LCWR ready to defy hierarchy, analyst finds

August 20, 2014

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) appears ready to raise the stakes in its conflict with the Vatican, observes Ann Carey in a Catholic World Report story on the LCWR’s annual meeting last week.

The LCWR has resisted a Vatican demand for reform of the group, which represents the leaders of the “mainstream” religious congregations in the US, accounting for roughly 80% of the country’s women religious. Although an escalation of the conflict could lead the Vatican to withdraw certification from the LCWR, some analysts believe the group’s leaders are prepared to take that step.

Carey calls particular attention to a keynote address by Sister Nancy Schreck, who said: “We have been so changed that we are no longer at home in the culture and church in which we find ourselves.”

In her speech, Sister Schreck claimed that the women religious of the LCWR have achieved a special wisdom, which represents the true fulfillment of the vision of Vatican II, and which male Church leaders do not grasp. The keynote speaker said that the LCWR has “a clarity of identity and purpose which we cannot expect those who have not taken the journey and done the work to be able to understand.”

 

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Further information:

• The LCWR Doubles Down on Dissent (Catholic World Report)
• Theologian raps bishops as LCWR ends annual meeting (CWN, 8/18)