Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious is holding its annual meeting this week in St. Louis. The LCWR represents about 80 percent of women’s Catholic religious orders in the United States and is the group that the Vatican has recently expressed concern about on account of how far it has strayed from a clear profession of Catholic teaching on any number of subjects. It's a problem that has been going on for decades, but one that only recently was dealt with by the Vatican.
The media love the LCWR. (Here's my look at the latest New York Times puff piece on the group.) They're the group that provided cover for Catholic Democrats to vote for Obamacare over the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' objections. Their conferences are known for pushing the outer edge of the envelope when it comes to orthodox teaching. Or busting through the envelope, actually.
There was the year the speaker said it was time to move "beyond Jesus." This week they're hearing from Barbara Marx Hubbard, described by the National Catholic Reporter as an "evolutionary thinker" who is "not Catholic or part of any mainstream religion." Rather, she has "faith in the future":
She will bring this message of hope to LCWR when she delivers the keynote address at the organization’s annual meeting Tuesday through Friday in St. Louis. The audience is likely to still be reeling from the criticism in a Vatican assessment that has shaken communities of sisters throughout the country.
“It’s a message of hope, of cooperation and alignment,” Hubbard said of the ideas she will explore in her speech. “How can we align that impulse to the deeper impulse of Christ in evolution, of God in evolution?”
Hubbard, who spoke recently in front of a couple of congregations of Catholic sisters, said she felt that her impulse to look toward the future and toward evolution was aligned with the “spiritual impulse of faith and trust and love” that she sees in the sisters, who are always working to meet society’s needs.
I actually have no idea what any of that means. And I'm shocked -- shocked! -- that the Vatican might not be pleased with decades of conferences hosting speakers such as this.
Anyway, over at America, there's a report of something very surprising. I mentioned above that the LCWR represents leaders from roughly 80% of American Catholic women's religious orders. One of the issues that has been raised about this group is that it is aging rapidly while the smaller and more traditional religious orders -- ones that wear traditional religious dress as opposed to the attire you might see above -- are experiencing some growth.
Or are they? America claims explosive evidence to the contrary. The authors of the study introduce their explosive evidence here:
The announcement last April of the results of the doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has provoked strong reactions inside and outside the Catholic Church in the United States. In the process, some commentators have made assertions about the demographics of religious life in the United States that are not based in fact. Regrettably, such misinformed statements create dichotomies that not only mask the complexity of religious reality, but are patently false. In an article entitled “The Sisters: Two Views,” published in June on the Ethics and Public Policy Center Web site, for example, George Weigel wrote: “In any case, there can be no denying that the ‘renewal’ of women’s religious life led by the L.C.W.R. and its affiliated orders has utterly failed to attract new vocations. The L.C.W.R. orders are dying, while several religious orders that disaffiliated from the L.C.W.R. are growing.”
We believe that the church and the U.S. public deserve an accurate picture, devoid of distortions, ideology and fatalism, of the complex demographics of religious institutes.
And to substantiate their charge, they show that the traditional orders -- which represent about 14% of the women religious -- currently have the same number of new applicants as the LCWR behemoth.
Now, if a really large group is attracting the same number of people as a really small group, that is fascinating. But it's not fascinating in the way the authors seem to think.
Is this a problem of just not understanding how math works? Or trying to advance an agenda at all costs? As one commenter to the piece says:
The numbers, at first blush, are impressive and surprising.
But on closer examination, shouldn't the LCWR figures be a lot higher? The fact that they aren't indicates that CMSWR, despite its relative small size, is astonishingly robust.
What does that say about vocations to the religious life today?
And what does it say about where young women today are drawn to serve Christ?
What's particularly disappointing about this is that I saw various journalists on social media link to this study as proof against claims about the aging non-habit-wearing orders being in decline.
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Comments:
Jun '10
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
"Faith in the future" sounds like the leading piece of dogma of the utopian religion that man can create heaven on earth. (Despite thousands of years of evidence to the contrary).
Or perhaps, it's a manifestation of what C. S. Lewis called "Christianity-and-water":
I'm sorry, but it is the abyss that lies "Beyond Jesus."
Edited on August 8, 2012 at 4:45pmSep '10
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
Journalists are inclined, like most people, to believe the interpretation that they want to believe. Also, they're journalists. They weren't selected for their quantitative skills.
Mar '11
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
"Moving beyond Jesus", whatever that means, is not something that can be called orthodox or even recognizably Christian.
The Vatican was right to demand that Catholic Nuns actually believe in and live out their Catholicism.
Whatever my disagreements with Benedict, I think he clear-sightedly understands that the Church has lost some of its moral authority by covering up abuse and deviating from its core teachings. It will necessarily have to go through a period of inward-looking, reform, reaffirmation of its orthodox teachings, and consolidation, if it is to regain its moral authority. That may mean taking its lumps with regard to mass attendance, or even the unpleasant spectacle of holding heretical Nuns accountable.
Jan '11
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
Well, you have to be careful, because there are lots of issues involved.
For instance, there are lots of women "religious communities" that only have a few members. They were started by small groups of sisters who were already part of larger orders, who then became friendly and wanted to live in community and pray together. Those communities, naturally, don't have any substantial recruiting offices. It's not surprising that they wouldn't have many recruits. They don't have new recruits because they're not really seeking them.
The big (pardon the pun) "mother-ship" orders, like the Sisters of Mercy or the Mighty Macs, have organized vocational offices. Many of those orders are more institutional, and naturally, more traditional.
I'm not sure you can draw an apples-to-apples comparison between orders based simply on the number of recruits. It's more complicated than that.
May '10
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
As someone in another thread said a few days ago, "Math is HAAAARDDD!"
When you want to make a point that's contradicted by the facts one must obfuscate those facts. The hidden fact here is the total number of orders affiliated with each group.
The LCWR has over 1,500 affiliated orders. At 74 applicants each order is attracting less than one half of one percent in new applicants.
The CMSW has only 108 members which means that 68% of their organizations could have attracted a new applicant.
(That is assuming that no order received more than one applicant, which of course is statistically impossible. It's just an average.)
Edited on August 8, 2012 at 7:30pmJan '11
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
For the record, though, if you want the imprimatur of the church, you have to represent the teaching of the church.
If you want to teach your own ideas, go right ahead - but don't pretend that your teaching has any authority. As far as I'm concerned, that's just fraud. You can't portray yourself as having credentials to teach doctrine if the one who issues credentials denies your right to do so.
Jun '10
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
The "80% of Catholic nuns" is a bit misleading in the same way that the mainstream press lets "police chiefs" speak for police officers. The police chiefs are deep into politics, by necessity--the reason they rose to the top in the first place--while their officers are not very political, and probably don't agree with the chiefs on things like gun-control. The LCWR is not much different. The LCWR leadership (chosen largely by seniority) are the '60s Baby Boomers that your mother warned you about. They started in Civil Rights (good thing) and just kept going left (bad thing.) They're the ones that sought the power over the years. If the Vatican doesn't solve the LCWR leadership problem itself, time will. They're old, and the calendar keeps turning.
Jul '10
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
If you have faith in the future, does that mean you are a libertarian nun?
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
It strikes me that the LCWR should re-affiliate with the American Episcopal Church. It, too, used to be Christian.
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
Ah, Paul, you seem to be recovering nicely!
Jun '12
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
Mollie, thanks for the reminder that I need to read getreligion.org more.
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
Becoming a Missionary of Charity takes nine years. Postulants may own virtually nothing but three saris, a pair of sandals, a crucifix, and a rosary. And instead of devoting themselves to political activism, the nuns care for the dying.
Mother Teresa founded the Missionaries less than seven decades ago--the day before yesterday, as the Church measures these things. The order now numbers more than 4,500 nuns in more than 100 countries.
Just sayin'.
Edited on August 8, 2012 at 8:22pmJun '12
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
Members of the LCWR need to be excommunicated. Seriously. As Prof. Rahe said, they can always go Episcopal. For them to even claim the name Catholic is ludicrous.
Mar '12
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
One of the virtues associated with belief in Christ Jesus is that of patience. God did come to save the world, not to condemn it. However CJS is right. After a while, patience should be exhausted and these women should be recognized as non-Catholic in thought, word and deed, which in fact they are.
Mar '11
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
If you're not going to follow even the most basic tenets of your religion, why should you have any official position in it at all? Especially a leadership position. When someone does something like this, and it's clear that they're working against you, kick 'em out.
Sep '10
Re: Lies, Damned Lies and Nunsense
I had to read this twice to get it.
It may be the quote from America that did it. Sentences like
"Regrettably, such misinformed statements create dichotomies that not only mask the complexity of religious reality, but are patently false."
make me long for something like:
These statements have some truthiness, but are not true.
or maybe:
This is just crap.