UNITED STATES
dotCommonweal
April 30, 2012
Posted by J. Peter Nixon
In its recent statement regarding the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith noted that its principal means of assessing the doctrinal fidelity of the LCWR was a review of keynote and leadership addresses at the LCWR annual assembly. Many of the documents in question are publicly available on the LCWR web site. Given the controversy, I wanted to read some of these documents myself.
What I found was not what I expected. With all the concerns the CDF raised about “radical feminism,” I assumed I would encounter many stirring denunciations of patriarchy and criticisms of the Church’s teaching that the sacrament of Holy Orders be restricted to men.
Intimations of those positions find their way into the documents here and there. At most, however, they are a minor concern. The core struggle revealed in these addresses is an emotional and spiritual one: how to live out a religious life in communities whose vision of Church—a vision that once seemed a real possibility—is increasingly a road not taken.
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