LCWR and ROME

LCWR stands for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Oddly there is no LCMR, probably because male celibate clerics rule the roost and proclaim that they, only they, can rise to leadership.

LCWR is meeting now to determine its response to Rome's stringent assessment of their place in the church. NCR has a couple of good articles, in case anyone hasn’t kept up with the details.

The temptation to respond to the episcopal triumvirate was so strong, I doubted whether I had any professional attitudes to those bishops at all. Sheer revulsion at their conduct, too easily branded as thuggery, forced me to shut up, be still, and support the Nuns and their leaders with prayer, filled with an equal amount of emotion on the good side. I had no contact with Nuns while growing up.

We went to Sunday School for Catechism lessons, until Dad, the Sexton of our parish church, heard my squeals at a couple of women wearing black who looked like and acted like thugines. Over the years I could never understand why a girl would want to be a Nun. So, for most of my life, I was just like a lot of men who protested they were good fellows, but still looked askance at women. For eight years I was a Jesuit, until I returned to ordinary life and practiced law, while helping the love of my life raise a family of four sons.

Thank goodness that youthful attitude has vanished, mostly because of 53 years of daily living with a lovable, loving woman and getting to know her friends on a much better level than distant politeness. I saw quickly how lawyers could never succeed at anything without the help of women, not just as secretaries or paralegals, but as equally competent, skilled, and prepared lawyers. Women took their places as judges in trial courts and justices in appellate courts, with as much skill, patience, learning, and ability to judge as are their fellow men judges. Glance, if you will, at halls of Government, Universities, Professional Graduate Schools, Corporations, Partnerships, yes, even the Military, where women are as equal, if not superior, to men. Watch TV these days to see Olympic athletes from countries all over the world.

What, in God’s Name, is wrong with the Catholic Church in its attitude towards its own women, particularly our Nuns?

Perhaps, should the bishops have more daily contact with Nuns, in the service of the people of God, they’d change their attitudes, too. I guess that means prayers for them to wake up, look and see what the Church has in the Sisterhood. And get along, together, as do we, men and women in our daily lives. When I think of Mother, Wife, Aunt, Cousin in my own family, or of Sister, Daughter in other families, I cannot understand the lack of understanding male celibate clerics have about women in the Church.

It is senseless. Worse than that, it is cruel. There are so many other adjectives to describe the indescribable contempt professional churchmen have towards women. Each one of those male hierarchs had a mother. Many had sisters within the family. Others might even have been in love, prior to entering the seminary. Even afterwards, as well.

And yet ….. and yet . . .