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Vatican signals new tone on US nuns


BY RACHEL ZOLL | 12.16.2014|  An unprecedented Vatican investigation of U.S. women's religious orders that alarmed Roman Catholic sisters when the inquiry began years ago ended Tuesday with a report signaling a softer approach under Pope Francis.

The report praised sisters for their selfless work caring for the poor and promised to value their "feminine genius" more, while gently suggesting ways to serve the church faithfully and survive amid a steep drop in their numbers. There was no direct critique of the nuns, nor any demand for them to change — only requests that they ensure their ministries remain "in harmony with Catholic teaching."

"There is an encouraging and realistic tone in this report," said Sister Sharon Holland, head of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the umbrella organization for most U.S. religious orders. "Challenges are understood, but it is not a document of blame, or of simplistic solutions. One can read the text and feel appreciated and trusted to carry on."

The laudatory language contrasted sharply with the atmosphere in which the review started under Pope Benedict XVI. Cardinal Franc Rode, who in 2008 initiated the nationwide study when he led the Vatican office that oversees religious orders, said there was concern about "a certain secular mentality that has spread in these religious families and, perhaps, also a certain 'feminist' spirit."

Rode left the post while the review was still under way, and his successors had said they wanted a friendlier relationship with the sisters.

Still, many nuns remained concerned about the outcome of the investigation under Francis' still-young pontificate. Some nuns had taken legal steps during the inquiry to shield the financial assets of their religious orders in case of a Vatican takeover.

The report expressed hope that sisters would take "this present moment as an opportunity to transform uncertainty and hesitancy into collaborative trust" with the church hierarchy. Many sisters have complained that their work often went unrecognized by priests and requested improved dialogue with bishops to clarify their role in the church and give them greater voice in decisions, according to the report.

Before the news conference releasing the report in Rome, leaders for the sisters and the nun who oversaw the review, Mother Mary Clare Millea, attended the pope's daily Mass in the Vatican hotel where he lives and spoke with him briefly, where he offered his blessing.

Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, based in Maryland, said in a statement the document signaled "a hope for future dialogue and communion among and between women religious and church leaders."

"The report is clearly focused on cooperation. It's clearly focused on dialogue, which I think is not necessarily what people expected back in 2008 when this issue came up," said Jana Bennett, a specialist in Catholic theology and ethics at the University of Dayton, Ohio.

Still, American nuns are dealing with the fallout from a separate investigation from a different Vatican office. The Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in 2012 ordered an overhaul of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents about 80 percent of U.S. sisters. The doctrine office said the organization strayed from church teaching and promoted "radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith." Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain was appointed to oversee the Leadership Conference, potentially through 2017.

Holland said she was "working hard and working well" with Sartain and other Vatican-appointed delegates, and the process might end sooner than originally expected.

"We're moving toward resolution of that," she said.

Both investigations prompted an outpouring of support from many rank-and-file American Catholics who viewed the inquiries as a crackdown by the all-male Vatican hierarchy against the underpaid, underappreciated women who do the lion's share of work running Catholic hospitals, schools and services for the poor.

Theological conservatives have long complained that after the modernizing reforms of the 1960s Second Vatican Council, women's religious orders in the U.S. became secular and political while abandoning traditional prayer life and faith.

The nuns insisted prayer and Christ were central to their work.

Along with praise, the report offered a sobering assessment of the difficult state of American religious orders. The current number of 50,000 U.S. sisters represents a fraction of the 125,000 in the mid-1960s, although that was an atypical spike in U.S. church history.

Financial resources to care for sisters are dwindling as they age, and the orders have struggled to attract new members. The report asked the sisters to make sure their training programs reflect church teaching and their members pray and focus on Christ.



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Jesuit Brother wins top science award



(Vatican Radio) The President of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, Jesuit Brother Guy Consolmagno was presented on Thursday with the Carl Sagan Medal by the American Astronomical Society (AAS).
He received the award at the 46th annual meeting of the Division for Planetary Sciences in Tucson, Arizona.
Carl Sagan was an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist and science commentator in astronomy and other natural sciences.
Speaking to Lydia O’Kane on receiving the Medal, Brother Consolmagno said, “First of all to have recognition of your peers is really amazing…but in addition I had met Carl Sagan when I was a young man and seen his enthusiasm… that changed everything for all of us because he showed us that it’s a good thing to show your enthusiasm…

Listen



The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, operated by the Vatican Observatory, is located, in southeastern Arizona's Pinaleno Mountains near Mount Graham.

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To all Consecrated People. Apostolic Letter of Pope Francis on the Occasion of the Year of Consecrated Life





APOSTOLIC LETTER| 11.29.14| Dear Brothers and Sisters in Consecrated Life, I am writing to you as the Successor of Peter, to whom the Lord entrusted the task of confirming his brothers and sisters in faith (cf. Lk 22:32). But I am also writing to you as a brother who, like yourselves, is consecrated to God.
Together let us thank the Father, who called us to follow Jesus by fully embracing the Gospel and serving the Church, and poured into our hearts the Holy Spirit, the source of our joy and our witness to God’s love and mercy before the world.

In response to requests from many of you and from the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life, I decided to proclaim a Year of Consecrated Life on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium, which speaks of religious in its sixth chapter, and of the Decree Perfectae Caritatis on the renewal of religious life. The Year will begin on 30 November 2014, the First Sunday of Advent, and conclude with the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple on 2 February 2016.

After consultation with the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and for Societies of Apostolic Life, I have chosen as the aims of this Year the same ones which Saint John Paul II proposed to the whole Church at the beginning of the third millennium, reiterating, in a certain sense, what he had earlier written in the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Vita Consecrata: “You have not only a glorious history to remember and to recount, but also a great history still to be accomplished! Look to the future, where the Spirit is sending you in order to do even greater things” (No. 110).

I. AIMS OF THE YEAR OF CONSECRATED LIFE

1. The first of these aims is to look to the past with gratitude. All our Institutes are heir to a history rich in charisms. At their origins we see the hand of God who, in his Spirit, calls certain individuals to follow Christ more closely, to translate the Gospel into a particular way of life, to read the signs of the times with the eyes of faith and to respond creatively to the needs of the Church. This initial experience then matured and developed, engaging new members in new geographic and cultural contexts, and giving rise to new ways of exercising the charism, new initiatives and expressions of apostolic charity. Like the seed which becomes a tree, each Institute grew and stretched out its branches.

During this Year, it would be appropriate for each charismatic family to reflect on its origins and history, in order to thank God who grants the Church a variety of gifts which embellish her and equip her for every good work (cf. Lumen Gentium, 12).

Recounting our history is essential for preserving our identity, for strengthening our unity as a family and our common sense of belonging. More than an exercise in archaeology or the cultivation of mere nostalgia, it calls for following in the footsteps of past generations in order to grasp the high ideals, and the vision and values which inspired them, beginning with the founders and foundresses and the first communities. In this way we come to see how the charism has been lived over the years, the creativity it has sparked, the difficulties it encountered and the concrete ways those difficulties were surmounted. We may also encounter cases of inconsistency, the result of human weakness and even at times a neglect of some essential aspects of the charism. Yet everything proves instructive and, taken as a whole, acts as a summons to conversion. To tell our story is to praise God and to thank him for all his gifts.

In a particular way we give thanks to God for these fifty years which followed the Second Vatican Council. The Council represented a “breath” of the Holy Spirit upon the whole Church. In consequence, consecrated life undertook a fruitful journey of renewal which, for all its lights and shadows, has been a time of grace, marked by the presence of the Spirit.

May this Year of Consecrated Life also be an occasion for confessing humbly, with immense confidence in the God who is Love (cf. 1 Jn 4:8), our own weakness and, in it, to experience the Lord’s merciful love. May this Year likewise be an occasion for bearing vigorous and joyful witness before the world to the holiness and vitality present in so many of those called to follow Jesus in the consecrated life [...].

Apostolic Letter To all Consecrated People

Source: vatica.va, November 28, 2014

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