UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Ken Briggs | Dec. 7, 2014 NCR Today
The Vatican’s summary report on the grueling investigation of U.S. nuns is just days away and my unsolicited and superfluous guess is that it will try to put the whole mess to rest by offering at least half an olive branch.
The ordeal has dragged on for five years at great expense especially to communities related to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, impugning their integrity and forcing them into a defensive position. Catholics of good will, including the preponderance of American lay people who support them, have been embarrassed again by their church’s bullying and demeaning of nuns and, by association, all women.
Nobody has won anything by these implications of disloyalty and the clamps placed on the LCWR have caused no small degree of outrage and despair.
So in that sense, the damage has already been done and the Vatican can feel free to covertly declare “problem solved,” heap a measure of disingenuous praise on nuns for the work their constituencies have stoutly rallied behind, and move on essentially with no change to the system of total male control. Add to that perhaps a means intended to allow sisters to save face. The status quo will probably remain intact, except that Rome has reasserted anew that it claims the right to monitor and intervene in sisters’ affairs.
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