Last week the Vatican announced that the union of the United States Leadership Conference of Women Religious (USLCWR), which had been investigated, would be placed under the guidance and oversight of the Archbishop of Seattle. The Vatican found fault with its fidelity in promoting church teaching particularly on life issues.
The news called to mind a spat many years ago between Sydney Bishop Thomas Muldoon and a visiting religious sister who was lecturing in Australia. Muldoon, an attractively larger than life figure with a reputation for being a bull in a china shop, criticised her views. The Bulletin, reflecting the then courteous attitudes of Catholics to women religious, awarded the bishop the Congolese Medal for Bravery.
Tensions between enterprising women religious and church authorities go back a long way. In the early 17th century, when the only form of religious life open to women was of enclosure within a convent, Mary Ward (pictured) felt called to gather a group of educated women who taught young women, engaged in pastoral work, were international in scope, and were not under the direction of men.
She wanted to adopt the Jesuit rule. This was a step or two too far for the Jesuits or the Vatican. Her congregation was suppressed and she was jailed for a time.
The papal bull that suppressed the congregation was direct. It described the women as 'workers who rashly betake themselves to the field of the Lord, scatter what has been sown, root up what has been planted, introduce cockle and spread false weeds through it...'
'Free from the laws of enclosure they wander about at will, and under the guise of promoting the salvation of souls have been accustomed to attempt and employ themselves at many other works which are most unsuitable to their weak sex and character, to female modesty, and particularly to maidenly reserve — works which men of eminence in the science of sacred letters, of experience of affairs of innocence of life undertake with much difficulty.'
It concludes, 'we totally and completely suppress and extinguish them, subject them to perpetual abolition and remove them entirely from the Holy Church of God... And we wish and command all Christian faithful to consider them and think of them as suppressed, extinct, rooted out, destroyed and abolished'.
In those days they made contempt into an art form. Mary Ward's sisters continue today.
The intervention into the USLCWR is mercifully less spectacular and follows an