A former Nun Weighs in on Vatican Investigations--of Ministering Sisters and Sexually Abusive Priests

by Phyllis Kittel                                           photo:  April Sikorski

The world may be intently watching legal investigations of the world-wide priest sex abuse scandal and the potential cover-up by the Catholic Church. Ironically the Church itself is conducting two different investigations of U.S. communities of sisters.

In September 2009, the Vatican announced that it would conduct a formal investigation or Apostolic Visitation into "the quality of life" of American nuns.  No prior warning and no reasons were given the sisters when they were directed to answer extensive and intimate questionnaires and, for selected communities, welcome (and support financially) Vatican authorized "visitators" for interviews.  Officials have not given any hint of what actions might result from the subsequent comprehensive report, which shall remain secret.

The Vatican is also investigating the U.S. Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), to which 95 percent of U.S. women's religious orders belong.  A letter from Cardinal Levada, who heads the Vatican office doing the investigating, states that: an investigation is warranted because the LCWR has apparently failed "to promote the Church's teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation."  For decades American sisters have spoken out on these issues, respectfully and prophetically.

As I write, the media is reporting almost daily on more cases of priest sex abuse and on resignations of bishops who reassigned priests accused of abuse to continue to work with children, who covered up clergy abuse, or who were abusers themselves.  Yet the Vatican Visitation of nuns has begun its second phase with far less media attention.

Did I mention the irony that these disparate investigations are occurring simultaneously?  Why is the Church investigating the quality of life of nuns in the US when it has not conducted a world-wide investigation of priestly sexual abuse and what many believe is a world-wide cover-up by bishops (maybe even reaching the Vatican itself?)?  How can the Church criticize the media for reporting what the Church has not investigated to get the facts?

Just before the U.S. sex abuse scandal broke into the media in 2002, I had begun my own inquiry into the "quality of life" of one particular religious community.  I was initially driven by curiosity about the magnitude of organizational change that I glimpsed in this community of nuns where I had been a professed member from 1959 to 1968.  However, my fascination with the quality of the sisters' renewed lives gradually became the center of my research and subsequent book.

Up front, I will give away the story by reporting that "my" sisters' faithfulness to their founder's mission, their renewed spirituality and ministry and joy in vowed lives devoted entirely to the gospel Christ and the Church's mission--all have touched me profoundly.  Their lives bear witness to the Catholic Church that I know.

When I began, I had no idea what I would find: how these sisters live today.  I had no idea how the 1960's Second Vatican Council or Vatican II, which assigned all sisters to renew and update their lives, had changed them. According to the Church the sisters were to listen to the Spirit and to the needs of the world and to respect the dignity of every individual beginning with themselves.  

I found that they plunged into the assignment wholeheartedly, prayerfully, and collaboratively.  Gradually my sisters stepped out of medieval habits and listened to the needs of the contemporary world.  They based everything they did on the Church's Second Vatican Council, on the Spirit, and on their founder's vision.  Their fundamental principle was dignity of the human person.  Today they live like Jesus followers, bringing compassion and healing to a broken world.  They are professors, doctors, lawyers, school principals, founders of half-way houses for women and of food pantries, and leaders who fight injustice and who represent the Church in all levels of society.  Most of all, my sisters are women of prayer.  Simply put, I found the Catholic Church at its best. 

It appears from its actions that the Church does not understand these renewed nuns; that the Church wants them to wear habits and practice cloister, return to the 1950's lifestyles of rules and lack of respect for the individual.

Sandra Schneiders, a professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley has asserted that nuns do not exist to be a support system for the Church's power structure. In a series of articles for National Catholic Reporter , she wrote:  "The meaning of their life" is "participation in the prophetic mission of Jesus."  Living prophetically is not all that religious life is about; but it is just the point where the nuns and the Vatican do not see eye to eye.  It seems the Church wants women religious to be quiet.

A central part of religious life, affirmed by Pope John Paul II in 1996, is that nuns are to play a prophetic role in the Church.  Schneiders, in her second NCR online essay says this of the role of the prophet: "The prophet is immersed in the life of the people in a particular place and time and is commissioned by God to interpret that situation in the light of God's dream for this people and the whole of humanity.  Listening to the voice of God, reading the 'signs of the times' (see Mt. 16:13), and focusing the Word of God on the present is the defining feature of prophecy." 

In my research, I found that sisters live and work with profound spirituality, community, stewardship, compassion, and respect for human dignity. 

My sisters have spoken out passionately, individually and corporately, for social justice.  However, they are also among the many women religious who have been on the front lines, calling for respectful and prophetic discussion of issues that the Church considers settled.  Issues like the male-only clergy and the Church's treatment of homosexuality.  Many U.S. communities of women publicly promoted the recent health reform bill passed by Congress, which does not support federal funding for abortion.  U.S. Catholic Bishops did not support the bill on abortion grounds.  Some bishops have harshly criticized sisters who did support it.

The Church leadership, its hierarchy, never responded to the renewal called for by Vatican II in the way that U.S. communities of women religious have.  The Church hierarchy, from the Pope to bishops to dioceses, never deeply examined its own quality of life; never renewed itself according to the vision of its founder, Jesus; never considered how its mission should be lived in the contemporary world; never answered the profound question of whether its leadership represents the Jesus of Nazareth of the gospels. As New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof recently wrote, it has become "obsessed with dogma and rules and distracted from social justice". 

distracted from social justice

The Church has responded to the needs of the people in many ways, both through actions of its clergy and through its papal publications.  Still it has blocked many social reforms and reformists.  The power and wealth of its leadership remain a scandal.  The Church in Rome has put reputation and protection of clergy ahead of sex abuse victims' welfare and of the law.

I hope that the incredible irony between the coincidence of the sex abuse scandal and the Vatican Visitation of U.S. nuns will, eventually, bring forth a renewed Roman Catholic Church.  In this renewed Church every aspect of this very human organization will bear witness to its founder, Jesus Christ.  In the meantime, as Nicholas Kristof wrote: "Beyond the Vatican stand Catholics who make the world better." 

A former sister, Phyllis Kittel is the author of Staying in the Fire: A Sisterhood Responds to Vatican II.  (Woven Word Press, 2009)

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