Members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) announced Aug. 10 at the close of their four-day assembly in St. Louis that they will continue to dialogue with Church officials about the Vatican’s doctrinal assessment of their organization.

LCWR’s outgoing president, Franciscan Sr. Pat Farrell, said the group’s leaders would begin dialogue with Seattle Abp. J. Peter Sartain, who is charged with overseeing the group’s reform. He attended the organization’s board meeting the following day.

Sr. Farrell said LCWR members hoped its leaders would have “open and honest dialogue” that would lead to greater understanding and to greater opportunities for women to have a voice in the Church.

She said the officers would “proceed with these discussions as long as possible but would reconsider if LCWR is forced to compromise the integrity of its mission.”

Abp. Sartain said that along with LCWR, he remained “committed to working to address the issues raised by the doctrinal assessment in an atmosphere of prayer and respectful dialogue.”

“We must also work toward clearing up any misunderstandings, and I remain truly hopeful that we will work together without compromising Church teaching or the important role of the LCWR,” Abp. Sartain said in a statement released Aug. 11 after his meeting with the LCWR board. “I look forward to our continued discussions as we collaborate in promoting consecrated life in the United States.”

In its assessment issued in April, the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said a reform of LCWR was needed to ensure its fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas including abortion, euthanasia, women’s ordination, and homosexuality.

Abp. Sartain said in his statement LCWR brings “unique gifts to its members and to the church at large. This uniqueness includes sensitivity to suffering, whether in Latin America or the inner-city; whether in the life of an unborn child or the victim of human trafficking.”

The US bishops “are deeply proud of the historic and continuing contribution of women religious to our country through social, pastoral, and spiritual ministries; Catholic health care; Catholic education; and many other areas where they reach out to those on the margins of society,” he said.

During an afternoon news conference Aug. 10, when asked how LCWR officials would be able to dialogue on issues of doctrine, Sr. Farrell said that “dialogue on doctrine will not be our starting point.” She also said LCWR officials cannot speculate how the dialogue will proceed but will see “how it unfolds.”

Nine hundred sisters attended the St. Louis meeting, which included several closed sessions where members discussed how they would respond to the Vatican’s doctrinal assessment.

At the start of the Aug. 7-10 meeting Sr. Farrell announced that this gathering would be “like no other” because of the particular focus on the doctrinal assessment.

At the close of the assembly, Franciscan Sr. Florence Deacon, president-elect, was to succeed Sr. Farrell. Sr. Carol Zinn, a Sister of St. Joseph, was chosen president-elect.

The gathering was the first time the organization had assembled since the assessment was released April 18. The organization’s canonical status is granted by the Vatican.

The participants, leaders of women’s religious congregations, were urged at the outset of the St. Louis meeting to take a thoughtful and prayerful approach to discerning the assessment and not to discuss the deliberations with members of the media since the process would continue to unfold in each day’s executive sessions.

One sister described the process of discernment as “muddling through” and said it is not new to the sisters but something they said they are used to doing, particularly in their work with other religious communities and lay groups.

References to how the sisters were discerning their next steps were clear in the daily prayer sessions where the sisters were continually reminded that they were at a crossroads and should let go of fears and preconceived ideas and trust the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

Sr. Farrell told the group in her closing address that the doctrinal assessment’s “historical impact” could not be ignored.

“Yes, much is at stake,” she said, pointing out that the LCWR can only go forward with “truthfulness and integrity” which she said she hoped would both contribute to the “good of religious life everywhere and to the healing of the fractured church we so love.”

In the final days of the meeting security near the ballroom where discussions were taking place became tighter, preventing anyone from even being outside the doors.

The national board of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) said June 1 it feels the assessment that led to a Vatican order to reform the organization “was based on unsubstantiated accusations and the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency.”

The LCWR board called the sanctions “disproportionate to the concerns raised” and said they “could compromise” the organization’s ability “to fulfill their mission.”

“The report has furthermore caused scandal and pain throughout the church community and created greater polarization,” the LCWR said in a statement released the morning after the board concluded a special meeting in Washington May 29-31, held to respond to an eight-page doctrinal assessment issued to LCWR by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Citing “serious doctrinal problems which affect many in consecrated life,” the doctrinal congregation April 18 announced a major reform of LCWR to ensure its fidelity to Catholic teaching in areas including abortion, euthanasia, women’s ordination, and homosexuality.

In response to the LCWR statement, Abp. J. Peter Sartain of Seattle, appointed by the Vatican to oversee the reform, said both he and the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith “are wholeheartedly committed to dealing with the important issues raised by the doctrinal assessment and the LCWR board in an atmosphere of openness, honesty, integrity, and fidelity to the Church’s faith.”

“I look forward to our next meeting in Rome in June as we continue to collaborate in promoting the important work of the LCWR for consecrated life in the United States,” he said.

The LCWR board said the organization’s president, Franciscan Sr. Pat Farrell, and its executive director, Sr. Janet Mock, a Sister of St. Joseph, will return to Rome June 12 to meet US Card. William J. Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and Abp. Sartain “to raise and discuss the board’s concerns.”

The Vatican April 18 appointed Abp. Sartain to provide “review, guidance and approval, where necessary, of the work” of LCWR, a Maryland-based umbrella group that claims about 1,500 leaders of US women’s communities as members, represents about 80 percent of the country’s 57,000 women religious.

His appointment came the same day the congregation announced a major reform. The congregation issued an eight-page “doctrinal assessment,” that cited “serious doctrinal problems which affect many in consecrated life.” The problems, it said, were revealed in an assessment originally ordered in April 2008.

In an interview with Catholic News Service, Sr. Farrell did not discuss specifics of the board’s reaction to the Vatican’s assessment, saying it was “a conversation we want to have first with the Vatican.”

She said that when she and Sr. Mock go to Rome they will continue the conversation they had when the eight-page document was first released to them, presenting their views after “prayerful reflection.”

Sr. Farrell said the LCWR leadership had not given interviews about the document since its release more than a month ago because they did “not want to react in the moment.”

“It was important not to respond immediately,” she said, “so that whatever we would say would come from our best selves.” She also noted that the LCWR leadership “couldn’t respond with any substance individually” because the group is a collaborative organization that speaks with one voice.

“Until we could meet as a group we weren’t in a position to respond,” she added.

Collaborative response

Sr. Farrell said the mood at the three-day board meeting was “pretty serious” and reflected a range of emotions. “There was a lot of sadness,” she said, “but it was a comfort for all of us to be together and process some of our candid responses and feelings with one another.”

Regarding future discussion of the Vatican report she said: “I think, first of all we have to move slowly, prayerfully, and reflectively on this.”

She said that as the process unfolds the LCWR leadership will have conversations with its members at the regional level and then at the national level.

“We need to walk through this one door at a time and to see how this process unfolds and to follow that path as long as we can respond with integrity,” she said.

Sr. Farrell said the LCWR leadership was not surprised by the doctrinal congregation’s report. “The great surprise was the severity of it,” she said.

In the weeks since the Vatican order was issued, the Franciscan sister from Dubuque, IA, said she has found “a lot of strength and comfort in prayer and in other members of the LCWR.”

“We have a deep and strong solidarity among us and we will move in a way that does not allow this to divide us.” She also said she was encouraged by the “immense outpouring of support” for the sisters from around the country and the world.

In his statement, Abp. Sartain added that Vatican and the US bishops “are deeply proud of the historic and continuing contribution of women religious–a pride that has been echoed by many in recent weeks.

“Dramatic examples of this can be witnessed in the school system and in the network of Catholic hospitals established by sisters across America which are lasting contributions to the well-being of our country,” he added.

Before the LCWR board opened its meeting, Abp. Carlo Maria Vigano, the papal nuncio, met with Sr. Farrell and Sr. Mock. Later that day at the nunciature, when a group was demonstrating to show support for LCWR, the archbishop invited some of its members inside and he accepted a petition they presented calling on the Vatican to stop the reform of LCWR.

In an article he wrote for the June 18 issue of America magazine, Abp. Sartain discussed the Vatican reform of LCWR.

“No one expects that such a sensitive task will be accomplished quickly or effortlessly, but by God’s grace and with mutual respect, patience and prayer it can be indeed accomplished for the good of all,” he said. “Challenges larger than this have been met before, with renewal and even deeper faith the outcome.”

“Through the years,” Abp. Sartain wrote in America magazine, “there have been inevitable conflicts and misunderstandings between religious congregations and their bishops, between one congregation and another and among the members of individual congregations. They exist today as well.

“Disagreements regarding mission, apostolate, discipline, doctrine, style of life and personality have often been at the core of such conflicts. Each situation was an opportunity to seek reconciliation and collaboration at the heart of the Church, in the “communion” that is God’s gift. Such a pivotal opportunity is now before us.”

MLK MEMORIAL–The new national memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., is located between the Jefferson and Lincoln memorials on the National Mall in Washington. (CNS/Bob Roller)

Sr. Antona Ebo, an 87-year-old Franciscan Sister of Mary, does not want Washington’s new memorial to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., to just be a quick tourist stop.

She hopes visitors take time to reflect on the words of the civil rights leader carved in stone at the memorial, which opened to the public Aug 22. Or better yet, she hopes these words and the 30-foot likeness of Rev. King carved in stone will prompt some soul searching.

“If we have to keep talking about keeping the dream alive, then what have we been doing for it still to be a dream?” said Sr. Ebo. “Martin was our dreamer; his dream was for his time. Who are our dreamers today? You have to search kind of hard to find people with new dreams appropriate for our time,” she said.

Sr. Ebo isn’t one to mince words, showing the same spirit she demonstrated in 1965 when she marched with Rev. King in a legendary protest for voting rights in Selma, AL. The march took place just days after what has been called “Bloody Sunday” when state troopers assaulted demonstrators with clubs and tear gas.

Although she lives in St. Louis, Sr. Ebo visited the King memorial a month before it opened during a special preview for members of the National Black Sisters’ Conference and the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus.

The official dedication was scheduled to take place Aug. 28–48 years after Rev. King’s famous “I have a dream speech”–but it was postponed until September or October once weather forecasts showed Washington to be in Hurricane Irene’s path.

The memorial has been in the works for more than two decades. It cost $120 million, most of which has already been raised through private and corporate donations. It is the only memorial on the National Mall not dedicated to a war or a US president.

It includes a 450-foot curved wall with quotations from Rev. King’s speeches, but snippets from the March on Washington address are missing from the wall because its designers wanted to promote his lesser-known statements.

Words from that famous speech set the tone though since visitors enter the memorial by going through a passageway of two granite rocks one of which is inscribed with the words: “Out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” After the passageway, visitors come to the huge statue of Rev. King, which appears to be have been carved out of a pushed-out section of the two rocks.

The symbolism was not lost on Msgr. Ray East, pastor of St. Teresa of Avila Parish in Washington, who said it was powerful to walk through the passageway and come to the other side where crowds assembled at the foot of the King statue.

He likened it to walking through despair to new life or finding light in darkness and love in hate to view a statue that conveys the sense of greatness of a “preacher who rose up when no one else would and spoke of hope and healing.”

Rev. King’s strong sense of hope even amid racism has long inspired Fr. Patrick Smith, pastor of St. Augustine Parish in Washington, the oldest black Catholic church in Washington and a parish that housed many of the marchers that came to Washington in 1963.

Fr. Smith, who was born two months after the March on Washington, said he was always inspired by Rev. King “for believing in something so much that he was willing to die for it.”

Service and love

He also said Rev. King’s words have had staying power because his dream was “clearly not just something for the African American community” but instead a “vision of the kingdom of God. That’s why it’s endured,” he said.

Today, nearly 50 years after Rev. King spoke of his hope for racial equality, Americans are closely divided about the extent that dream has being fulfilled. According to a USA Today/Gallup poll released Aug. 26, 51 percent feel this vision has been achieved while 49 percent say it has not. The poll, with a margin of error of plus or minus four percentage points, was conducted Aug. 4-7 surveying 1,319 adults.

Just visiting the memorial provides a pointed reminder of the work that still needs to be done, some say.

“We’ve come a mighty long way,” said Sr. Roberta Fulton, a member of the Sisters of St. Mary of Namur and president of the National Black Sisters’ Conference, “but there is still a lot of work to be done.”

The sister, who is principal of St. Martin de Porres School in Columbia, SC, took part in the preview tour of the memorial this summer and said she intends to visit it every time she comes to Washington.

She described the memorial as a “blessing to African American people and to the nation” because it will enable people to “see what tremendous strength and faith Dr. King really had to keep moving forward.”

Now she said the key to keeping that momentum going is to inspire young people with Rev. King’s message.

Msgr. East agreed and said he is urging people to visit the memorial as part of a pilgrimage. Personally, he knows he “stands on the shoulders” of his parents and other relatives who attended the 1963 March on Washington and he asks himself what he needs to do to continue Rev. King’s work which echoes so many aspects of Catholic social teaching.

Beverly Carroll, assistant director of the Subcommittee on African-American Affairs for the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), likewise said the work Rev. King started remains undone.

She said Rev. King’s “presence on the National Mall reminds us the job is not finished and calls us to leadership through service and love.”