The Vatican has launched a doctrinal investigation into the leadership of Catholic sisters in the United States, reportedly because they have not sufficiently promoted the Vatican line on homosexuality, the all-male priesthood and other issues.
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an association that gathers the leaders of most of the country’s women’s congregations, said it was informed of the “doctrinal assessment” in a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog.The doctrinal investigation is separate from another Vatican-ordered study looking into the quality of the life in more than 400 U.S. women’s religious institutes. That study was launched as the church grapples with the dramatic decline in the number of American nuns and sisters over the past several decades.
Regarding the investigation of the women’s leadership conference, Levada [Cardinal William Joseph Levada, the congregation’s prefect] informed conference leaders: “Given both the tenor and the doctrinal content of various addresses given at the annual assemblies of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious in the intervening years, this Dicastery can only conclude that the problems which had motivated its request in 2001 continue to be present.”
As a result, Levada said, the Vatican had decided “a doctrinal assessment” of the “activities and initiatives of the LCWR would be helpful.”