Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Women religious visitation "positive"

The two American women religious running the Vatican’s "apostolic visitation" of women's apostolic communities in the United States insist that the project is a positive effort to support congregations.

Speaking to the National Catholic Reporter on Friday, Mother Clare Millea of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus said, "We feel that transparency is the most important tool of this whole visitation. There's no reason to hide what we're looking for."

The two major associations of women’s congregations in the United States, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, received a fax announcing the visitation just hours before a news conference presenting the project to the world.

Speaking on background, leaders among American women's congregations who travel regularly to Rome to meet with Vatican officials - including Cardinal Franc Rodé, Prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, the office that ordered the visitation - say that not once in these conversations did Rodé or anyone else offer a hint that a visitation might be in the works.

In the first phase of the visitation, superiors general of the roughly 400 women's congregations in the United States will receive letters from Rodé inviting them to contact Millea for a personal appointment.

Millea said the idea is that these conversations will help formulate the issues to be addressed during the visitation.

Millea said that an Instrumentum laboris, or "working paper," for the visitation will be developed, as it was for the recent visitation of American seminaries and religious centers of formation.

That document will lay out basic concerns and suggest a series of questions to be asked during visits.

The visitation team, which includes Illionis-based Sr. Eva-Maria Ackerman of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Martyr St. George, has a Web site, apostolicvisitation.org, with more information about the visitation and contact information for Millea and Ackerman.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Disclaimer

No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Clerical Whispers’ for any or all of the articles placed here.

The placing of an article hereupon does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.

Sotto Voce

(Source: CTHUS)