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	"To Be Who We Are and to Speak Our Truth" By Michelle Krupa The Times-Picayune August 12, 2009 http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/frontpage/index.ssf?/base/news-13/1250054569323500.xml&coll=1 The nation's largest umbrella group for Roman Catholic sisters opened its annual meeting Tuesday in New Orleans, marking the first formal gathering of members since the Vatican launched two unprecedented inquiries into their communities. Officers of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, whose 1,500 members represent about 95 percent of 67,000 sisters in the U.S., said that in addition to public events they will convene behind closed doors this week to gauge response to the ongoing "doctrinal assessment" of their group launched early this year by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. That office, once known as the Holy Office of the Inquisition, enforces official doctrine in all Roman Catholic organizations. The probe centers on a directive the conference got from Rome in 2001 to adhere more closely to church teachings that bar women from ordination, consider homosexuality an "objective disorder" and declare the Catholic Church the true path to salvation, according to portions of a letter from a cardinal leading the inquiry that was posted at the LCWR's Web site . Also likely to stir discussion will be the ongoing Apostolic Visitation of U.S. women's religious institutes. Begun late last year, the stated purpose of the initiative -- to assess communities' "quality of the life" -- has drawn skepticism. The probe targets religious orders whose members work in schools, clinics and other public settings, not nuns living in cloistered communities. The LCWR's national board has called the "purpose and implications" of the exercise "unclear," though it also noted that the review could provide an "occasion for the celebration of achievements." Many sisters -- the preferred term for order members serving in public, now typically without habits -- this week will get their first opportunity to see a 12-page working document, issued July 14 from Rome, that describes in detail how the church will handle the remaining phases of the Apostolic Visitation. The process will include confidential visits of selected sites beginning next spring. To date, the LCWR largely has demurred in responding to the probe into its own activities. But Sister J. Lora Dambroski, the LCWR's president, said in an interview Tuesday that both inquiries will provoke considerable discussion among roughly 800 sisters gathered at the Hilton New Orleans Riverside Hotel for the four-day summit. "I think they are not feeling diminished by this," said Dambroski, of the Pittsburgh-based Sisters of St. Francis of the Providence of God. "The energy is high, and I have to say, it's positive." Dambroski said the sisters, drawn from every corner of the country, may well settle on an official rejoinder to the Vatican investigations.
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