US religious women closing the door on the visitation

NCR is reporting that US religious women are "almost universally resisting" the Vatican inquiry into the condition of their lives.

I was struck by several elements of this story.

First, participation in the Vatican inquiry is voluntary.  How does one resist voluntary participation?  You either take part or you don't.  "Resistance" is something you do when you are being coerced into some action you believe to be contrary to your will. Congregations were invited to participate not coerced.  The NCR article consistently uses the word "comply" and the phrase "not complying" to note the lack of participation.  One complies or fails to comply with an order.  One accepts or refuses an invitation. 

Second, the inquiry is an opportunity for women religious to tell the Vatican about their lives in their own words.  The LCWR frequently complains that the hierarchy doesn't listen to women religious.  What is accomplished by "resisting" this chance to tell the hierarchy how US women religious live?  Future complaints about the Vatican "not listening" will be met with the question:  "Did your congregation participate in the visitation?"

Third, by participating in the development of the visitation report, congregations reserve a place for themselves at the table when the report is issued.  Will those congregations that refuse the invitation to participate refrain from criticizing the report when and if it fails to represent their views on religious life?  Does it make sense here to say, "If you didn't vote, don't complain about the election outcome"?

Fourth, in an era when lack of transparency in secular governments and the scientific community is causing one scandal after another, LCWR criticized the Vatican for lack of transparency in the inquiry.  Yet, many congregations complained about questions in the visitation document asking for the average age of the sisters and information about their assets and current financial situation. The Vatican dropped these questions. Why would congregations want too hide these bits of information?  Isn't transparency a good thing?

Several quoted statements from sisters in the NCR article go a long way toward indicating some of the root problems in the LCWR.

"Vatican II took us out of the ghettos and into ecology, feminism and justice in the world," she said. "The Vatican still has a difficult time accepting that."  This ignores the fact that the Church has always called Catholics to faithful stewardship of our natural resources; that the Church has been at the forefront of elevating and defending women against secular culture; and that the Church produced the notion of "human rights" and has always called for social justice.  The real complaint here is that the Church has successfully resisted efforts by a radical minority to fundamentally mold the Church into a product of the '70's-'80's zeitgeist.

One said that it is "unlikely the Vatican wanted us to come out of this being more confident of our identity as self-defining religious agents, but that is exactly what has happened."  But we aren't "self-defining religious agents."  We are members of one Body who use our gifts for one another.  What happens to me if, as a self-defined religious agent, I define myself as something other than Catholic?  If I have any integrity at all, I leave the Church and join a like-minded group.  Catholics are defined by a tradition of teachings and practices that distinguish us as a group from other groups.  To be "self-defined" is to be "not defined by the group I voluntarily belong to."   If we are to be of one heart and one mind, we cannot be self-defining.

"At first, many women were asking, 'How do we respond? Then we were asking, 'How do we respond faithfully in keeping with our identity?' And soon we were asking, 'What is that identity?'" This is exactly the point of the visitation!  When a Dominican provincial or Master of the Order conducts a visitation of the friars, he is out to access the lived-identity of the brothers.  Do they know who they are as Dominicans?  Are they living out their vowed-identities faithfully?

All along, said one woman religious, the challenge has been to respond to the Vatican in a way that breaks a cycle of violence.  What "cycle of violence"?  This is hysterical rhetoric and cannot be taken seriously.  How exactly does a set of questions perpetrate violence?  I guess the visitator could have rolled the papers up and smacked someone, but I doubt this is what happened.  Calling the visitation "violent" is a fanciful way for congregations to paint themselves as victims of intimidation.  Again, how does one violently request voluntary participation?  I suppose the Vatican could have sent its cadre of albino Opus Dei ninja monks to kick in some convent doors. . .

One congregation, she said, cited a U.S. bishops' statement concerning domestic abuse in its response letter to Millea. "The point is, there have to be more than two choices: Take the abuse and offer it up, or kill the abuser."  We are supposed to believe that an invitation from the Vatican to voluntarily participate in a visitation is the moral equivalent of wife-beating?  Really?  Truly, some of these sisters are living in a highly rarefied and privileged world of the imagination.  To say, "I feel that these questions are violent" is not the same as saying, "These questions are violent."  I feel like Bill Gates owes me a billion dollars.  This does not mean that he does.  I worked at a battered women's shelter.  Labeling the visitation "violent" is an insult to women who suffer from real beatings at the hands of their out of control husbands and boyfriends. The women who came to the shelter with bruises, broken bones, bloody cuts, and real emotional damage would no doubt call B.S. on this statement.

It goes without saying that congregations are free to think and feel any way they choose about the visitation.  This goes for individual sisters as well.  But these statements--likely not representative--portray the sisters as privileged, disconnected, rhetorically irresponsible, and, frankly, a little desperate to hide their lives from review.  Do they see themselves as being above questioning?  Above reproach?  Isn't this the charge LCWR consistently makes against the hierarchy?  Secrecy, lack of transparency?  I doubt many of the "rank and file" sisters view the visitation as violent and intrusive.  How many sisters sent in private evaluations of their lives that contradict the official statements of their congregational leadership?  It is not uncommon in institutional structures for the leadership cadre to fear the frank evaluation of the "rank and file."  We see this in unions, political organizations, men's religious communities, the Church herself, and just about any sort of group where the leadership can become disconnected from those they lead. 

The visitation report should make very interesting reading.  And when I read a critique of the report from a sisters' congregation, my first question is going to be, "Did this congregation fully participate in the visitation?"  If not, the critique is going to ring hollow.