At the National Conference of the US Resource Center for Religious Institutes, to be held at the Atlanta Georgia Hilton hotel this October, one of the workshops is described as follows:Workshop #28: Going Non-CanonicalMary David Walgenbach is indeed a good speaker for the topic since she and her fellow former Benedictine sister, Joanne Kollasch, have left their order but spent several years sewing up a legal arrangement whereby they could keep the assets and build a new property in Madison, Wisconsin.
Neal Smith, Mary David Walgenbach, OSB & Dan Ward, OSB
The story of a small Benedictine community’s journey of becoming non-canonical. The content includes their ecumenical ministry, visioning process, development of an ecumenical board, relationship with the Federation of St. Gertrude and canonical and civil procedures for the transfer of assets.
The new non-canonical, ecumenical foundation is called the Holy Wisdom Monastery. Bishop Morlino has forbidden priests from celebrating Mass there but the sisters are happy “sharing the Bread of Life around a common table” at a weekly, inclusive, ecumenical Eucharist, presided over by a rotating team of non-Catholic ministers.
H/T St John's Valdosta where you can read more.
This is all very much in the "laugh or cry" category but there is a lesson here and it is not simply to say how dreadful it all is. Mary David Walgenbach told the National Catholic Reporter:
As women's religious congregations continue to get smaller in North America, they are exploring a variety of options for what their communities might look like in the future, and the Madison Benedictines offer one example.Well here's another option to explore: what we need is a group of intelligent, like-minded young women who can get into one of these orders before it completely collapses, provide compassionate and high-quality nursing care for the elderly sisters, and then transform the congregation, restore the habit and all the lovely chapel furnishings, and make good use of the real estate for the restoration of traditional faith and religious life. This is an idea I sometimes suggest to devout young women with leadership capacity but none of them has yet taken it up. Come on! We need some St Teresa's in the Church today - you don't even need to build convents, just take over the existing ones!
21 comments:
I've long dreamed of seeing religious life reformed. It's always so depressing to watch orders with beautiful charisms slowly decline.
When I was still discerning a religious vocation, I often thought about just what you suggest. It seems to me, though, that it would be tremendously dangerous - generally speaking, isn't it true that bad influences tend to drag down the devout, far more than the devout chase out the darkness in those influences?
If I recall correctly, St. Teresa did not become a Carmelite in the hopes of reforming the order. She began her reform long after she was already a member. So, seems to me that we should be praying and offering up our sufferings that members of these groups wake up.
Save the devout young women, perhaps, to found new religious orders. To start fresh.
For any young women to enter such communities and do as suggested would surely be in the category of white martyrdom. Although, given the age profile of the dissidents, it would most probably be a short one! But I wonder, Father, how would they even be accepted in the first place?
Well, the traditional orders are flourishing. It's the cracked up feminazi nuns who are fading. Let me know when the last crack pipe burns out.
[I thought Benedictines had more sense than this. This is really shocking and sad to read about. Why sit around the coffee table eating crackers when you can be devoting yourself to doing the work of the Lord and praising Him?]
But assuming I don't lie, how could that idea work, Father? "Hello, trendy liberal gray-haired sisters! As a young and orthodox aspiring nun, I'm appalled by what you've done with your calling and the donations entrusted to you by laypeople who thought they were supporting an actual Catholic religious order. I now wish to join your so-called order, resist whatever formation you attempt to impose upon me, somehow provide my own orthodox formation, thrive in my relationship with God in spite of your poisonous atmosphere, nurse you all as needed until you (finally!) die, and then inherit all your property for the implementation of my vision, which is most definitely opposed to yours! Now, when does my postulancy begin?"
Translation: they left the Roman Catholic Church.
And have become sort of freelance liberal Protestants.
The good news is unlike 30 years ago such people aren't taken seriously any more.
Father,
Being a resident of Wisconsin, USA, I am very aware of this "community". There are a lot of strange things associated with this bunch; it's better they were independant of the Catholic Church.
If the LCRW in this country does not shape up, they may be in the same situation...all kinds of unfortunate "goings on"...the NCReporter is giving all kinds of space to giving these women religious a forum for their "acceptance of Vatican II" and so on.
Yes, we need a LOT of St. Teresa of Avilas.
As a student at a Sinsinawa Dominican school I used to joke that if I wasn't married by 40 I would become a Sinsinawa. I figured that I would be the youngest by decades and soon enough I would be the 'last nun standing' and own it all!
It was a sad joke when I said it. I never would have imagined that someone would have actually done it. One would think that the Church would have some sort of protections in place so that sisters couldn't take the property when they leave.
What are we to think of the abbot primate who enthusiastically supports this endeavor?
Oh, believe me, I thought about it (especially since it seems a lot easier to "get into" one of those communities than those annoying faithful ones with their care for the Holy Spirit's will and my spiritual well-being).
But I think we young 'uns are a bit too full of ourselves, as per our generation. Too fully aware of the need for our own formation and conversion, that is.
Fortunately, you only need one St. Teresa to set the whole thing alight.
Maybe these dying orders should look at those orders in the US that are growing. Oh wait, those groups are faithful to the magesterium, wear habits, actually pray etc. Obviously not a viable alternative for these people who are looking for alternatives.
& while I like your suggestion, do you think these orders would really let women in who want to transform their dying orders, restore the habit, etc.
Yeah.... but it wouldn't be you who had to live with the liberal sisters...
;-)
I seem to be in 'elephant in the room' mode today, Fr Tim, so apologies for that, but the difficulty in your suggestion is that, in today's times, "intelligent" and "traditional" do not sit as easily together as they used to. I agree there are good grounds for promoting certain forms of traditionalism (I wouldn't be a mostly appreciative reader of this blog otherwise!) but they do need to be more carefully explained so get over the hurdle of irrelevancy both in principle and in response to practical situations such as those developing in the US and elsewhere.
SSPX didn't go that far but the whole pressure that Rome was capable of was put on them.
".. at illa dixit etiam Domine nam et catelli edunt de micis quae cadunt de mensa dominorum suorum .."
As the Anglican Benedictine nuns in the States cry out in faith for the Bread of the Lord's Table, these deluded ladies have rejected the Truth and set up their own table, away from the Lord's, and are sharing the bread that perishes. Duh!
Bishop Morlino has forbidden priests from celebrating Mass there but the sisters are happy “sharing the Bread of Life around a common table” at a weekly, inclusive, ecumenical Eucharist, presided over by a rotating team of non-Catholic ministers.
That's an OAP's Luncheon Club, right?
Very sad. What is going on with the US Benedictines? I was similarly disturbed when I recently came across the results of a survey (the 'Triduum Survey' on this page http://www.osb.org/mlf/) which revealed all sorts of liturgical bizarreness in some of these congregations.
They should be forbidden to use the title Benedictine. It's an insult!!.
Yes, an awful aspect of this is it didn't come from nowhere. Lots of official Roman Catholic communities, dying off, are almost just like it. These two (and it's worth remembering here it's only two people and one who seems to have joined later) have taken all the bad catechesis they've heard in the official church (but not from the magisterium) over 40 years to a logical conclusion, mainline Protestantism heading into universalism, 'beyond Christ' out of Christianity. (Essentially how upper-class American Protestants 100 years ago hoped the immigrants would assimilate.)
Using the name Benedictine is scandalous given the circumstances (these are former Roman Catholics): because of it, at a casual glance they look like they're still a Roman Catholic convent.
But I don't think anyone can do anything about that. As long as they're not openly lying — not saying they're still in the official church, and in a way I respect their honesty in leaving something they no longer believe in but not their presentation of it — they can use it.
(Cut out the 'going non-canonical' song and dance and just say you left the Catholic Church.)
Paulinus highlights - 'but the sisters are happy “sharing the Bread of Life around a common table” at a weekly, inclusive, ecumenical Eucharist, presided over by a rotating team of non-Catholic ministers'.
An OAP's Luncheon Club, right? No Paulinus - WRONG!!! VERY WRONG!!! It's not as benign as this by any means.
I might suggest that these sisters are sharing (as they did in the liberation of the 60's and 70's) in something very far indeed from the Bread of Life and closer to the Cup of Death.
I suggest Shakespeare's words from Macbeth might be more fitting to paint the correct picture -
'Double, double, toil and trouble;
Fire burn and cauldron bubble.
Cool it with a baboon's blood,
Then the charm is firm and good.
By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes'.
When Holy Orders are destroyed by this liberation idea-theology, always linked to total defiance of Church Teaching and including some kind of Sacriligeous Communion then 'Something Wicked' has definitely come their way.
St Teresa we beg your help and intercession. Send a shower (a monsoon if necessary) of your 'Way of Perfection' to bring the light of Jesus and clear the lies and deceits of the devil from the hearts, minds and souls of all religious who are lost and struggling at this time.
St Teresa of Avila - Pray for us.
I am ashamed to admit I live in Wisconsin.
This fiasco has been going on for YEARS.
Thank God the Bishop has made it clear to his priests; what kind of "Eucharist" they celebrate there I cannot fathom...
This is going to die with the two of them.
And we have three motherhouses in our Diocese whose first concerns are selling the real estate, getting the retirement money, and who is going to blow out the sanctuary light when the last one goes...if the good Lord is going to even be there.
What is the born-people death toll exacted by atheists in the 20th century, anyway? It would make a good t-shirt.
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