Denver Archbishop Recalls "Progressive" Nuns to Obedience to the Church

[Lepanto]

I’m actually amazed that Archbishop Chaput was somehow permitted to speak to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).

Maybe just as well…the LCWR will be extinct within another generation.

lifesitenews.com/ldn/2008/aug/08080806.html

 

[Br_Mark]

Dear Lepanto,

I always find it amazing that we all choose our “resources” to support our view of reality.

I always find it most helpful to go directly to the source to find out the “correct” information and not someones interpetation of said reality.

While Archbishop Chaput did speak at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious he did not “recall “progressive” nuns to Obedence” ; the site that you referred to also got it wrong by stating that Chaput was a Franciscan, he’s a Capuchin.

In the Peace of Christ,

Br Mark, OSB

 

[bpbasilphx]

**the site that you referred to also got it wrong by stating that Chaput was a Franciscan, he’s a Capuchin.
**

I thought that Capuchins were part of the Franciscan family.

 

[Br_Mark]

Dear bpbasilphx,

You are correct, Capuchins are part of the Fransican family, but never the less they are not Franciscans. Much like Cistercians follow the rule of St Benedict, but never the less they are not OSB.

In Christ,

Br Mark, OSB

 

[tee_eff_em]

You are correct, Capuchins are part of the Fransican family, but never the less they are not Franciscans.

Of course they are Franciscans.

tee
Raised in the wild by OFM Cap’s

 

[Lepanto]

You are correct, Capuchins are part of the Fransican family, but never the less they are not Franciscans.

This sentence does not compute.

But more importantly…were you at the conference? If so, what did the article get wrong regarding Archbishop Chaput’s address?

 

[manualman]

It’s a Lifesite thing. They are notorious for adding, um, “creative spin” to news.

Not exactly helpful to the cause, IMO. But quite effective in drawing attention to the site. I wonder which goal they value more?

 

[daughterofmary]

Since there seems to be a disagreement about what the Archbishop said, why don’t we just read what he said?

Remarks of Archbishop Charles Chaput at the 2008 LCWR-CMSM Assembly (Leadership Conference of Women Religious -Conference of Major Superiors of Men)

August 1, 2008
Denver, Colorado

Thank you for the invitation to address your meeting. I want to begin by welcoming you to Denver – both as a fellow religious, and as a bishop.

Being a Capuchin and being a bishop is an unusual combination. Many people enter religious life for a radical experience of the Gospel, and one of the reasons they sometimes do this is to avoid the institutional frustrations that can go with diocesan life.

When I became a capuchin, I would never have expected to be here today as a bishop. I got here, frankly, for one extraordinary reason. The Holy See decided it needed a Native American to be a bishop of Rapid City, South Dakota, because a large percentage of the Catholics there are Native American. I’m very blessed to be a Potawatomi Indian, and that’s why I went to Rapid City, out of love and in obedience. Now I’m the Archbishop of Denver. I know that I am also here because of love and obedience.

All of us who are religious share that same commitment to love and obedience – love FOR and obedience TO Jesus Christ, to the Church and to her pastors. Charles de Foucauld called obedience the “yardstick of love.” It’s a clear way we measure the fidelity and unselfishness of our hearts. I do not think it’s an accident that John XXIII had the words, “Obedience and Peace” as his papal motto. The Church belongs to Christ, the Church is His spouse and we find His peace through love and obedience to His Church, which is finally not an institution or corporation or bureaucracy, but our mother and teacher.

I’ve experienced authority in the Church both as a Capuchin major superior and now as a bishop. I know very well the frustrations good people sometimes suffer at the hands of leaders who are made of clay.

Nevertheless, St. Francis and St. Ignatius and many other founders had a common experience: For them, obedience was that “yardstick of love.” The kind of radical love expressed in obedience – an obedience that can make our hearts ache and bruise our vanity – is the seed of renewal in every age of the Church. I entered religious life because I wanted to be one of those seeds, because I knew my own happiness depended on it. I am sure you want to be those seeds of renewal too.

The theme of this meeting is “On This Holy Mountain.” As I was thinking about that theme, my mind turned to the Transfiguration. The Transfiguration showed the Apostles and us that Jesus is not merely a great teacher or wise thinker or brave leader. He is our Lord and God. So Christian discipleship and consecrated life demand more than a polite relationship with Jesus and His Church. Christ does ask for our approval or agreement. He doesn’t need either. Instead, He asks us to follow him – radically, with all we have, and without exceptions or reservations. What he deserves is our love – a love that is expressed in our worship, in our service to others and in our obedience to the Church.

On the Holy Mountain of the Transfiguration, a bright cloud cast a shadow over Jesus and his disciples and the voice of God said: “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; listen to Him,” which could just as accurately be translated, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; obey Him.”

We religious are women and men who consecrate ourselves to God through poverty, chastity, and obedience. All the vows are important. Poverty is about things outside ourselves. Chastity is chiefly about things within us. But obedience is about everything, within and without. It is truly “the yardstick of love.”

My God grant you all a time of refreshment, friendship and peace in your meeting, and thank you for coming to Colorado.

I am not naive. He didn’t use the word obedience almost 15 times in that short little piece by coincidence.

 

[wapsi]

I am not naive. He didn’t use the word obedience almost 15 times in that short little piece by coincidence.

Yes, obedience was the theme of his speech. But to say the speech’s purpose was to “recall ‘progressive nuns’ to obedience” is spin, something LifeSite is prone to do. A more objective headline would say that Archbishop Chaput praises obedience.

 

[daughterofmary]

There is a reason he, as a pastor, thought it wise to speak on obedience. I don’t find it a coincidence at all. Life News never said that the Archbishop pointed fingers, but they did say he recalled these sisters to obedience (and he did). He urged them and all to be obedient. And they are “progressive” sisters. It isn’t a big secret. He did recall progressive sisters to obedience.

 

[Seminarian_Tim]

Yes, obedience was the theme of his speech. But to say the speech’s purpose was to “recall ‘progressive nuns’ to obedience” is spin, something LifeSite is prone to do. A more objective headline would say that Archbishop Chaput praises obedience.

Anyone with an opinion is capable of spinning something, which is basically anybody that reads it…yourself included. Your “more objective” headline is coming from your subjective thought process. No one here can give a truly objective point of view on the article.

 

[EasterJoy]

There is a reason he, as a pastor, thought it wise to speak on obedience. I don’t find it a coincidence at all. Life News never said that the Archbishop pointed fingers, but they did say he recalled these sisters to obedience (and he did). He urged them and all to be obedient. And they are “progressive” sisters. It isn’t a big secret. He did recall progressive sisters to obedience.

Well, yes, he talked about obedience, theirs and his, and the difficulty of it. He did not imply that his audience had been disobedient!

With this kind of spin, I’m glad for the sisters’ sakes he didn’t talk more than he did about chastity.

(And what is this “was somehow permitted to speak” stuff? The implication is that he was not invited!)

 

[odubhghail]

Read some of the material on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious website. Some of it (such as one statement, which defends the nuns who signed the 1984 New York Times ad which stated that there is more than one legitimate Catholic position on abortion) is truly horrific, much of it bizarro feminism, not really strong on references to the truths of faith and Church.

 

[1234]

Well, the archbishop wasn’t asking them to obey him, but the Church. The Church told congregations years ago during Vat II to go back to the original documents of their foundresses and basically re-found themselves again. That’s what they did. They found that their (often sainted ) foundresses worked among the poor and dressed like the poor of the day did. They didn’t staff private schools for the rich and wear archaic, bizarre outfits ( time-consuming to maintain, hot, dirty, dangerous) which were not attuned to the times. So the congregations renewed themselves, a very difficult process. They dropped their archaic habist and started working among the poor, as their foundresses and early members did. Many felt uncomfortable and left, mainly those who wanted and needed the structure, others who were well-educated, bright and natural leaders, and could do perfectly well on their own. Eventually new orders sprang up who answered the needs of the structure group, but the older congregations, now aging and depleted, finally found their true voice and continue on today, with new calls based on their old, original charisms. They work among the poor, teach, staff and run large institutions, and conduct retreats and centers of spiritual training and refreshment.

How many of you have actually read documents published by the LCWR? Very few, I expect. I have just finished their summer 2008 Occasional Paper, On This Holy Mountain, written in preparation for their conference in Denver and did not find a single heretical or schismatic word in it. They aren’t disobeying the Church or Chaput or anyone else; they are obeying their foundresses, who obeyed the Church.

How many of you actually know sisters in these congregations and have discussed the issues that bother you, whether it’s their charism, their relationship to the Church, or topics such as reiki or habits or whatever it is which seems to obsess this forum?

I don’t hear the current pope obsessing about these things or these orders. I don’t read that he is firing out bulls or writs or encyclicals or whatever thundering against the LCWR. He has a lot larger fish to fry, such as the loss of the church in Europe, which his name, Benedict, refers to.

Let Pope Benedict be our guide.

 

[odubhghail]

Actually, I have had some of these LCWR congregations’ Sisters in my theology classes while working on my masters. Most were pleasant, charitable, kind. There were others who could be, for all their ‘affirmation’ of women, quite hostile towards Sisters in habit. One group in particular formed a clique, very anti-male, and very angry.
Yes, I am very well informed about LCWR, I have read their material, and I must respectfully disagree with you. Much of it seems quite schismatic. Without mentioning any names, I can state that there are a few presidents of LCWR who have made very shocking statements. I was particularly appalled when one of their presidents defended the Sisters who signed the New York times (pro abortion) ad in 1984 as a free speech issue.
The habit is a complex issue. These were the ordinary garb of the poor at a given time, in many cases. But, the various Third Order Regular Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, Augustinian congregations, which adopted the garb of the Second Order women, cannot lay claim to that theory.
Many, not a few, groups were founded wearing a uniform habit, whether based on widows’ weeds or not. It was understood that the members of the community all dressed alike, uniformly. Whether their clothing was all that removed from the average person’s clothing is another question. Some congregations left no doubt that they were consecrated people, for example the Sisters of Mercy. Very few congregations started out wearing no habit whatsoever. Mary Ward’s English Ladies, the pre French Revolution Sisters of St. Joseph, the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, the Missionaries of the Most Blessed Trinity, the Polish Sister Servants of Mary Immaculate are the only groups that come to mind immediately. The Congregation of the Holy Faith, founded by Margaret Aylward, did not wear a habit, but did have a uniform (which, I believe, the foundress did not wear).
Regarding the idea of teaching in middle or upper class schools, quite a few foundresses did open schools for these groups, either to finance other ventures, or because that was their original mandate. For example, Dr. Murray asked Mother Teresa Ball to begin the Irish Loreto Sisters to educate the daughters of the growing Catholic middle class of the time. Catherine McAuley also made foundations which catered to the middle or upper classes.
The issue of the habit will not go away. I do not believe your characterizations of religious are entirely accurate, or fair. For, if religious life as a distinct form of consecrated life is to exist, there are certain characteristics, or structures, if you will, that must support it.
Not all habitless religious are paragons of virtue, nor are all habited religious desperately clinging to the past. I know, I have a very dynamic former student who has just begun her novitiate in a recently founded Canadian group.
By the way, it is customary in respectful dialogue to refer to people by their correct titles, as in Archbishop Chaput.

 

[1234]

I wish that the Archbishop would learn that in a large organization, there are many tents, to paraphrase Jesus–he doesn’t have to have these congregations in his diocese, but other dioceses have them and don’t object. The demographics of who is joining the LCWR-type groups is very different from the usual person entering, say, the Nashville St. Cecilians–the former are older, very well-educated, often mothers/grandmothers. Many of these large old groups will merge, shrink, die out, but they aren’t going to disappear. Similarly I suspect that the young habited rapidly growing groups, a small number of orders overall, smaller than the media and they would have you believe–may be just a phase and will, too, slow down in time. Generally, I think that one does a disservice to religious life overall by railing against this group or that --one used to see a lot of this on phatmass, often by very young and immature men or married people, people who would never wear a woman’s habit, among other things. Fortunately, some of the noisiest have left.

In particular , unlike JPII, the current pope does not appear to be pursuing these sorts of issues.

The Archbishop should protect something else that his statements are threatening: the tax-exempt status of his church and diocese. He is notoriously outspoken, but he has to keep politics out of the pulpit. If he does not, or if any other priest is caught lecturing on political issues from the pulpit, a raft of experienced lawyers will make sure that their dioceses spend the next decade in court defending their tax-exempt status, something that the dioceses, after paying out one billion dollars in the US on pedophile scandals, can ill afford.

 

[daughterofmary]

How many of you actually know sisters in these congregations and have discussed the issues that bother you, whether it’s their charism, their relationship to the Church, or topics such as reiki or habits or whatever it is which seems to obsess this forum?

Raises hand I do.

And I did bring it up, the reiki and new age practices (sophia, dancing around labyrinths to find one’s inner-self), their insistence on teaching contraception to young women at the school, their believing with in their life-time women priests would exist . They seemed more interested in the environment, themselves, and spreading their agenda ardently through out the diocese than the Mass, the Eucharist, the BVM, or being obedient to the Church which is the pillar and foundation of truth.

To my knowledge, St. Francis and St. Dominic did not teach contraception, seek their “inner-self”, refer to God as a woman or to the Holy Spirit as “Sophia,” go around talking about our “mothers and fathers of the church,” and how women should be priests. St. Francis and St. Dominic loved holy poverty and wore their holy habit, they had a great respect for the Church as it was and is. They did not go about trying to change it, as these sisters seem to be bent on doing. And, honestly, I haven’t seen these sisters who are associated with this group in my diocese reach out to the poor at all. I am not watching them 24/7, but I never hear of them doing anything like that. They are always teaching and preaching their insane ideas and calling it Catholicism at every workshop, retreat, and conference in the diocese. I am sorry, but I fail to see how any of this mumbo-jumbo bologna is “returning to their founders and foundresses.” Seems to me, like many have abandoned the ideas of those great men and women. If wearing “dangerous”, big-puffy habits and teaching “rich kids” actual Catholicism were the big wrongs of the past, then what are we to call this crazy-ness? Many, not all because I don’t know all, but many certainly have sunk into heresy. Praying for them all.

Let Pope Benedict be our guide.

Oh, if only all the sisters thought this way…

 

[daughterofmary]

The Archbishop should protect something else that his statements are threatening: the tax-exempt status of his church and diocese. He is notoriously outspoken, but he has to keep politics out of the pulpit. If he does not, or if any other priest is caught lecturing on political issues from the pulpit, a raft of experienced lawyers will make sure that their dioceses spend the next decade in court defending their tax-exempt status, something that the dioceses, after paying out one billion dollars in the US on pedophile scandals, can ill afford.

The demographics of who is joining the LCWR-type groups is very different from the usual person entering, say, the Nashville St. Cecilians–the former are older, very well-educated, often mothers/grandmothers. Many of these large old groups will merge, shrink, die out, but they aren’t going to disappear.
Similarly I suspect that the young habited rapidly growing groups, a small number of orders overall, smaller than the media and they would have you believe–may be just a phase and will, too, slow down in time. Generally, I think that one does a disservice to religious life overall by railing against this group or that --one used to see a lot of this on phatmass, often by very young and immature men or married people, people who would never wear a woman’s habit, among other things. Fortunately, some of the noisiest have left.

 

[odubhghail]

If the individual who posted above about keeping politics out of the pulpit means the archbishop has no right to speak against abortion, then he or she is dead wrong. We need only look at Athanasius, or Thomas Beckett. Not only is it Archbishop Chaput’s right to call the faithful to account for their Catholic faith, it is his obligation, whatever the consequences. The threat of removal of tax exempt status for the Archdiocese of Denver is the threat of a bully.
I beg to differ with this poster. While some congregations’ growth is no doubt due to novelty, others indicate that the Holy Spirit is at work among us. I have no doubt, however, that when religious congregations speak against the Church’s teachings, then they are on a downward spiral.
I would ask this poster not to make ad hominem attacks on people; that is very impolite behaviour, not to mention quite judgemental.