Ministry by Women Religious and the U.S. Apostolic Visitation

The concurrent investigations of women religious in the United States, begun in 2009, mark a turning point in defining women’s apostolic religious life and ecclesial ministry. Further, the investigations raise interesting questions in ecclesiology and interpretations of the Second Vatican Council. Each is directed by curial offices directly to the institutes and organization involved, rather than via diocesan bishops or, even, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.1 The January 2009 announcement of an Apostolic Visitation of US wom n religious was quickly followed by announcement of a doctrinal investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the membership group for leadership of 95% of women’s religious institutes in the country. Some commentators implied the combined events were a coordinated attempt by conservative forces in the Church, following a conference held at Stonehill College, Massachusetts at which the speakers presented a single view of apostolic religious life.2 As some women’s leadership struggled to be positive in the face of the Apostolic Visitation, even as others welcomed it, passive aggressive patterns emerged on both sides. The Apostolic Visitation “office”—really one part-time secretary and some volunteer help in addition to the appointed Visitator, Mother Mary Clare Millea, Rome-based superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus—was mostly unresponsive to media as a critical mass of the 325 institutes under scrutiny reportedly refused to complete sections of the Visitation questionnaire, returning only copies of their approved constitutions. Separately, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith assigned Toledo, Ohio Bishop Leonard P. Blair “to review