BENEDICT XVI: NEWS, PAPAL TEXTS, PHOTOS AND COMMENTARY

Yesterday, I remarked on how Vatican Radio's English service slanted its report on Pope Francis's address to a conference of women religious to underplay his message to them that they must be obedient to the Church Magisterium. I had hoped to add the coverage of the major news agencies, but I could not find any. No! Was it possible they would decide not to report on It when all MSM had been hanging on a thread waiting for what they all openly hoped would be Pope Francis relenting about doctrinal discipline? Well, Reuters and the New York Times appear to have ignored the event completely - how could they possibly ruin their narrative of this best of all possible Catholic worlds (at least in their view) under Pope Francis? AP did have this brief report - it is almost comical:

Pope tells sisters:
'Do not be old maids'


VATICAN CITY, May 8, 2013 (AP) - Pope Francis has told nuns from around the world that they must be spiritual mothers and not "old maids."

Francis also warned the sisters against using their vocations for personal ambition, saying priests and sisters who do so "do more harm to the church."

Francis has complained frequently about such "careerism" in the Church — a buzzword that is frequently used to describe Holy See bureaucrats. [Benedict often preached against it, always to bishops and priests, remember, AP????]

The Pope made the comments during an audience Wednesday with about 800 sisters attending an assembly of the International Union of Superiors General, which gathers the leaders of women's religious orders from some 75 countries.

Not a line about obedience to the Magisterium! But the ff is news:

The meeting came before Francis' general audience in St. Peter's Square, where in a break with tradition, he walked around a quadrant of the square greeting pilgrims. [And John Paul II and Benedict XVI never did that at all???]



Googling about for a Reuters story on yesterday's address to the women religious, I found this instead - something I had not seen from a month ago, and yet another story about, in effect, Pope Francis discovering for all of us that the world is round....



From the New York Times, with respect to the search specification "New York Times story - Pope Francis address to women religious May 8, 2013" - ZIP, ZILCH, NADA!

P.S. Here, on the other hand, is the featured reaction story from the Fishwrap which has been the most militant advocate for the LCRW and Catholic dissidents, in general, and among the most sanguine in predicting that Pope Francis would be lenient with the sisters on their doctrinal indiscipline. Sure, there is disappointment, but there is not an iota of the vitriol and bitterness that has marked the Fishwrap writers' treatment of Benedict XVI on anything, but especially, his insistence on doctrinal discipline... The headline is inept, but I am keeping it as is.

For the LCWR,
the more the papacy changes,
the more it stays the same
by Jamie Manson

May. 9, 2013

The more something changes, the more it stays the same. It's a cliché, yes, but it seems to be an increasingly apt one to apply to the situation between women religious and the Vatican.

For those watching the situation unfold since April 2012, when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith mandated that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) be reformed by three U.S. bishops, this week promised to offer some explanations about where the new Pope stands on the issue.

Pope Francis even met with members of the International Union of Superiors General (UISG), a group of nearly 2,000 leaders of women religious throughout the world who have been meeting in Rome all week. [The Vatican figure was 800, not 2,000.]

There have been high hopes for Pope Francis among those left spiritually bruised by the papacy of Pope Benedict XVI. Francis paid his own hotel bill after the conclave, took the bus with the rest of the bishops, refused to move into the papal apartment, claimed to want a "poor church," and celebrated Holy Thursday at a juvenile detention facility where he washed the feet of 10 men and two women. [Serves you right, all you who mistake external signs as necessarily indicative of a Pope's serious intentions, and who forget that the primary duty of a Pope, any Pope, is to promote, uphold and defend the deposit of faith as it has been transmitted to him from the time of the Apostles through the centuries.]

But a month after his election, a fly got caught in the balm Francis was pouring over the church's body. LCWR lepders were informed in a meeting with the doctrinal congregation's lead cleric, Archbishop Gerhard Müller, that the new Pope had reaffirmed the mandated reform of the their organization.

Many Catholics who support both the LCWR and the new pope were at a loss to understand the news. Some imagined Francis simply wasn't up to speed about the injustices behind the mandate. Speculation ran high that Müller hadn't even spoken to Francis about the issue in any depth and that, somehow, Müller was speaking on behalf of Francis without the new Pope's approval. [Trying to rationalize a Papal decision you cannot accept by blaming everyone else for it!]

There was hope this week that all this conjecture was accurate when Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, head of the Vatican's Congregation for the Religious, told the sisters at the UISG meeting that the doctrinal congregation made its fateful decision without his knowledge and that it caused him "much pain". [Yeah, the self-serving, grandstanding cardinal! BTW, how come Pope Francis has not yet met with him separately as he already has with other Curial congregation heads? One would think such a meeting might have been scheduled before the UISG conference this week - what better occasion? Obviously, the Pope did not think it was necessary. Or, why did Braz de Aviz not take the initiative and request a meeting before the UISG conference?]

Less than a day later after his stunning admission, Cardinal Braz de Aviz was apparently taken to the doctrinal congregation's woodshed. The Vatican quickly released a statement claiming that the media (namely, the report in NCR) had misinterpreted Braz de Aviz's words and that Braz de Aviz and Müller "reaffirmed their common commitment to the renewal of Religious Life, and particularly to the Doctrinal Assessment of the LCWR and the program of reform it requires, in accordance with the wishes of the Holy Father." [Too bad the Vatican statement was quite inept and failed to answer Braz de Aviz's complaint directly, even if it did say that doctrinal discipline is the competence alone of the CDF. Which, of course, these militant 'we-men' will never acknowledge.]

The statement made two realities clear. First, as has typically been the case throughout the church's history, the doctrinal congregation wields more power than any other congregation in the Curia. [Lady, it has nothing to do with who has 'more power' - in this particular case, only the CDF (with the approval of the Pope) has the competence to decide on doctrinal questions.]

Second, Francis is more familiar with the saga between the doctrinal congregation and LCWR than some had hoped. [So, does that not undercut the argument that he agreed with the CDF only because he had not been given all the facts? Which, to begin with, was an insulting assumption to make about him.]

In a press conference the following day, Braz de Aviz claimed not to have seen this statement from the Vatican [REALLY!] and affirmed NCR's report as "precise." He said the only idea that got lost in translation was his explanation of authority.

Braz de Aviz went on to reassert what Pope Francis had said earlier in the day about authority and obedience during his speech to the UISG.

"Christ and the Church. The two have to be together. For some people, Christ is fine, but the Church isn't. You can't separate the two," the cardinal told the press. [The clueless cardinal! Now chiming in "Me-too!" after the Pope had spoken. Isn't he aware an LCRW leader infamously said that they - the dissenting sisters - are 'beyond the Church and beyond Jesus'????]

Braz de Aviz was echoing Francis's statement to women religious: "It is an absurd dichotomy to think of living with Jesus but without the church, of following Jesus outside of the church, of loving Jesus without loving the church."

Francis has offered this idea more than once over the last few weeks, but when directed at women religious, as it was on Wednesday, it takes on a particular weight. [And what made them think before yesterday that the statements might not apply to the LCRW at all??? They really do think they are a privileged class who must be exempt from the rules by which all other Catholics live! Please, if you can't agree to doctrinal discipline, leave the Church and set up your own 'church' or whatever, where you can say and do as you please, a 'we-menarchy' in which the only role for males will be to serve as errand boys and doormats.]

At the UISG meeting the previous day, Congregation of Jesus Sr. Martha Zechmeister, an Austrian professor of systematic theology, told the gathering of 800 women superiors, "Religious obedience ultimately can only respond to God's authority. In the traditional language, fulfilling the will of God is the only legitimate reason for religious obedience." [And isn't the Church Magisterium supposed to interpret the 'will of God' for the faithful??? Without a guiding Magisterium, everyone would be free to do as he pleases, as these dissenting sisters have been doing for the past three decades or so!]

It is a sentiment we've heard often since the doctrinal congregation's crackdown on LCWR, and one for which the new Pope apparently has little sympathy. Francis makes it clear that it is impossible to follow Jesus and not follow the Church. In Francis' eyes, it seems, to love and obey God is to love and obey the Church. [Because, as the second sentence of Lumen gentium says - if you people ever bothered to read the Vatican-II documents - "the Church is in Christ like a sacrament or as a sign and ]instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race". She is not just any aggrupation that claims to be "we are Church"!]

Though Francis was the first pope to meet with the UISG [Was he? I must check that out!], those who expected a dialogue with the new pontiff were likely disappointed. Francis offered a 15-minute reflection on religious life, then shook hands and exchanged brief pleasantries with the UISG's executive board and staff.

As NCR's Joshua J. McElwee reported from Rome, Francis's speech "focused on three themes, telling the sister leaders to keep their lives centered on Christ, to think of authority in terms of service, and that they must hold a 'feeling with the Church that finds its filial expression in fidelity to the Magisterium.'"

In other words, the way to be a true daughter of the Church is to be faithful and obedient to the teachings of the Pope and bishops.

With ideas that are no different from those of Pope John Paul II and Benedict, Francis told the sisters they should accept a "fertile chastity" because women religious are "mothers" who "generate spiritual children in the church."

The new pope maintained his and his predecessors' belief in the "special" (but not equal) role of women in the church, telling the sisters that without them, the church "would be missing maternity, affection, tenderness." He went on to tell them to put themselves "in an attitude of adoration and service."

If there is a point on which both Francis and the sisters agree, it is the importance of "touching the flesh of the poor Christ in the humble, the poor, the sick, and in children."

But Francis does not seem to understand that it is precisely because women religious regularly touch that wounded body of Christ that they have such rich theological imaginations and a longing to delve into the spiritual questions of our time. Their intensely sacramental lives of service help clarify their priorities in their pursuits of justice and mercy. [Oh please! John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis never touched that wounded body in many ways??? One of the gravest wounds they have had to endure for Christ is precisely this holier-than-thou and quintessentially selfish attitude that dissidents like the LCRW and their advocates are perpetrating! It's almost as if they are using their charitable activities as an excuse for justifying their doctrinal indiscipline. That's really crass.]

All that women religious have done -- the work they have committed to, the leadership style they have developed and the theologians they invite to their meetings -- has been inspired by their ministry to the broken body of Christ. What Francis and the doctrinal congregation may interpret as a "deviation from doctrine" or a "failure to obey" are really just the fruits of women religious fulfilling their vocation as a prophetic life form.

Perhaps the greatest irony is that the Vatican is punishing women religious for failing to strictly adhere to doctrines that they have had no voice in developing and no role in shaping -- precisely because they are women.

The look and feel of the papacy may be changing under Francis, but the fundamental understanding magisterium's authority and the requirement that the women obey the men, I'm afraid, will continue to stay the same.

UGH and DOUBLE UGH, and let me RETCH!!! So all their huffing and puffing is really in the service of militant 'we-menism'. These are the people who give women a bad name. May the Holy Spirit work his graces on them.