No hope and change for LCWR under Pope Francis.

wo days after the elec­tion of Pope Fran­cis, Thomas C. Fox of the So-Called Catholic Reporter called atten­tion to an “upcom­ing seg­ment” of 60 Min­utes; CBS described it this way:

One of the press­ing prob­lems new­ly elect­ed Pope Fran­cis may want to address is the dis­il­lu­sion­ment among Amer­i­can nuns. Many were shocked last year when the group that rep­re­sents most of them was rep­ri­mand­ed by the Vat­i­can, which says that the nuns’ lib­er­al ideas were under­min­ing the Church.

Accord­ing to Mr. Fox, the 60 Min­utes seg­ment “comes at a time of con­sid­er­able uncer­tain­ty in the church.” He goes on to sur­mise that “With­out a CDF pre­fect, the author­i­ty of Seat­tle Arch­bish­op Peter Sar­tain, who offi­cial­ly serves as the Vat­i­can ‘arch­bish­op del­e­gate’ for LCWR[,] is in ques­tion, at the very least.”

fox’s uncertainty resolved

Sar­tain it is, how­ev­er, that the LCWR (and Mr. Fox of So-Called) can be “uncer­tain” no longer. On his blog at Patheos, Dea­con Greg Kan­dra quotes a state­ment from the Vat­i­can regard­ing a meet­ing between the CDF, the LCWR, and Abp. Sar­tain him­self.

Accord­ing to the state­ment, CDF pre­fect Ger­hard Muller “high­light­ed the teach­ing of the Sec­ond Vat­i­can Coun­cil regard­ing the impor­tant mis­sion of Reli­gious to pro­mote a vision of eccle­sial com­mu­nion found­ed on faith in Jesus Christ and the teach­ings of the Church as faith­ful­ly taught through the ages under the guid­ance of the Mag­is­teri­um (cf. Lumen Gen­tium nn. 43–47). … For this rea­son, [reli­gious] Con­fer­ences are con­sti­tut­ed by and remain under the direc­tion of the Holy See (cf. Code of Canon Law, cann. 708–709).

Final­ly, [Abp.] Muller informed the [LCWR] that he had recent­ly dis­cussed the Doc­tri­nal Assess­ment with Pope Fran­cis, who reaf­firmed [its] find­ings … and the pro­gram of reform for his Con­fer­ence of Major Supe­ri­ors.

The Vat­i­can state­ment could as eas­i­ly have cit­ed Pope John Paul II’s apos­tolic exhor­ta­tion Vita Con­se­cra­ta:

A dis­tinc­tive aspect of eccle­sial com­mu­nion is alle­giance of mind and heart to the Mag­is­teri­um of the Bish­ops, an alle­giance which must be lived hon­est­ly and clear­ly tes­ti­fied to before the Peo­ple of God by all con­se­crat­ed per­sons, espe­cial­ly those involved in the­o­log­i­cal research, teach­ing, pub­lish­ing, cat­e­ch­esis[,] and the use of the means of social com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

It seems to me self-evi­dent, let them deny it who will, that the very point of a reli­gion is to advance claims about the Truth. Doc­trine mat­ters. With­out that, you may be any num­ber of things, but you’re not Catholic. And it is not good to have the laity in the pews con­fused about these points. That is why John Paul II was so at pains to point out the need for “alle­giance of mind and heart” to what the Church has taught. That is par­tic­u­lar­ly so for those in reli­gious life. They are the face of the Church to the world.

orthodoxy shock

So I am not sure why it is that the LCWR is said to have been “shocked”—shocked, shocked I say!—by the Doc­tri­nal Assess­ment (DA) of the CDF. The Church has kept no secret about its teach­ing on, to name just two key points, abor­tion and con­tra­cep­tion. Per­haps the shock can be explained by say­ing that there have (with­out ques­tion) been dis­ci­pli­nary prob­lems with­in the Church for some time, and it could be that the LCWR thought they could just go on in heresy with­out ever being called on it.

Let them be “uncer­tain” on this point no longer. The CDF made its assess­ment under Pope Bene­dict, and Fran­cis is not going to change any of it. His reaf­fir­ma­tion makes that as clear as day.

God bless Pope Fran­cis.

updates

1. Fr. Z also dis­cuss­es here and here.

2. The left­ist rag Squawk­ing Points Memo is out­raged, to the sur­prise of no one. On that site, Nicole Win­field dusts off the alarmist descrip­tion of the DA as a “crack­down.” Some­how I sus­pect­ed it would not be long before the left­ists turned on Pope Fran­cis.

3. The LCWR issued their own terse state­ment here.

4. The shocked left­ist despon­den­cy con­tin­ues. Cathy Lynn Gross­man at USA Today mourns that the “hon­ey­moon between progressive[s] … and Pope Fran­cis … may have end­ed” by the pope’s will­ing­ness to reaf­firm the “sting­ing rebuke of most U.S. nuns.” [N.B., the LCWR is far from “most U.S. nuns,” but good luck con­vinc­ing these peo­ple of that.] Ms. Gross­man goes on to use all the stan­dard buzz-phras­es: the “con­tro­ver­sial report” that was “a scan­dal,” the need for “mis­sion integri­ty” in the LCWR, the “polit­i­cal cen­sure.” [Yada yada yada.]

Expect this kind of bewail­ing and breast-beat­ing among the far-left to con­tin­ue.