there. And this mandate coming from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith putting us in a position of being under the control of certain bishops that is not a dialogue. If anything, it appears to be shutting down dialogue."

One of the questions on the table, which Levada tried to tackle, is the Church’s doctrine on sexuality. Here too, Sister Farrel refuses to be placed in the category of those who reject it: “We have been, in good faith, raising concerns about some of the church's teachings on sexuality. The problem being that the teaching and interpretation of the faith can't remain static and really needs to be reformulated, rethought in light of the world we live in. And new questions and new realities [need to be addressed] as they arise. And if those issues become points of conflict, it's because Women Religious stand in very close proximity to people at the margins, to people with very painful, difficult situations in their lives. That is our gift to the church. Our gift to the church is to be with those who have been made poorer, with those on the margins.”

The interview could not fail to address the question regarding the LCWR’s position on the fight against abortion which Rome claims is too soft: "I think the criticism of what we're not talking about seems to me to be unfair. Because [Women] Religious have clearly given our lives to supporting life, to supporting the dignity of human persons. Our works are very much pro-life. We would question, however, any policy that is more pro-foetus than actually pro-life. If the rights of the unborn trump all of the rights of all of those who are already born, that is a distortion, too — if there's such an emphasis on that. We also have many, many ministries that support life. We dedicate to our lives to those on the margins of society, many of whom are considered throwaway people: the impaired, the chronically mentally ill, the elderly, the incarcerated, to the people on death row. We have strongly spoken out against the death penalty, against war, hunger. All of those are right-to-life issues…Our concern is that right-to-life issues be seen across a whole spectrum and are not narrowly defined. ... To single out one right-to-life issue and to say that that's the only issue that defines Catholic identity, I think, is really a distortion.”

It is worth mentioning that after all the spontaneous and formal demonstrations of support for the nuns, including the full support of all superiors of the 7 Provinces of Friars Minor in America, other bodies have followed suit and expressed their full support for the LCWR cause. For example, the Augustinian Order, the Missionaries of the Most Precious Blood, the Xaverian congregation and the entire Conference of Major Superiors, the male equivalent to the LCWR.

The article fails to make mention of an important distinction: the LCWR represents leaders of women religious, not the orders themselves. So, the Mother Superior of Our Lady of Perpetual Modernism and the Abbess of St. Binkly the Woeful may converse upon topics together, in like manner. But not the rank and file nuns themselves, so to speak.

There’s no need for dialogue. There’s a need for Obedience, as the vows taken by most religious call for. The LCWR has not been following Catholic teaching, and has caused some of the flock to fall into error, in part because they apparently feel that they are not subject to the Ordinary and Extraordinary Magisterium of the Church. They’re mistaken in that, and this has been, sadly, a long time coming. If the LCWR waffles on such important teachings as those mentioned herein, and will not fall into when instructed upon obedience to do so, then it is a good thing that there is another group analogous to theirs which is faithful, to be used in their stead.

It is certainly worth mentioning that, regarding the last sentence, there are other groups in this country and others, in need of similar correction of error. Pray for them, and pray that the Vatican continues to clean house of these errors. Hopefully, without the loss of either these souls, or others.

I'd be interested in seeing the Scriptural authority for the Sister's contentions. I daresay she doesn't have any.

Here's the Church's position on Abortion, from The Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2270 Human life must be respected and protected absolutely from the moment of conception. From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person - among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life.72

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.73

My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth.74

2271 Since the first century the Church has affirmed the moral evil of every procured abortion. This teaching has not changed and remains unchangeable. Direct abortion, that is to say, abortion willed either as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral law:

You shall not kill the embryo by abortion and shall not cause the newborn to perish.75

God, the Lord of life, has entrusted to men the noble mission of safeguarding life, and men must carry it out in a manner worthy of themselves. Life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception: abortion and infanticide are abominable crimes.76

2272 Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life. "A person who procures a completed abortion incurs excommunication latae sententiae,"77 "by the very commission of the offense,"78 and subject to the conditions provided by Canon Law.79 The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society.

2273 The inalienable right to life of every innocent human individual is a constitutive element of a civil society and its legislation:

"The inalienable rights of the person must be recognized and respected by civil society and the political authority. These human rights depend neither on single individuals nor on parents; nor do they represent a concession made by society and the state; they belong to human nature and are inherent in the person by virtue of the creative act from which the person took his origin. Among such fundamental rights one should mention in this regard every human being's right to life and physical integrity from the moment of conception until death."80

"The moment a positive law deprives a category of human beings of the protection which civil legislation ought to accord them, the state is denying the equality of all before the law. When the state does not place its power at the service of the rights of each citizen, and in particular of the more vulnerable, the very foundations of a state based on law are undermined. . . . As a consequence of the respect and protection which must be ensured for the unborn child from the moment of conception, the law must provide appropriate penal sanctions for every deliberate violation of the child's rights."81

2274 Since it must be treated from conception as a person, the embryo must be defended in its integrity, cared for, and healed, as far as possible, like any other human being.

Prenatal diagnosis is morally licit, "if it respects the life and integrity of the embryo and the human fetus and is directed toward its safe guarding or healing as an individual. . . . It is gravely opposed to the moral law when this is done with the thought of possibly inducing an abortion, depending upon the results: a diagnosis must not be the equivalent of a death sentence."82

2275 "One must hold as licit procedures carried out on the human embryo which respect the life and integrity of the embryo and do not involve disproportionate risks for it, but are directed toward its healing the improvement of its condition of health, or its individual survival."83

"It is immoral to produce human embryos intended for exploitation as disposable biological material."84

"Certain attempts to influence chromosomic or genetic inheritance are not therapeutic but are aimed at producing human beings selected according to sex or other predetermined qualities. Such manipulations are contrary to the personal dignity of the human being and his integrity and identity"85 which are unique and unrepeatable.

72 Cf. CDF, DÚnum vitae I,1.
73 Jer 1:5; cf. Job10:8-12; PsÁ/I> 22:10-11.
74 Ps 139:15.
75 Didache 2,2:ÆCh 248,148; cf. Ep. Bárnabae 19,5:PG 2 777; Ad D 5,6:PG 2,1173; Tertullian, Apol.¹9:PL 1,319-320.
76 GS 51 § 3.
77 CIC, can. 1398.
78 CIC, can. 1314. 79 Cf. CIC, cann. 1323-1324.
80 CDF, Donum vitae III.
81 CDF, Donum vitae III.
82 CDF, Donum vitae I,2.
83 CDF, Donum vitae I,3.
84 CDF, Donum vitae I,5.
85 CDF, Donum vitae I,6.

It would behoove the good sister to familiarize herself with those passages. It's a matter of Dogma, not dialogue.

Genuflectimus non ad principem sed ad Principem Pacis!

Listen, O isles, unto me; and hearken, ye people, from far; The LORD hath called me from the womb; from the bowels of my mother hath he made mention of my name. (Isaiah 49:1 KJV)

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