How the Vatican can restore trust among American nuns: just wait a bit

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Aug 22, 2011

While he was prefect of the Congregation for Religious, Cardinal Franc Rodé began an apostolic visitation of women's religious orders in the US, motivated by the concern that many communities had "simply acquiesced to the disappearance of religious life" while others were drifting away from the universal Church. But now Cardinal Rodé is gone, the Congregation for Religious is under new management. Today the new leadership concentrates on reassuring American women religious. The goal now, it seems, is not to have American religious communities that the Vatican can trust, but to have a Vatican that the women religious can trust.

In light of today's news headline on the disappearance of American nuns from traditional roles, one might ask what was wrong with Cardinal Rodé's diagnosis. When a leading woman religious feels that the most "courageous" option is to let her community die out...Well, that certainly looks a lot like acquiescence to the disappearance of religious life.

So why has the Vatican made a U-turn on the apostolic visitation? A cynic might suggest that the current laissez-faire policy is actually not incompatible with Cardinal Rodé's analysis. If the Vatican allows current trends to take their natural course, scores of religious orders will simply disappear. And those that remain will trust the Vatican. Because they always did.