Core Reality

Patricia McCann, R.S.M., has provided an excellent, sweeping overview of what has happened to religious life among women religious in the United States since the Second Vatican Council (Catholic Identity, New Age and Women Religious, 7/21). Her knowledge of history is undoubtedly what made possible her judicious synopsis of the decline of religious life, arguably one of the most confusing phenomena in the postmodern world and one that has plagued the church to the present day. Indeed, what will happen to religious life, that rich gift to the 19th- and 20th-century American Catholic Church?

Of particular interest to me is Sister McCann’s willingness to admit the degree to which New Age action and perspectives have invaded the life and thinking of so many active religious congregations today. This is an honest and correct observation, yet it is ignored as a major reason for the obvious problems within congregations and the consequent decline in religious vocations. If not accepted by religious sisters as occasioning points of confusion, it has certainly not been understood by our lay sisters and brothers.

Here is where I wish that Sister McCann had been more emphatic. She says, for example, that we were not yet ready to focus on an evaluative analysis of these changes and suggests, Now it is time for a dialogue between Catholic faith tradition and New Age thought. To my mind, it is time for dialogue to give way to action. It is time for women religious to recognize that a certain New Age secularity has taken priority, one that must be re-evaluated in terms of its consequences for the future of religious life.

In this time of diminishment and mounting secular ridicule, it is time to face the larger questions Sister McCann also poses. The first question she suggests could alone set us all on the path we need to considernamely, Is faith in God made manifest in Jesus and articulated through the Catholic Church and its theological tradition still our core reality? My hope is that the challenge Sister McCann presents in her insightful article will not be left unexamined by today’s women religious.

Dolores Liptak, R.S.M.

Balanced Approach

The article by Drew Christiansen, S.J., (5/19) drew my immediate attention, because I had spent October 2001 to June 2002 in Jerusalem and on more than one occasion had met and listened to Patriarch Michel Sabbah speak or preach. I first met him in December 1987 in Rome, when he spent his days of preparation for his episcopal ordination in the house where I then lived, and I have followed his work, at a distance, since then. I have always found him to be very balanced in his approach and in his words.

I do agree with the general thrust of the article.

I was taken aback by the statement that George Cottier, O.P., the papal theologian, and other French churchmen supported the idea with vigorous attacks on Patriarch Michel Sabbah in the French Catholic press. Other than an article by Father Cottier in the periodical Nova et Vetera, I have found nothing and am unaware of anything in the French Catholic press. Thus my questions: who else? and where?

Considering where it originates, Switzerland, Proche-Orient Infoat least to me as a Canadiancan hardly be included in the French Catholic press. Further, was what was printed in Proche-Orient Info on Dec. 10, 2002, signed by Father Cottier, or was it a reprint from elsewhere? (I’m sorry, I don’t have access to back issues of Proche-Orient Info.)

Father Cottierand othersmay have done a grave injustice to Patriarch Sabbah, but there may also be a perceived injustice to the French Catholic press.

(Most Rev). John Stephen Knight