US women religious and the apostolic visitation

Bishop Robert Finn of Kansas City with Sisters celebrating their jubilee year of profession in religious life; I chose this photo because it offers a sweep of ways in which women religious dress these days.

I've posted twice (here and here) on the Vatican's three year study of American congregations of women religious. A portion of that study included questionnaires sent to the heads of these congregations which were deadlined for return on November 20. In response to negative reaction to the questionnaire, some elements of it were recently changed. Here's a link to the official Apostolic Visitation website.

And here's NCR's latest report on the progress of the visitation:

The vast majority of U.S. women religious are not complying with a Vatican request to answer questions in a document of inquiry that is part of a three-year study of the congregations. Leaders of congregations, instead, are leaving questions unanswered or sending in letters or copies of their communities' constitutions.

"There's been almost universal resistance," said one women religious familiar with the responses compiled by the congregation leaders. "We are saying 'enough!' In my 40 years in religious life I have never seen such unanimity."

The deadline for the questionnaires to be filled out and returned to the Vatican-appointed apostolic visitator, superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Mother Mary Clare Millea, was Nov. 20. On that day, according to an informed source, congregation leaders across the nation sent Millea letters and, in many cases, only partial answers to the questionnaire. Many women, instead of filling out the forms, replied by sending in copies of their Vatican-approved orders' religious constitutions. A religious order's constitution states its rationale, purpose and mission.

The Vatican initiated the study in January, saying its purpose is to determine the quality of life in religious communities, given the decline in vocations in recent decades. From the outset, the women have complained they were never consulted before Vatican officials announced the investigation and there is no transparency in the process. Some have called the effort demeaning and intrusive.

The decisions by congregation leaders not to comply follow nearly two months of intensive discussions both inside and across religious congregations. They follow consultations with civil and canon lawyers, and come in the wake of what some women religious see as widespread support by laity for their church missions.

With about half of the responses from the nation's 59,000 women religious accounted for, only about one percent answered, as directed, most or all of the questions contained in the study's working paper, officially called an Instrumentum Laboris, according to one informed source.

By contrast, according to the source, congregations representing, by far, the greater majority of women religious decided not to comply and answered only a few, or none, of the questions. Many of the 340 U.S. apostolic congregation heads instead sent letters to Millea stating that what they were sending was what the Vatican was looking for.

(Read the complete article)

Some of the commentary this story will occasion is fairly predictable. What interests me is the way in which the response of the women religious to the Vatican, to authority, might offer a case study from which the Church at large might grow in its understanding of how ecclesial life is best evaluated and conflict resolved.

-ConcordPastor