Abuse of power

For more than sixty years, all through the traumatic changes following Vatican II and since, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the United States has offered comfort, challenge and guidance to nuns and sisters. It has done this hand in hand with the relevent Vatican congregations and has had regular meetings with senior Church officials in an attempt to stay in full communion with the Church, and true to the spirit of the Gospel. Rome has now decided that these women are unable to manage their own affairs and need to be brought back in line.

 The largest leadership organization for U.S. women religious says it was "stunned" by the announcement Wednesday that the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith had ordered it to reform its statutes and had appointed an archbishop to oversee its revision.
"The presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious was stunned by the conclusions of the doctrinal assessment of LCWR by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith," the group said in a news release Thursday morning.
"Because the leadership of LCWR has the custom of meeting annually with the staff of CDF in Rome and because the conference follows canonically-approved statutes, we were taken by surprise." On Wednesday, the Vatican announced it had appointed Seattle Archbishop Peter sartain to oversee the LCWRwhich has been the subject of a doctrinal assessment by the Vatican congregation since 2009.

The sisters aren't commenting at this time, preferring to observe a period of quiet consultation, prayer and reflection.

Timothy Radcliff (former Master of the Dominicans) said that "the role of the Magisterium is to keep us talking, thinking and praying about what is central to our faith, as we journey towards the one who is beyond all words." Again we see another example of the Magisterium being used as a very large stick to beat around the heads of those respond to the Gospel call faithfully but in a way the Vatican doesn't understand.