A Nun’s Life LIVE! podcasts

Sister Julie – I will be very excited to hear this podcast on the CARA study and will think about whether I have questions, though I am just interested in what they have to say. It has been interesting to read the articles out there and I would like to hear what the survey’s author and Patrice Tuohy have to say, in large part because I anticipate that they will not become involved in the partisan nonsense that has begun to shape a near meta-narrative that pits LCWR (organization and members and supporters) against CMSWR (organization and members and supporters) and vice versa.

My hope is that they will, instead, speak to the survey and encourage discerners and potential discerners to continue to hear God while sisters and congregations are encouraged to hear the voices of the surveyed and discern how they want to respond to what this study has to say to them as congregations and as individual sisters.

I am so tired of the kind of the discussion that results in this kind of response to CARA (in response to NCR’s article on the study): “That’s a shame. They seem to be joining orders that wear habits. They’re going to undo all the work of Vatican II! Something must be done.”

Here’s my response to that post: “What must be done? Who must do it? Why must it be done? I am discerning with an order that does not wear a preVII habit and am comfortable that I am being called by the Holy Spirit to that order. But why should I – or anyone else – assume that this movement toward the traditional pre-VII habit is not also the work and calling of the Holy Spirit? I perceive such an assessment as spiritual arrogance and it is very troubling to me. Something has been done, I think. The Holy Spirit called me to an order that does not wear the traditional habit and the Holy Spirit called a bunch of other men and women to orders that do wear that habit”.

I read another particuarly upsetting exchange in which a woman who has the opposite concern (she has very mildly and clearly “owned” disagreements with the less preVII-traditional and LCWR orders) is being berated online by someone who disagrees with her concernsopinion. That particular personal attack is taking the form of a continued assertion that this woman (unknown to the berater) is refusing a vocation to LCWR orders and, in her fear and cowardice, is thus attacking what she secretly desires. I am horrified whenever I read this stuff that judges the “rightness” or “wrongness” of the Holy Spirit’s call to individuals and congregations.

I look forward to the discussion here, Sister Julie, and what I know will be respect for the reality that Religious Life is driven by the Holy Spirit and not by the votes and whims and wrangling-for-poll-numbers of a two-party system of spiritual “Democrats” and spiritual “Republicans”.

Jean

I look

Thanks for arranging this dialogue for us, Sister Julie

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