For the first time now LCWR leadership has no one with a
lived experience of the time when CMSW became the LCWR. (This change came about out of the desire of
some congregations to include more than Major Superiors in leadership decisions.
Not every congregation joined this movement and later those who refused to join
LCWR formed the group called CMSWR). The
LCWR is going through an emerging learning process, interviewing women within
and outside of religious life. An interesting
comment from one of these groups, Giving
Voice, a group of religious women younger than 40, is that religious life
today is in a “Crisis of Imagination.”
Why is that? Sr. Mary proposed it
is because of a need for privacy, for independence and false perceptions of what
it would cost us to work side by side with others. What will it take to initiate a stretch of the imagination.
She named some of the false perceptions that stand in our way:
1. Women are from Venus; men are from Mars. We believe
we can’t really understand one another and work together.
2.
LCWR is a radical liberal group that is disrespectful
of the Church. They are not authentic religious. They live religious vows too loosely.
3.
Sisters who wear habits are too conservative.
4.
CMSWR are ultra conservative and not open to new
ways. They want to return to pre-Vatican II days.
Sisters in congregations that belong to neither LCWR nor
CMSWR say that they left LCWR because they wear the habit and Sisters who don’t
wear the habit made them feel unwelcome; they tried joining the CMSWR but found
that their members were too self-righteous and were always bad mouthing the
LCWR. (Is it time to form a new group that combines the strengths of both of
the others with some better guidelines for how to cooperate with one another??)
Sisters ministering in the U.S. from other countries suffer
the perception that they only want to work with people from their ethnic group
and that they don’t speak English. Most
of them do speak English and want to learn it better and work with English-speaking
people.
March 31, 2019 a presentation by Sr. Mary Hughes, OP at Diocese of San Jose Chancery Office.
