The following comes from a May 5 posting on the blog of Father Zuhlsdorf.
This is big. From the site of the CDF.
This is pretty much self-explanatory. Just read it through.
CONTEXT: Remember that the nuns were trying to spin what the US bishops and the CDF were, and are doing, as payback for their support for ObamaCare. The nuns were trying to make this political. Now we see the true issue: Faith. Faith in Jesus, Son of God, who saved us from our sins! The Jesus who founded the Church as the means of salvation for all! Some of you have been waiting for me to admit, “for all”. There it is.
The nuns, however, seem not even to know what they don’t know.
Okay… now read. Just read.
______
Meeting of the Superiors of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
with the Presidency of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)
April 30, 2014
Opening Remarks
By Cardinal Gerhard Müller
….An example may help at this point. It saddens me to learn that you have decided to give the Outstanding Leadership Award during this year’s Assembly to a theologian criticized by the Bishops of the United States because of the gravity of the doctrinal errors in that theologian’s writings. This is a decision that will be seen as a rather open provocation against the Holy See and the Doctrinal Assessment. Not only that, but it further alienates the LCWR from the Bishops as well.
I realize I am speaking rather bluntly about this, but I do so out of an awareness that there is no other interpretive lens, within and outside the Church, through which the decision to confer this honor will be viewed. It is my understanding that Archbishop Sartain was informed of the selection of the honoree only after the decision had been made. Had he been involved in the conversation as the Mandate envisions, I am confident that he would have added an important element to the discernment which then may have gone in a different direction. The decision taken by the LCWR during the ongoing implementation of the Doctrinal Assessment is indeed regrettable and demonstrates clearly the necessity of the Mandate’s provision that speakers and presenters at major programs will be subject to approval by the Delegate. I must therefore inform you that this provision is to be considered fully in force. I do understand that the selection of honorees results from a process, but this case suggests that the process is itself in need of reexamination. I also understand that plans for this year’s Assembly are already at a very advanced stage and I do not see the need to interrupt them. However, following the August Assembly, it will be the expectation of the Holy See that Archbishop Sartain have an active role in the discussion about invited speakers and honorees.
Let me address a second objection, namely that the findings of the Doctrinal Assessment are unsubstantiated. The phrase in the Doctrinal Assessment most often cited as overreaching or unsubstantiated is when it talks about religious moving beyond the Church or even beyond Jesus. Yes, this is hard language and I can imagine it sounded harsh in the ears of thousands of faithful religious. I regret that, because the last thing in the world the Congregation would want to do is call into question the eloquent, even prophetic witness of so many faithful religious women. And yet, the issues raised in the Assessment are so central and so foundational, there is no other way of discussing them except as constituting a movement away from the ecclesial center of faith in Christ Jesus the Lord.
For the last several years, the Congregation has been following with increasing concern a focalizing of attention within the LCWR around the concept of Conscious Evolution. Since Barbara Marx Hubbard addressed the Assembly on this topic two years ago, every issue of your newsletter has discussed Conscious Evolution in some way. Issues of Occasional Papers have been devoted to it. We have even seen some religious Institutes modify their directional statements to incorporate concepts and undeveloped terms from Conscious Evolution.
Again, I apologize if this seems blunt, but what I must say is too important to dress up in flowery language. The fundamental theses of Conscious Evolution are opposed to Christian Revelation and, when taken unreflectively, lead almost necessarily to fundamental errors regarding the omnipotence of God, the Incarnation of Christ, the reality of Original Sin, the necessity of salvation and the definitive nature of the salvific action of Christ in the Paschal Mystery.
My concern is whether such an intense focus on new ideas such as Conscious Evolution has robbed religious of the ability truly to sentire cum Ecclesia. To phrase it as a question, do the many religious listening to addresses on this topic or reading expositions of it even hear the divergences from the Christian faith present?
This concern is even deeper than the Doctrinal Assessment’s criticism of the LCWR for not providing a counter-point during presentations and Assemblies when speakers diverge from Church teaching. The Assessment is concerned with positive errors of doctrine seen in the light of the LCWR’s responsibility to support a vision of religious life in harmony with that of the Church and to promote a solid doctrinal basis for religious life. I am worried that the uncritical acceptance of things such as Conscious Evolution seemingly without any awareness that it offers a vision of God, the cosmos, and the human person divergent from or opposed to Revelation evidences that a de facto movement beyond the Church and sound Christian faith has already occurred.
I do not think I overstate the point when I say that the futuristic ideas advanced by the proponents of Conscious Evolution are not actually new. The Gnostic tradition is filled with similar affirmations and we have seen again and again in the history of the Church the tragic results of partaking of this bitter fruit. Conscious Evolution does not offer anything which will nourish religious life as a privileged and prophetic witness rooted in Christ revealing divine love to a wounded world. It does not present the treasure beyond price for which new generations of young women will leave all to follow Christ. The Gospel does! Selfless service to the poor and marginalized in the name of Jesus Christ does!
It is in this context that we can understand Pope Francis’ remarks to the Plenary Assembly of the International Union of Superiors General in May of 2013. What the Holy Father proposes is a vision of religious life and particularly of the role of conferences of major superiors which in many ways is a positive articulation of issues which come across as concerns in the Doctrinal Assessment. I urge you to reread the Holy Father’s remarks and to make them a point of discussion with members of your Board as well.
To read the original posting on Father Z’s blogsite, click here.
You can see the weirdness here:
https://barbaramarxhubbard.com/evolutionary-language/
Tower of babel?
Just another one of “The Fruits of Vatican II”.
The cardinal’s words are admirable. But I can’t forget that the CDF which takes warranted action against the LCWR is the same CDF that watches Catholic universities invite notorious public sinners to deliver commencement addresses to the student body, and takes no action whatever. I can’t forget that this is the same CDF that provides elaborate funerals for notorious public sinners who called themselves catholic. I can’t forget that this is the same CDF that allows bishops and priests to give the sacred Eucharist – and do so in a most public way – to notorious public sinners even at the Vatican. And I can’t help noticing the inexplicable double standard being applied here. Is there one set of Church teachings and one code of Canon Law for the rich and the powerful, and another set of teachings and code of Canon Law for women religious?
I think that you do not understand the function of Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
You’re not kidding. I can’t begin to understand why they crack down on the nuns for new age rituals and other deviations from orthodoxy while they turn a blind eye to similar and even worse aberrations taking place in our Catholic universities, for example.
‘Conscious Evolution’ is ‘New Age’ religion. It puts the human person equal to God, or does not include God at all and glorifies the person (much like Scientology).
It is a heresy for Catholics to believe in this or to teach it.
The LCWR, NETWORK, and Nuns on the Bus, are all part of the same highly political membership.
They do not read or adhere to the Bible or everything in the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition”.
There is no need for the LCWR. Membership in the LCWR is voluntary.
Faithful Orders have been resigning from the LCWR.
No Faithful Catholic Order should be a part of the LCWR any longer.
A Note to all Women – There are Faithful Catholic Orders of Nuns – for teaching, nursing, contemplative prayer, etc.
Do not join any Order that is part of LCWR, Network, or Nuns on the Bus.
They are heretical and schismatic and very political.
Ella, there are some orders whose leaders belong to LCWR who do not agree with what the current leadership has done.
Then they should publically resign their membership in the LCWR.
The can not be faithful to the Church, and also to the LCWR (or Network, or Nuns on the Bus).
All faithful Orders will be in full adherence with Holy Scripture (Bible) and the “Catechism of the Catholic Church, Second Edition” – in entirety.
There is no picking and choosing between Church teachings – to suit oneself.
“This catechism is conceived as an organic presentation of the Catholic faith in its entirety. It should be seen therefore as a unified whole.” (CCC pg 11)
Just another one of “The Fruits of Vatican II”.
NO, NO y NO!!
Most of this nuns took the habits way before Vatican II.
Yes, most of the leadership in the LCWR are quite elderly.
I recently saw Sister Simone Campbell of ‘Nuns on the Bus’ and you would hardly recognize her from her speech at the 2012 Democratic National Convention – – an elderly woman with lines on her face and grey hair. She either had plastic surgery or botox has done a great job.
They were adults well before the close of Vatican II in 1965.
Some people blame everything on Vatican II, and have never read all the Documents, but like little parrots just repeat what they have heard.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/
There have been heretics and schismatics well before Vatican II.
Oh…so things have been great since Vatican II ???
While things weren’t perfect before..anyone remember nonsense like THIS before Vat II ????
I’m pretty sure the internet machine wasn’t invented until after VII.
Study your Church history cjo. There have always been heretical and schismatic people within the Church.
The greatest schisms took place before, during and after the Council of Trent (1545).
Have you not heard of the Protestant Reformation which concluded about 1648 ? (These people at one time were Catholics.)
The real problem is not either Council which gave us the only two official world-wide catechisms in the history of the Church –
it is the lack of many Bishops and other clergy not teaching the Laity from them accurately and in entirety.
The problem has not changed.
PETER S., thank you for your insightful post. I am often amazed when I realize that far to many people seem to be under the assumption that history started when they were born, or perhaps only 50 years prior to their birth!
Anonymous,
Have you not read or heard: “from their (VII) fruits ye shall know them?
Not even I thought that I would ever see Disloyal LMU (DLMU) feature the President of Planned Barrenhood L.A. as a Keynote speaker. Lord have mercy on DLMU!
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
Yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher
It is wrong to pervert Holy Scripture in this way
The problems with LCWR, the honoring of pro-choice politicians and other problems of heterodoxy in the Church are not fruits of the Ecumenical Council known as Vatican II anymore than they are fruits of the Council of Trent.
“Ecumenical Councils are those to which the bishops, and others entitled to vote, are convoked from the whole world (oikoumene) under the presidency of the pope or his legates, and the decrees of which, having received papal confirmation, bind all Christians.”
https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/04423f.htm
Ephesians 4:[29] Let no evil speech proceed from your mouth; but that which is good, to the edification of faith, that it may administer grace to the hearers. [30] And grieve not the holy Spirit of God: whereby you are sealed unto the day of redemption. [31] Let all bitterness, and anger, and indignation, and clamour, and blasphemy, be put away from you, with all malice. [32] And be ye kind one to another; merciful, forgiving one another, even as God hath forgiven you in Christ.
Those Catholics who reject the official teachings of the Church are heretics and schismatics.
(For Church definitions see: CCC 2089)
This includes rejecting the OFFICIAL teachings from Vatican II.
https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/
Everyone who doubts must read the statements of Cardinal
Ratzinger (Pope Benedict) in the “RATZINGER REPORT
pages 27 -44.
Included is the following quote:
“We must remain faithful to the today of the Church, not the yesterday or tomorrow. And this today of the Church is the documents of Vatican II, without reservations that amputate them and without arbitrariness that distorts them” .
Well said MAC. Keep up the good, informative posts.
Cardinal Muller hit this one out of the park. Praise God. Remeber that the LCRW is just a very small group who represent about 1200. Our beautiful faithful Nuns are still out there quietly and prayerfully doing the Lord’s work. Pray for all our religious who are so devoted to our Lord and to helping mankind.
Well said SandraD.
Mac obviously thinks that all of this going on is just wonderful! I don’t remember any of these kind of problems in the Church prior to Vatican II.
Why did Our Lady appear so many times to call the faithful to conversion?
If one reads the Cardinal’s entire speech, he was pretty tough on the Sisters. That makes it important to also read the reaction of the Sisters to being taken behind the wood shed. https://ncronline.org/news/vatican/lcwr-accusations-communication-has-broken-down-mistrust-has-developed.
Bob One, please do not promote link the heretical and schismatic “NC REPORTER”.
The number of recorded hits on their web site helps with their advertisers.
For those who may not know, the ‘National Catholic REPORTER’ was condemned in 1968 by their Diocese Bishop Helmsing.
https://greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=00Cofv
The condemnation was reaffirmed by their Diocese Bishop in 2013.
https://catholickey.org/2013/01/25/the-bishops-role-in-fostering-the-mission-of-the-catholic-media/
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/colorado-bishop-national-catholic-reporter-is-an-embarrassment-to-the-catho/
Peter S., while I do not typically read the NCR, I was not aware that the paper has been condemned nor that it holds so many heretical views! I read the Life Site News article you linked to. Thank you!
You are also correct that every click onto their site helps them retain their advertisers. I also believe that now with digital radio and TV, every time one tunes into a program, this too is counted. We all need to be aware of who we are supporting with every click of the mouse or turn of the dial.
Bob One, be aware that any obedience rightly demanded of by the Bishop will be far easier for the sisters to bear, (not to mention a joyful experience if accepted in humility), than the obedience demanded by the STATE will ever be!
Theologian Fr. John Hardon S.T.D. on the virtue of obedience: “As a virtue, (obedience) is pleasing to God because it means the sacrifice of one’s will out of love for God.” He defined obedience as the following: “The moral virtue that inclines the will to comply with the will of another who has the right to command.”
https://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=5245
My son, reject not the correction of the Lord: and do not faint when thou art chastised by him: For whom the Lord loveth, he chastiseth: and as a father in the son he pleaseth himself. (Proverbs 3:11)
The average US nun has a better grasp on the Church’s problems and future than the average member of the DCF at the Vatican.
Their grasp, however, is not Faith based, good cause. Nuns are called first to have Faith in Christ and Church teaching first and foremost. Without that, they are nothing more than ad hoc social workers.
That said, they seem very much to embody the notion of a ‘modern’ woman in a ‘modern’ secular marriage.
good cause, not the heretical and/or schismatic nuns of the LCWR, Network, and Nuns on the Bus.
Thank you Sandra D for pointing out there are still many, many good nuns out there. I will never forget Sr. Jane Kelly in Santa Rosa, CA. A true saint if ever there was one but she’ll never get the recognition she deserves because she dared take on a bishop. We in the laity must support, assist and encourage our priests, nuns and bishops!
from your Facebook page-A lesson that many here at CCD should pray over.
“There are some people who continuously seem angry and look for conflict. Walk away; the battle they’re fighting isn’t with you, it is with themselves.”
“Loved this”, just a little reminder; occasionally Jesus ‘walked away’, but mostly he responded with strong words! While the above quote may be the prudent response in some situations, this is not always the case. Non-the-less, I do agree with you that saying a prayer for guidance prior to posting on this or any other site is a wise thing to do.
“This concern is even deeper than the Doctrinal Assessment’s criticism of the LCWR for not providing a counter-point during presentations and Assemblies when speakers diverge from Church teaching…”
How very true of these ‘dissenters’ who allow No Pr-Magisterium Dissent from their politics when they host forums ostensibly under the banner of the Church, and at least Paid for by the same Church they trash.
Like the ‘tolerance’ industry, they are intolerant in the extreme of anyone who may actually contradict, let alone de-bunk, their partisan political ideologies.
Lest there be any doubt – let me state clearly that I have known Nuns who were some of the greatest people I have ever met, and who deserved all the respect in the world.
In the Olden Days it was Faithful Nuns who mostly ran Catholic Education (and they suffered difficult students as all teachers do, but had the same joys as well), but as their numbers declined we have seen infiltration of ‘Catholic Education’ by those who are anything but Catholic.
Today’s ‘Trying Times’ and the rest of the ‘Digital First Media’ (Formerly the Dean Singleton propaganda machine) have publicly trashed the Catholic Church & Bishop Barber – for saying Catholic Teachers (which is a Ministry – even if not properly recognized as one yet) should actually be Catholic.
How politically incorrect can you get – in this bastion of ‘tolerance’ for all that is Anti-Catholic?
“Morality clause for Oakland Catholic schoolteachers wrong, parents say
BERKELEY — A new faith and morals clause for Catholic schoolteachers in the Diocese of Oakland implies that teachers who are gay, have sex outside marriage or use birth control could be fired, and that is wrong, according to some angry parents and Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner.
https://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_25732386/morality-clause-oakland-catholic-school-teachers-wrong-parents
Could be fired! How about will be fired!
May God have mercy on an amoral Amerika!
Viva Cristo Rey!
Yours in Their Hearts,
Kenneth M. Fisher, Founding Director
Concerned Roman Catholics of America, Inc
I just went over to the NC Reporter following a link. I don’t think I will do that again.
Good. It has been condemned for fraudulently pretending to be “Catholic”.
They are nothing more than a heretical and schismatic rag.
Some people call the “National Catholic REPORTER” – FISHWRAP – because it is not fit to do anything with – except wrap stinking, decaying fish with.
I believe the sisters abandoned their habits just as Vatican II was ending. In Los Angeles, the sisters all wore traditional habits until the summer of 1967. After that, some habits were modified, but many were abandoned. The sisters were told to go to a sensitivity training seminar which was held at Imaculate Heart College. All the nuns there wore habits, but soon afterwards, the sisters were no longer distinguishable from other women. This was the beginning of the downfall of women religious in North America. And, the NCR stands for National Catholic DISTORTER, even though distorter begins with a’ d,’ and not with an’ r’.
ST PIUS X’S PRAYER FOR UNION WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT
O Holy Spirit of Light and Love,
to You I consecrate my heart, mind, and will
for time and eternity.
May I be ever docile to Your Divine inspirations
and to the teachings of the holy Catholic Church
whose infallible guide You are.
May my heart be ever inflamed
with the love of God and love of neighbour.
May my will be ever in harmony with Your Divine Will.
May my life faithfully imitate the life and virtues
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
To Him,
with the Father,
and You, Divine Spirit,
be honour and glory forever.
Amen
Yes, the old guard is dying out, and the new nuns are joyful and really want to be nuns. My personal opinion after 12 years of Catholic Schools with nuns, some of them did not either want to be teachers or nuns, or perhaps both!
There are 4 wonderful nuns at Marin Catholic, and the lovely Italian Sisters at St. Catherines and St. Francis of Assisi in East Palo Alto have nuns from Mexico!
Keep praying everyone for traditional nuns that will be teaching in the schools!!!
The photo heading this story is of Barbara Marx Hubbard, who is specifically mentioned in the Doctrinal Assessment, a “futurist” with rather chilling belief holdings which she has self-described as “conscious evolution.” (“Since Barbara Marx Hubbard addressed the Assembly on this topic two years ago, every issue of your newsletter has discussed Conscious Evolution in some way.” = Card. Mueller’s Doctrinal Assessment.) She defines “Conscious Evolution” (CE) as “an awakening of a ‘memory’ that resides in the synthesis of human knowing, from spiritual to social to scientific”—in other words, leaving behind the religious and the divine and moving on to a Brave New Scientific World. Traditional religious language, she says, states that we were created in the image of God (=Catholic belief, prima facie). She says as a result of evolution, we are essentially leaving all that behind, “In cocreation we bring forth two strands — our spiritual essence and our scientific and social capacities — to participate in the creation. When these strands blend, a new human is born: a universal human, a cocreator, a unique and personal expression of the divine.” (www.barbaramarxhubbard.com)
“The most fundamental step on the path of the cocreator is a new spirituality in which we shift our relationship with the creative process from creature to cocreator , ” she says.
What is or should be shocking is that the LWCR is “all in” on this post-Christian, post-Catholic Nietzschean SuperWomyn, where we “choose” our being henceforth by literally making up our own rules.
Such heresy and evil amongst these women/unCatholic and irreligious harpies and yet the Cardinal apoligizes for being blunt?
As to those who wish to excoriate pre-Vatican II Catholicism based on the age of many of these quite elderly “Nuns on the Run [from God]”, all of us have noticed that some of the worst renegades are those who were “in the system” prior to V2 and who developed theological mad-cow-disease during the heady 1960’s of V2 and it’s famed “Spirit of”. I only observe to you the Fr. Brian Joyces, the [late] Fr. Richard Purcell OFM of here in SF, the Matthew Foxes, Abp. Rembert Weakland, Hans Kung, and the [late] Fr. Tennant Wright SJ of Santa Clara University (Fr. “Tennie” Wright at one Good Friday service about 1973 at Santa Clara Mission burst in on the quiet, respectful students gathered for the liturgy along with another unidentified male, both dressed up in Planet-of-the-Apes masks—I kid you not—and proceeding to utter unintelligible shreiks and ape-sounds, while beating one another with sticks. He ‘explained’ later that it represented the chaos of evil on Good Friday. Oh.), and we could all go on and on. There was not doubt a lot of rot going on under the surface. But was that all remedied by V2? Or was that (V2) the catalyst that set of the final thermonuclear detonation of the Catholic Church? I lean toward the latter view.
Are you familiar with RemnantNewspaper.com, Steve? They have some really relevant and helpful videos. I especially find it an aid to verbalizing what is difficult to express…they call modernists or liberals “neo-Catholics” and use logic and tremendous Church knowledge to show what’s taking place right now. I was helped enormously. We’re not alone, just the minority. God bless California Catholic…what a boon.
Yes, thank you, Dana, Remnant Press and now Remnant-TV has been startlingly prophetic (and sometimes dry-ly comic) about the strange ‘Spirit of V2’—as divergent as that ‘Spirit’ has been from the actual written documents of the Council. If people want the actual liturgy of V2, that is the TLM: Rembert Weakland and A. Bugnini did not concoct the ‘New Mass’ until Jan. 1968, when they unveiled it for a stupefied Paul VI. Read Weakland autobiography, anyone who contests this.
Could you give a page number? I can’t find what you are referring to.
We have learned that John Paul II cared little or nothing for the victims of his priests and bishops but was instead concerned with protecting bishops, preserving the image of the priesthood and finding a focus for blame anywhere but in the institutional Church. We have learned that the clerical elite that runs the institutional Church is abysmally ignorant of the complex nature of human sexuality and therefore of the devastating effects of sexual violation on all levels of personhood. We have learned that the exposure of widespread sexual abuse at all levels of the institutional Church has triggered the exposure of corruption in other areas such as finance and a demand for accountability. We have learned that today’s bishops have a severely limited and deficient understanding of pastoral care. We have learned that the last two popes and the hierarchy have a seriously twisted notion of right and wrong whereby they protect or excuse clerics who violate children but persecute and punish sincere, faith-filled men and women who seek new and more effective ways to bring the Christian message to people in our twenty-first century culture. We have learned that victims who present themselves to Church authorities in a docile, deferential and non-demanding manner……who play nice…… will be tolerated but those who stand on an even level with the bishops and demand true justice will be treated as the enemy. We have learned that the Church’s leaders from the papacy on down have grossly underestimated the impact their action and inaction would have and the mortal blow this would deal their credibility.