Leeds Trinity to Host Major Catholic International Conference

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, Leeds Trinity University College is hosting a major Catholic international theological conference from 26 – 29 June 2012.

(PRWEB) May 18, 2012

The beginning of the Second Vatican Council had a profound impact on the life of the Catholic Church and its mission, in particular by starting an engagement with the modern and secularized world through a renewed proclamation of the Gospel. Pope John Paul II described this as the ‘New Evangelization’, and in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed this priority by creating the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.

The 50th anniversary provides a unique opportunity to revisit that seminal event, and ‘Vatican II: 50 Years On: The New Evangelization’ will reflect on the impact of the council and deepen understanding of New Evangelization. Hosted by Leeds Trinity in conjunction with the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, the conference will take place from 26 – 29 June at Leeds Trinity University College, and is the first in a series of conferences to celebrate Catholic Higher Education in the UK.

A number of international, high profile church leaders and theologians will address the conference, including Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the newly formed Pontifical Council for New Evangelization, and Gavin D’Costa, Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol. Representatives of church, academy and society will also take part in panels assessing the local and global impact of the Council and its meaning for today. There will be an opportunity to celebrate the Council and the New Evangelization at public events each evening.

The Right Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, has lent his support for the conference, saying:

“I welcome the forthcoming International Theological Conference at Leeds Trinity University College. This represents an important moment in the Church’s outreach to society following the Papal Visit in 2010. Our Catholic faith has a specific content. Rearticulated at the Second Vatican Council, this faith is to be constantly explored and treasured. God is calling us to share its saving truths respectfully with others so that they may share our joy. I hope that your reflections will bear much fruit.”

For further information and to book a place, visit http://www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/vaticanIIconference or contact Kathy Stenton, k(dot)stenton(at)leedstrinity(dot)ac(dot)ukor +44 (0)113 2837102.

Notes for editors

Leeds Trinity University College is an independent higher education institution offering foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a range of subjects including Business, Education, Humanities, Journalism, Media, Psychology and Sport. Formerly Leeds Trinity All Saints, the institution attained University College status in September 2009, following the granting by the Privy Council of Taught Degree Awarding Powers.

All degrees involve a professional placement for students to extend their experience and explore their career aspirations. With around 3000 students studying for full and part-time degrees Leeds Trinity retains a community atmosphere which provides a supportive and friendly environment to help people realise their full potential.

For more information:

Lisa Farrell, Communications Officer, Leeds Trinity University College

Tel: 0113 283 7273

Email: l(dot)farrell(at)leedstrinity(dot)ac(dot)uk

For the original version on PRWeb visit: http://www.prweb.com/releases/prwebleedstrinity/internationalconference/prweb9514946.htm

Leeds Trinity to host major Catholic International Conference

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, Leeds Trinity University College is hosting a major Catholic international theological conference
from 26 – 29 June 2012.

/PressPort/ – The beginning of the Second Vatican Council had a profound impact on the life of the Catholic Church and its mission, in particular by starting an engagement with the modern and secularized world through a renewed proclamation of the Gospel. Pope John Paul II described this as the ‘New Evangelization’, and in 2010, Pope Benedict XVI confirmed this priority by creating the Pontifical Council for Promoting the New Evangelization.

The 50^th anniversary provides a unique opportunity to revisit that seminal event, and ‘Vatican II: 50 Years On: The New Evangelization’ will reflect on the impact of the council and deepen understanding of New Evangelization. Hosted by Leeds Trinity in conjunction with the Centre for Catholic Studies, Durham University, the conference will take place from 26 – 29 June at Leeds Trinity University College, and is the first in a series of conferences to celebrate Catholic Higher Education in the UK.

A number of international, high profile church leaders and theologians will address the conference, including Francis Cardinal George, Archbishop of Chicago, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, President of the newly formed Pontifical Council for New Evangelization, and Gavin D’Costa, Professor of Catholic Theology at the University of Bristol. Representatives of church, academy and society will also take part in panels assessing the local and global impact of the Council and its meaning for today. There will be an opportunity to celebrate the Council and the New Evangelization at public events each evening.

The Right Reverend Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, has lent his support for the conference, saying:

 “I welcome the forthcoming International Theological Conference at Leeds Trinity University College. This represents an important moment in the Church’s outreach to society following the Papal Visit in 2010. Our Catholic faith has a specific content. Rearticulated at the Second Vatican Council, this faith is to be constantly explored and treasured. God is calling us to share its saving truths respectfully with others so that they may share our joy. I hope that your reflections will bear much fruit.”

For further information and to book a place, visit  www.leedstrinity.ac.uk/vaticanIIconference or contact Kathy Stenton, k.stenton@leedstrinity.ac.uk or +44 (0)113 2837102.

ENDS

Notes for editors

Leeds Trinity University College is an independent higher education institution offering foundation, undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in a range of subjects including Business, Education, Humanities, Journalism, Media, Psychology and Sport. Formerly Leeds Trinity All Saints, the institution attained University College status in September 2009, following the granting by the Privy Council of Taught Degree Awarding Powers.

All degrees involve a professional placement for students to extend their experience and explore their career aspirations. With around 3000 students studying for full and part-time degrees Leeds Trinity retains a community atmosphere which provides a supportive and friendly environment to help people realise their full potential.

For more information:

Lisa Farrell, Communications Officer, Leeds Trinity University College

Tel: 0113 283 7273

Email: l.farrell@leedstrinity.ac.uk 

CathBlog – How Catholic are we?

BY DRASKO DIZDAR

Fifty years ago, at the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church set itself a number of goals. Among those were opening up to the rest of the world and the unity of the church, indeed, of humankind. 

The Council insisted that, far from being exclusive and sectarian, the church is only truly catholic when it embraces the living and lively diversity of everything that is genuinely human. As the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church put it quite unambiguously: 

All are called to this catholic unity of the People of God…. And to it, in different ways, belong or are ordered: the Catholic faithful, others who believe in Christ, and finally all mankind, called by God’s grace to salvation (Lumen Gentium 13; emphasis added). 

According to the Catechism: “The word ‘catholic’ means ‘universal,’ in the sense of ‘according to the totality’ or ‘in keeping with the whole’” (§830). It comes from the Greek words kata (according to) and holos (whole). In other words, “catholic” means inclusive, holistic, open to everyone.

Let’s be clear about what “catholicity” does not mean then: it is not a fancy word for the religious beliefs and practices that make Roman Catholics different from everyone else (so-called “Catholic cultural identity”). On the contrary, “catholicity” denotes what unites rather than what divides; it speaks of communion rather than difference; of unity-in-diversity.

By calling itself “catholic” the church asserts that which unites and opens it up to all people, beyond all differences. Paradoxically this openness is the distinguishing and specific mark of its “identity” and the heart of its “culture”.

So, far from being a “tribal cipher” that merely marks the church off as yet another of the world’s religions, catholicity is a deeply mysterious and paradoxical process. It is a way of saying that we are discovering ourselves becoming something unique precisely because we find our differences transformed in a universal communion where everyone is welcome just as they are. 

We are “catholic”, then, to the extent that we are open. Open to what? Christ and the world. As the Catechism makes very clear, catholicity is first and foremost about Christ: “First, the Church is catholic because Christ is present in her. ‘Where there is Christ Jesus, there is the Catholic Church.’” (§831).

Only when we are absolutely clear about the centrality and primacy of Christ as the embodiment and giver of catholicity, can we speak of its specifically human dimension and scope: “Secondly, the Church is catholic because she has been sent out by Christ on a mission to the whole of the human race” (§831).

Our catholicity is a mark of “identity” as communion, not tribe or institution. Catholicity is the means of our healing, our restoration to the integrity and wholeness for which we are created. In and through the church as “catholic communion” all humanity is called to participate in realising its likeness to the Triune God who is a “communion of love”.

Catholicity is the ecclesial way of speaking about God’s transforming humanity into the image and likeness of God as communion of love; an image and likeness we see absolutely realized in Christ, the One who is at once one-with-God and one-with-us, so uniting us with God. As Pope Benedict XVI puts it: 

The essence of original sin is the split into individuality, which knows only itself. The essence of redemption is the mending of the shattered image of God, the union of the human race through and in the One who stands for all and in whom, as Paul says (Gal 3:28), all are one: Jesus Christ… [T]o be a Christian means to be Catholic, means to be on one’s way to an all-encompassing unity. (Joseph Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 49).

“Catholicity” is not a fancy word for Catholic tribalism, then, but a call “to an all-encompassing unity” that excludes no one since all are “children of God”, and equally so.

So, how catholic are we? The catholicity of our parishes, schools and other ecclesial communities has nothing to do with statues of Mary, pictures of the pope and “bums on seats”. It has everything to do with openness of mind, heart and embrace towards the world God loves and Christ renews by his life-giving Spirit.  

Show me how wholeheartedly you accept the “other” in the “Wholly Other” become “One-with-us”, and I’ll show you how catholic you are.

Dr Drasko Dizdar is a member of the Emmaus monastic community, and a theologian with the Tasmanian Catholic Education Office.

Disclaimer: CathBlog is an extension of CathNews story feedback. It is intended to promote discussion and debate among the subscribers to CathNews and the readers of the website. The opinions expressed in CathBlog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the members of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference or of Church Resources.

From Catholic To Orthodox

The word ‘orthodoxy’ can conjure up foul associations. There’s Bertrand Russell’s famous quote, “Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence,” which covers any sort of rigid or right thinking at the expense of creative thought.

Orthodoxy (lower case) implies a strict adherence to tradition against which Modernism doesn’t stand a chance. In Judaism, Orthodoxy is seen as that religion’s supreme, most traditional expression, its un-reformed essence. In Christianity, Orthodoxy which has never had a Second Vatican Council or anything approaching a Novus Ordo – Divine Liturgy with lay ministers and Protestant-style hymns – is a window into the ancient Church. In fact, you could search the world for a modern young Orthodox priest with a guitar and a penchant for humming “On Eagles Wings,” but chances are you wouldn’t find one. Priests like that never get a chance to bloom in Orthodoxy; or, if one was discovered in seminary, he’d be sent packing or be told to switch hit to the local Catholic Franciscans.

In the Orthodox Church there are no activist organizations of lay women clamoring to be priests (although Metropolitan Kallestos Ware admits that at some point in time the Church may have to consider the question). To date Orthodox women, however feminist their inclinations, haven’t splintered off and gotten themselves “ordained” by renegade bishops.

There are no Orthodox lay liturgists trying to reinvent or modernize the Divine Liturgy, either. In the eyes of the world, Orthodox Christianity has always been relegated to second tier status, taking a back seat to Catholicism’s power, even in this era of clergy sex abuse. As a box to be checked on applications and questionnaires, where religious affiliation means Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, or other , Orthodoxy barely exists at all.

My first glimpse of Orthodoxy was at the 1964-1965 New York Worlds Fair. I’d gone to the Fair with my family primarily to visit the Vatican Pavilion, a modernist white building that had a futuristic look and that effectively mirrored the reformatting of Catholicism taking place in Rome at the Second Vatican Council. Inside the Pavilion was Michelangelo’s treasure, The Pieta, a major Fair exhibit that attracted people of all faiths. Inside the Pavilion there was also the modernist Chapel of the Good Shepard with its minimalist altar table, glass stained windows but not much else.

The chapel’s over-wrought simplicity made an impression on me. Not only did this new Catholic structure have a decidedly Presbyterian style, all the signature Catholic elements were missing except a crucifix. The intent seemed to be the creation of an interdenominational chapel where everybody would be made to feel at home. This was a Catholic chapel that didn’t want to offend Protestants by looking “too Catholic.”

At the time, I sensed that the chapel design hinted at coming changes in Catholic Church architecture.I was right. Most visitors, distracted by the media hoopla surrounding The Pieta (the Vatican Pavilion was the second most popular exhibit at the Fair, attracting some 27,020,857 guests) probably didn’t dwell on this fact that much. My sense is that many Catholics then excused minimalist, Protestant looking church interiors if there was enough stained glass to take the mind off what had been eliminated.

Not far from the Pavilion was a small log cabin church with a three-bar cross on top. I knew the cross to be Russian Orthodox. The chapel was a replica of the first Orthodox chapel in America built in the 1800s at Fort Hood, California. While the rustic exterior put one in mind of Lincoln Logs or Lewis and Clark expeditions, the interior – we had to peer through the windows because the chapel was locked – revealed something startling: a small chandelier illuminating a colorful iconostasis in the center of which were circles of electric candles and a replica of the framed (miraculous) icon of Our Lady of Kazan.

The beauty of that small log cabin church far surpassed anything in the great white Pavilion monolith with its cold and empty Chapel of the Good Shepard.

It was then that I asked myself: What is this thing called Orthodoxy? Growing up, I was taught by the nuns that only Catholics had the true sacrament, the actual Body and Blood of Christ or the Real Presence; Catholics were the only ones with saints, the Mass, priests, and churches that looked like real holy places.

Orthodoxy, I found, also had the Mass (the Divine Liturgy), canonized saints, monks, nuns, priests, vestments, miters—everything in fact that Catholicism had, even miracle stories, bleeding and myrrh streaming images, as well as visions of the Virgin Mary.

This was confusing stuff for a committed, 12-year old Catholic. If there is only one true Church, why would the Virgin Mary make alleged appearances over the dome of a Coptic Orthodox church in Zeitoun, Egypt in front of hundreds of thousands of people? These series of apparitions, lasting from 1968 to 1971, spontaneously healed many people who witnessed the lady in light move around the dome of the church. Why would the bodies of some Orthodox saints remain incorrupt in the same manner as Saint Catherine Laboure’s body in Paris? For every Catholic saint or miracle story there is an Orthodox counterpart.

Is the Orthodox Church the true “other” lung of the whole Church, and not the schismatic renegades they’re made out to be by some Catholic traditionalists? In the eyes of God, where the divide and conquer nature of human politics does not exist – to the chagrin of strict doctrinaire prelates, both East and West, steeped in charges of heresy or schism – are both Churches already really one and united “under the skin” despite the lack of an official agreement?

As the abbot of St. Tikhon’s monastery near Scranton told me last year: “It was the Western, or Catholic Church, that began changing everything.” These changes not only included the Flioque clause in the Nicene Creed but the way Christians crossed themselves. The original method of crossing oneself was the Orthodox way, right to left, but Rome changed it from left to right in the 8th century.

A change like this seems a small thing but it can also be indicative of something deeper, like a tendency to re-invent and denude until centuries later you get something like the Second Vatican Council, where the changes were so drastic that if a Catholic from 1947 could come back he wouldn’t even recognize today’s Catholic Mass as being Catholic.

When former Byzantine Catholic Hieromonk and theologian Fr. Gabriel Bunge converted to the Orthodox Church, it generated a lot of press. (Conversions work both ways and can be a lot like musical chairs: In 2009, Orthodox theologian and writer John Mack converted to Eastern Catholicism although shortly after this he divorced his wife and left the priesthood).

On his conversion to Orthodoxy, Fr. Bunge said:

“…Many people thought that the two Churches were moving towards each other and would eventually meet at one point. But as I was growing older and learning some things deeper, I stopped believing in the possibility of the reconciliation of two Churches in terms of the divine services and institutional unity. What was I to do? I could only go on searching for this unity on my own, individually, restoring it in one separate soul, mine. I could not do more. I just followed my conscience, and came to Orthodoxy.”

I see the wisdom in this statement, especially since my conversion to Orthodoxy on April 8th of this year. Prior to my first communion at an Orthodox parish in Northern Liberties, I had many conversations with members of the congregation in which more than several freely admitted that they often attend Catholic churches when they are away on vacation and when they cannot find an Orthodox church.

Not only do they attend Catholic churches but they receive communion in these churches, a fact which may be frowned upon by their pastor or bishop but a fact nevertheless. The Orthodox people I spoke with felt they could relate to Catholics because Catholics believe in the Real Presence. “It’s all about the Eucharist,” as one Orthodox lady told me. “This is why I come to church, to receive the Eucharist. The Eucharist is not a symbol or a memorial, it is real.”

Comments like these bypass the usual East-West schism rhetoric having to do with the Filioque, or questions related to the primacy of the Bishop of Rome. It’s not that many or most Orthodox don’t think that these questions are important; many do. But for the ordinary people in the pews, ie. people who are not theologians, priests or monks, it is the Eucharist that stands out as the centerpiece of spiritual life. So yes, a certain strange unity of the heart between the two churches has already taken place.

I came to Orthodoxy from Catholicism partially because of its unchanged liturgy; because the Orthodox Church, in its wisdom, never embarked on a path of liturgical self-destruction. It was not enough for me to attend the Traditional Catholic Latin Mass once a month when the bulk of the Catholic Church remains in the Novus Ordo camp. Even while attending the TLM at beautiful Saint Paul’s church in South Philadelphia, one could not escape the reality that this Mass was a minority Mass, primarily a footnote to the Novus Ordo.

It pained me to realize that the TLM was seen more as a specialized event and not part of the regular lists of masses in most Catholic churches.

In the Orthodox Church there is always the traditional liturgy; the rubrics never wax or wane depending on the latest liturgical fashion. There’s no need for committees to advertise or promote tradition.Tradition is already there, and it’s not going anywhere. It is, as they say, the Church.

Since becoming Orthodox, gone are the endless personal narratives that would run in my head whenever I’d attend either a TLM or the Novus Ordo. Those narratives concentrated on what had been lost or thrown away.

In the Orthodox Church, tradition is not shuffled in and shuffled out, like a road show trekking onto Buffalo.

Stunning news for postmodern Catholic nuns – Mat

In the beginning, there was the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Women’s Institutes, which was established with the Vatican’s blessing in 1959 during an era of rapid growth for Catholic religious orders.

Then along came two cultural earthquakes: the Second Vatican Council and the Sexual Revolution. In 1971, the women’s conference changed its name — this time without the Vatican’s blessing — to become the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Two leaders in this transformation later wrote that the goal was to become a “corporate force for systematic change in Church and society.”

The rest is a long story, ultimately leading to a blunt April 18 missive from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This long-expected Vatican broadside noted “serious doctrinal problems” in LCWR proclamations, characterized by a “diminution of the fundamental Christological center” and the prevalence of “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Women’s conference leaders offered a terse response, saying they were “stunned by the conclusions of the doctrinal assessment” from Rome.

“Stunned” was the key word for legions of headline writers, whose work resembled this Washington Post offering: “American nuns stunned by Vatican accusation of ‘radical feminism,’ crackdown.” The Chicago Sun-Times went even further, proclaiming: “Vatican waging a war on nuns.”

Truth is, tensions have been building for decades between the LCWR leadership and Vatican leaders. Thus, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith missive stressed that its call for reform was built on a lengthy study of materials created by “a particular conference of major superiors and therefore does not intend to offer judgment on the faith and life of Women Religious in the member congregations.”

This particular investigation began in 2008 and Catholic leaders first discussed some of its findings two years later. The final “doctrinal assessment” document was completed in January of 2011. Some of the specific events criticized in the Vatican document took place during the 1970s and ’80s.

It “certainly didn’t help matters” that there has been so much publicity about liberal nuns supporting White House health-care policies and new Health and Human Services regulations that require most religious institutions to include free coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptives in their health-insurance plans, noted John L. Allen Jr. of the National Catholic Reporter.

Nevertheless, “it doesn’t withstand scrutiny for anyone to say that this conflict is about the bishops and Rome being upset about the sisters, Obama and birth control,” said Allen in a telephone interview from Rome. Also, “no one is upset about all the sisters have done to abolish the death penalty, stand up for immigrants, care for the sick and help the poor. Rome praised them for that. …

“Frankly, this report could have been written 20 years ago. The real issues in this case are that old.”

For example, the Vatican noted that in 1977 the LCWR leadership openly rejected Catholic teachings on the “reservation of priestly ordination to men.” The women’s conference later published a training book suggesting that it’s legitimate for sisters to debate whether celebrations of the Mass should be central to events in their communities, since this would require the presence of a male priest. In the ’80s, leaders in female orders backed the New Ways Ministry’s work to oppose Catholic teachings on homosexuality.

A pivotal moment came in 2007, when Dominican Sister Laurie Brink delivered the keynote address at a national LCWR assembly stating that it was time for some religious orders to enter an era of “sojourning” that would require “moving beyond the church, even beyond Jesus.”

With the emergence of the women’s movement and related forms of spirituality, many sisters would see “the divine within nature” and embrace an “emerging new cosmology” that would feed their souls, said Brink. For these sisters, the “Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative. … Jesus is not the only son of God.”

A year later, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith opened its investigation of the LCWR.

The Brink address, noted the resulting doctrinal assessment, “is a challenge not only to core Catholic beliefs; such a rejection of faith is also a serious source of scandal and is incompatible with religious life. … Some might see in Sr. Brink’s analysis a phenomenological snapshot of religious life today. But pastors of the Church should also see in it a cry for help.”

Terry Mattingly is the director of the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities and leads the GetReligion.org project to study religion and the news.

Opinions expressed on the Faith page are the author’s and are not necessarily those of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman, its staff or its parent company, Wick Communications Co. To submit a column or other news for the Faith page, send email to news@frontiersman.com, or call 352-2268.

Stunning news for postmodern nuns

Copyright ©2010. The Associated Press. Produced by NewsOK.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

BY TERRY MATTINGLY
|

Published: May 7, 2012


Oklahoman

  
Leave a comment

In the beginning, there was the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Women’s Institutes, which was established with the Vatican’s blessing in 1959 during an era of rapid growth for Catholic religious orders.

Then along came two cultural earthquakes: the Second Vatican Council and the Sexual Revolution. In 1971, the women’s conference changed its name — this time without the Vatican’s blessing — to become the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

Two leaders in this transformation later wrote that the goal was to become a “corporate force for systematic change in Church and society.”

The rest is a long story, ultimately leading to a blunt April 18 missive from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This long-expected Vatican broadside noted “serious doctrinal problems” in LCWR proclamations, characterized by a “diminution of the fundamental Christological center” and the prevalence of “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Women’s conference leaders offered a terse response, saying they were “stunned by the conclusions of the doctrinal assessment” from Rome.

“Stunned” was the key word for legions of headline writers, whose work resembled this Washington Post offering: “American nuns stunned by Vatican accusation of ‘radical feminism,’ crackdown.” The Chicago Sun-Times went even further, proclaiming: “Vatican waging a war on nuns.”

Truth is, tensions have been building for decades between the LCWR leadership and Vatican leaders. Thus, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith missive stressed that its call for reform was built on a lengthy study of materials created by “a particular conference of major superiors and therefore does not intend to offer judgment on the faith and life of Women Religious in the member congregations.”

This particular investigation began in 2008 and Catholic leaders first discussed some of its findings two years later.

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Religion: Tensions building between women, Vatican leaders

In the beginning, there was the Conference of Major Religious Superiors of Women’s Institutes, which was established with the Vatican’s blessing in 1959 during an era of rapid growth for Catholic religious orders. — Then along came two cultural earthquakes, the Second Vatican Council and the sexual revolution. In 1971, the women’s conference changed its name — this time without the Vatican’s blessing — to become the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). Two leaders in this transformation later wrote that the goal was to become a “corporate force for systematic change in Church and society.”

The rest is a long story, ultimately leading to a blunt April 18 missive from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. This long-expected Vatican broadside noted “serious doctrinal problems” in LCWR proclamations, characterized by a “diminution of the fundamental Christological center” and the prevalence of “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Conference leaders offered a terse response, saying they were “stunned by the conclusions of the doctrinal assessment” from Rome.

“Stunned” was the key word for legions of headline writers, whose work resembled this Washington Post offering: “American nuns stunned by Vatican accusation of ‘radical feminism,’ crackdown.” The Chicago Sun-Times went even further, proclaiming: “Vatican waging a war on nuns.”

Truth is, tensions have been building for decades between the LCWR leadership and Vatican leaders. Thus, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith missive stressed that its call for reform was built on a lengthy study of materials created by “a particular conference of major superiors and therefore does not intend to offer judgment on the faith and life of Women Religious in the member congregations.”

This particular investigation began in 2008 and Catholic leaders first discussed some of its findings two years later. The final “doctrinal assessment” document was completed in January 2011. Some of the specific events criticized in the Vatican document took place during the 1970s and ’80s.

It “certainly didn’t help matters” that there has been so much publicity about liberal nuns supporting White House health-care policies and new Health and Human Services regulations that require most religious institutions to include free coverage of all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives in their health-insurance plans, noted John L. Allen Jr., of the National Catholic Reporter.

Nevertheless, “it doesn’t withstand scrutiny for anyone to say that this conflict is about the bishops and Rome being upset about the sisters, (President Barack) Obama and birth control,” said Allen, in a telephone interview from Rome. Also, “no one is upset about all the sisters have done to abolish the death penalty, stand up for immigrants, care for the sick and help the poor. Rome praised them for that. … Frankly, his report could have been written 20 years ago. The real issues in this case are that old.”

For example, the Vatican noted that in 1977 the LCWR leadership openly rejected Catholic teachings on the “reservation of priestly ordination to men.” The women’s conference later published a training book suggesting that it’s legitimate for sisters to debate whether celebrations of the Mass should be central to events in their communities, since this would require the presence of a male priest.

In the ’80s, leaders in female orders backed the New Ways Ministry’s work to oppose Catholic teachings on homosexuality.

A pivotal moment came in 2007, when Dominican Sister Laurie Brink delivered the keynote address at a national LCWR assembly stating that it was time for some religious orders to enter an era of “sojourning” that would require “moving beyond the church, even beyond Jesus.”

With the emergence of the women’s movement and related forms of spirituality, many sisters would see “the divine within nature” and embrace an “emerging new cosmology” that would feed their souls, said Brink. For these sisters, the “Jesus narrative is not the only or the most important narrative. … Jesus is not the only son of God.”

A year later, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith opened its investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.

The Brink address, noted the resulting doctrinal assessment, “is a challenge not only to core Catholic beliefs; such a rejection of faith is also a serious source of scandal and is incompatible with religious life. … Some might see in Sr. Brink’s analysis a phenomenological snapshot of religious life today. But pastors of the Church should also see in it a cry for help.”

(Terry Mattingly directs the Washington Journalism Center at the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities. Contact him at tmattingly(at)cccu.org or http://www.tmatt.net.)

Pope stakes out church’s course entering 8th year

The Associated Press

Tuesday, May 1, 2012 | 3:21 a.m.

Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope on Tuesday after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists.

The coming year may see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict’s recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Tuesday marked the anniversary of the start of Benedict’s pontificate, which officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen “to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history.”

Seven years later, Benedict has certainly left a mark on the church, pressing a conservative interpretation of Vatican II’s key teachings, appointing like-minded bishops and making his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world, which he often laments, seems to think that it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest collaborators running the Vatican, insisting that Vatican II didn’t represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think but rather a renewal of the church’s core teachings and traditions.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The pope’s old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed a bishop to revise the conference’s statutes and review its programs and publications, and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope himself took to task a dissident group of priests in heavily Catholic Austria who have openly called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests, questioning whether their call for disobedience was more about imposing their own ideas on the church than renewing it.

At the same time, on the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.

The group, the Society of St. Pius X, broke from Rome after rejecting many of the teachings of Vatican II, particularly its outreach to Jews and people of other faiths, and the sanctioning of the New Mass in the vernacular that essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict has gone to tremendous lengths to reconcile with the group, fearing the expansion of a parallel, pre-conciliar church that already boasts more than 550 priests and 200 seminarians.

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: the Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X which had rejected Vatican II.

Top officials at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have said they were “stunned” by the Vatican decision and taken by surprise by its gravity. Online petitions supporting them have been launched, and one Jesuit author, the Rev. James Martin, has started a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

“Catholic sisters are my heroes: they’ve been my teachers, my mentors and my friends,” Martin said in an email. “The women represented by the LCWR fully embraced the changes that the church asked of them after the Second Vatican Council, revisiting their founding documents, throwing themselves into work with the poor, and reimagining community life, all while remaining faithful to their vows.”

Yet conservative Catholics have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching on issues such as homosexuality and a male-only clergy. The Vatican in its admonition of the LCWR complained that speakers at its assemblies often contradict or ignore core church teaching and that Catholic doctrine as a whole isn’t stressed enough in the conference’s member communities.

Conservatives have championed Benedict’s move to bring about a more orthodox faith to the church, even at the expense of popularity among liberals.

“Benedict understands his mission as custodian of the faith,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl Jr., an Opus Dei priest and professor of moral philosophy at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “The pope has little interest in opinion polling and focus groups. He is not going to adjust the doctrine according to popular opinion or majority belief. Benedict’s aim is to unite the church around the faith handed down by Jesus, the church’s founder.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reached out to both dissidents and members of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X in an anniversary editorial this weekend, urging unity as the pope begins his eighth year.

“It is our hope that dissenting groups will hear his invitation to be in communion with the church and receive this invitation with respect and attention, and with an understanding of its significance,” Lombardi wrote. And he added that he hoped the Vatican II anniversary “might be an occasion to promote the proper and objective understanding of the council as a ‘compass of the church of our time.’”

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Pope stakes out church’s course in his eighth year

The coming year may see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict’s recent moves to quell liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Tuesday marked the anniversary of the start of Benedict’s pontificate, which officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen “to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history.”

Seven years later, Benedict has certainly left a mark on the church, pressing a conservative interpretation of Vatican II’s key teachings, appointing like-minded bishops and making his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world, which he often laments, seems to think that it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest collaborators running the Vatican, insisting that Vatican II didn’t represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think but rather a renewal of the church’s core teachings and traditions.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The pope’s old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed a bishop to revise the conference’s statutes and review its programs and publications, and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope himself took to task a dissident group of priests in heavily Catholic Austria who have openly called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests, questioning whether their call for disobedience was more about imposing their own ideas on the church than renewing it.

At the same time, on the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.

The group, the Society of St. Pius X, broke from Rome after rejecting many of the teachings of Vatican II, particularly its outreach to Jews and people of other faiths, and the sanctioning of the New Mass in the vernacular that essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

Benedict has gone to tremendous lengths to reconcile with the group, fearing the expansion of a parallel, pre-conciliar church that already boasts more than 550 priests and 200 seminarians.

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: the Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X which had rejected Vatican II.

Top officials at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have said they were “stunned” by the Vatican decision and taken by surprise by its gravity. Online petitions supporting them have been launched, and one Jesuit author, the Rev. James Martin, has started a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

“Catholic sisters are my heroes: they’ve been my teachers, my mentors and my friends,” Martin said in an email. “The women represented by the LCWR fully embraced the changes that the church asked of them after the Second Vatican Council, revisiting their founding documents, throwing themselves into work with the poor, and reimagining community life, all while remaining faithful to their vows.”

Yet conservative Catholics have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching on issues such as homosexuality and a male-only clergy. The Vatican in its admonition of the LCWR complained that speakers at its assemblies often contradict or ignore core church teaching and that Catholic doctrine as a whole isn’t stressed enough in the conference’s member communities.

Conservatives have championed Benedict’s move to bring about a more orthodox faith to the church, even at the expense of popularity among liberals.

“Benedict understands his mission as custodian of the faith,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl Jr., an Opus Dei priest and professor of moral philosophy at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “The pope has little interest in opinion polling and focus groups. He is not going to adjust the doctrine according to popular opinion or majority belief. Benedict’s aim is to unite the church around the faith handed down by Jesus, the church’s founder.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reached out to both dissidents and members of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X in an anniversary editorial this weekend, urging unity as the pope begins his eighth year.

“It is our hope that dissenting groups will hear his invitation to be in communion with the church and receive this invitation with respect and attention, and with an understanding of its significance,” Lombardi wrote. And he added that he hoped the Vatican II anniversary “might be an occasion to promote the proper and objective understanding of the council as a ‘compass of the church of our time.’ ”

Pope stakes out church’s course entering 8th year

VATICAN CITY — Pope Benedict XVI began his eighth year as pope on Tuesday after spending the waning days of his seventh driving home his view of the Catholic Church, with a divisive crackdown on dissenters and an equally divisive opening to a fringe group of traditionalists.

The coming year will likely see more of the same as the Vatican gears up to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Second Vatican Council, the 1962-65 church meetings that reshaped the Catholic Church and are key to understanding this papacy and Benedict’s recent moves to stamp out liberal dissent and promote a more conservative brand of Catholicism.

Tuesday marked the anniversary of the start of Benedict’s pontificate, which officially began April 24, 2005, with an inaugural Mass in St. Peter’s Square. The pope promised then not to impose his own will on the church but to rather listen “to the word and the will of the Lord, to be guided by him, so that he himself will lead the church at this hour of our history.”

Seven years later, Benedict has certainly left a mark on the church, pressing a conservative interpretation of Vatican II’s key teachings, appointing like-minded bishops and making his priority the revitalization of traditional Catholicism in a world, which he often laments, seems to think that it can do without God.

He set out many of those priorities in a December 2005 speech to his closest collaborators running the Vatican, insisting that Vatican II didn’t represent a break from the past as many liberal-minded Catholics would like to think but rather a renewal of the church’s core teachings and traditions.

The Vatican last week put those words into action, cracking down on the largest umbrella group of nuns in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The pope’s old office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, appointed a bishop to revise the conference’s statutes and review its programs and publications, and accused the group of taking positions that undermine church teaching on the priesthood and homosexuality, while promoting “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

Two weeks earlier, the pope himself lashed out at a dissident group of priests in heavily Catholic Austria who have openly called for ordaining women and relaxing the celibacy requirement for priests, questioning whether their call for disobedience was more about imposing their own ideas on the church than renewing it.

At the same time, on the very day it announced the crackdown on the U.S. nuns, the Holy See said it was nearing agreement to bring an ultra-traditionalist conservative group of Catholics back into communion with Rome after two decades of schism.

The group, the Society of St. Pius X, broke from Rome after rejecting many of the teachings of Vatican II, particularly its outreach to Jews and people of other faiths, and the sanctioning of the New Mass in the vernacular that essentially replaced the old Latin Mass.

To critics, the coincidence was remarkable: the Vatican was in a way rejecting the U.S. nuns who had embraced Vatican II and its call to go out into the world to serve the poor, while embracing the Society of St. Pius X which had rejected Vatican II.

Top officials at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious have said they were “stunned” by the decision and taken by surprise by its gravity. Online petitions supporting them have been launched, and one Jesuit author, the Rev. James Martin, has started a Twitter campaign, WhatSistersMeanToMe, highlighting individual nuns who had an impact on him and others.

“Catholic sisters are my heroes: they’ve been my teachers, my mentors and my friends,” Martin said in an email. “The women represented by the LCWR fully embraced the changes that the church asked of them after the Second Vatican Council, revisiting their founding documents, throwing themselves into work with the poor, and reimagining community life, all while remaining faithful to their vows.”

Yet conservative Catholics have long complained that the majority of sisters in the U.S. have grown too liberal and flout church teaching. They have championed Benedict’s move to bring about a more orthodox faith to the church, even at the expense of popularity among liberals.

“Benedict understands his mission as custodian of the faith,” said the Rev. Robert Gahl, an Opus Dei priest and professor of moral theology at Rome’s Pontifical Holy Cross University. “The pope has little interest in opinion polling and focus groups. He is not going to adjust the doctrine according to popular opinion or majority belief. Benedict’s aim is to unite the church around the faith handed down by Jesus, the church’s founder.”

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, reached out to both dissidents and members of the schismatic Society of St. Pius X in an anniversary editorial this weekend, urging unity as the pope begins his eighth year.

“It is our hope that dissenting groups will hear his invitation to be in communion with the church and receive this invitation with respect and attention, and with an understanding of its significance,” Lombardi wrote. And he added that he hoped the Vatican II anniversary “might be an occasion to promote the proper and objective understanding of the council as a ’compass of the church of our time.”’