The Good Sisters

By Kristine Ward
National Survivor Advocates Coalition
April 28, 2012

http://nationalsurvivoradvocatescoalition.wordpress.com/editorials/

There has been a great deal of ink, broadcast air, and cyberspace focused in the past week on the Vatican's move against the women religious in the United States as they are organized in the Leadership Conference of Religious Women (LCRW).

There is great feeling both nostalgic and immediate expressed in the support of the vowed religious women in all approaches: the men are from Mars, women are from Venus theme, the walk with the underprivileged, the marginalized, and the poor versus the disconnected mansion men, or the social justice versus the hard right guide to sexuality.

We do not raise our voice to condemn, hurt, or deflate the sisters for God knows we have seen, know and sympathize with their plight because of the courage of the survivors of sexual abuse who have informed the Church and the society at large of the dealings of the hierarchy.

It is because of the survivors and the families of those who committed suicide that we raise our voice in the midst of the discussion about the nuns.

We raise it to ask the sisters as they pray, reflect, gather and seek to dialogue in their current crisis to come clean with the sexual abuse by nuns and do right by the survivors and their families.

We believe that if five ten communities of religious sisters had stood up, ramrod straight and unblinkingly strong when the third incarnation, let alone the first and second, of this horrific scandal burst into the general consciousness in Boston in 2002 that we would be miles ahead of where we are today in resolving this crisis – and certainly the survivors who are giving the heartbreaking and heart wrenching testimony that is unfolding in Philadelphia after the need for two grand jury reports could have been spared.

Nor would SNAP be standing near friendless with little financial resources as the Bishops bear down upon them in a new and fresh legal assault.

Yes, individual sisters have stood up, rallied to survivors, marched in front of cathedrals and testified in legislative hearings, most prominently, deliberately and perseveringly Sister Maureen Paul Turlish but this was not a wholesale response nor did it reach deep and wide into communities.

This is made all the more poignant because the abused, those who committed suicide and those who are today at risk are the very children that members of these religious communities taught and teach in parochial schools through this country, work for their full dignity as refugees and immigrants, strive to provide health care for, ladle food for in soup kitchens, find jobs for as returning veterans who suffer from the same PTSD as survivors, as well as nursed and nurse in their institutions, and raised in orphanages.

These were not strangers or the other; these were and are their very own.

We wish to make our position clear that we do not oppose the strong, rapid, and solid response of solidarity the sisters appear to be receiving from the laity – of which they are a part.

We acknowledge and applaud this support for its own value and because indeed we wish with all our hearts that had been or would be now the response of Catholics for survivors of sexual abuse and the families of those who committed suicide.

But it is important and imperative that in this time and at this juncture in the Church's life we must say that while being bullied, being treated rudely, and being investigated is offensive and insulting, it is not on the same par as an innocent and vulnerable child's body being raped, sodomized, forced into a crucifixion poses and made to mock the God that was systematically being taken from them in the vilest of ways. And heaped upon that when the victim finds the courage and strength to go to religious authorities, bishops in particular, to keep others from the same fate, the perpetrators are protected and crimes are hidden.

To say that the sisters are ata critical crossroad is an understatement.

They know, as we do, that it is their properties more likely than their policies that today are in the bulls eye of Rome. It is no coincidence that the current situation collides with the steeple grab of parishes hitting a major obstacle in Cleveland. Bishop Richard Lennon must back down and re-open the 12 parishes on which he hung closed signs with the bulldozer disregard he honed in Boston as an auxiliary of Cardinal Law's. In St. Louis the Missouri Supreme Court sided with the trusteeship organization of the parish of St. Stanislaus Parish and bluntly told the archbishop that he does not own the $9 million assets of this parish no matter how much excommunicating gets waived about or how much hold he thinks he has over the parishioners souls.

The religious sisters hold and manage valuable properties in the United States and a number of the congregations are involved in the lucrative business of health care both in hospitals and nursing homes.

If Rome's worst way prevails and canonical status is taken from the sisters' congregations, all, some, a few, will lose their properties and the threat of that the Vatican knows is more than enough to give the sisters pause.

Pause enough to heed and heel or pause to seize the moment in true freedom and heal the Church itself only time will tell us.

As the sisters take the initial step toward an answer to Rome and its trinity of overseers in late May and go forward with their assembly in August we sincerely yet urgently and forthrightly call upon them to address the issue of sexual abuse by members of their communities.

With the same voice we ask all Catholics when will they stand with the victims of sexual abuse with the same volume, solidarity, numbers and sense of injustice as they show to and express for the nuns?

Contact: KristineWard@hotmail.com