Officials of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) in the United States have responded to a rebuke from Cardinal Gerhard Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF), by saying that trust and communication have broken down between them and the Vatican, writes Michael Sean Winters.
Cardinal Müller had told the LCWR presidency in Rome that honouring a sister whose work the Vatican deemed “opposed to Christian revelation” was unacceptable. The sisters said in a statement last week they were “saddened to learn that impressions of the organisation in the past decades have become institutionalised in the Vatican, and have led to judgements and ultimately to the doctrinal assessment [initiated by the Vatican in 2009]”. “Communication has broken down and as a result, mistrust has developed,” they said.
Cardinal Müller had chastised the LCWR for giving an award to theologian Sr Elizabeth Johnson, whose work was censured by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and for highlighting the work of Barbara Marx Hubbard, a proponent of “conscious evolution” theory, which the doctrinal congregation said repeated Gnostic heresies. The LCWR statement acknowledged that the conversation with the CDF “was constructive in its frankness”.
Conservative critics pounced on Pope Francis’ remarks to a group of United Nations leaders in Rome last week in which the Pope called for “the legitimate redistribution of economic benefits by the state”. Popular radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh called the Pope “a Marxist” and others chastised him for his lack of economic expertise.
Read Pope Francis' full address
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