Responding to Questions Critical of the Sisters of the LCWR

[[Dear Sister, I have read your blog for some time and have admired a lot of what you have written. You pursue a hermit life of holiness and prayer in separation from the world but how can you speak of the Sisters of the LCWR and Network as though their lives are also about holiness and prayer? They are too immersed in the world. They are too involved in social justice. When the Church talks about "consecration" she means "set apart for God". These sisters are consecrated but who can tell? They don't dress like it, act like it, or live like it.]] (Redacted)

Thanks for your comments and questions. I assume these are in response to my post about Holiness as a Love that does Justice so I would prefer not to repeat what I already wrote there. Let me just say that the active, effective love of God that reconciles, heals, and therefore does justice (sets everything to rights) always spills over into ministry. Reconciliation is not only about our own souls, but about our entire lives, the lives of everyone around us, and in fact, our entire world. It always impels us to reach out to others and work for their own dignity and welfare, their own human wholeness and holiness. It compels us to work for the Kingdom of God --- that realm in which God is truly sovereign and so, that realm marked by a covenantal love that makes completely just. For a very very few of us that means a solitary life of prayer and penance, a life of the silence of solitude. We believe such a life signals to the whole church that there is a foundational relationship which is the source and ground of our lives, identities, and integrity. The very nature of human life is dialogical, and in fact, covenantal; hermits call attention in an especially vivid way to one dimension of this truth in particular.

But the rest of the Church calls attention to this truth in other ways, focusing on different facets of it. In Baptism all of us are consecrated into this truth and commissioned to discern how it is God calls us to make it real in our society and world. But note that consecration here has two interrelated senses. First it means set apart in and for holiness BY God --- for only God who is the Holy One consecrates. Secondly it means set apart for God, for his will, for all that he holds precious. For the majority of people this means vocations which are secular. As leaven in bread most express their consecration in the world. They do so in the world they are immersed in, the world of family, business, politics, economics, academia, etc. As Vatican II emphasized, ALL are called to an exhaustive holiness no matter the context of their lives and mission.

Men and Women Religious are also called to this SAME exhaustive holiness. However, their own call means letting go of various possibilities so that they may live out this call to holiness in a life which is more clearly countercultural and more explicitly set apart by and for God. Through their profession of the evangelical counsels they forego some ways of living which may mitigate or distort this countercultural stance. They do not build themselves into their worlds by having families, pursuing wealth, creating business empires, and the like. They live compassionate lives of prayer focused on their call to live a holiness where God's love does justice. These two dimensions of their lives allow them to address the world which God loves with an everlasting love with greater vision and generosity than THEY might otherwise be capable of --- NOT necessarily with greater generosity than others who are called to a different vocation are capable of. They are not, as you say, immersed in the world yet neither are they uninvolved in it nor ignorant or uncaring of it; neither are they called to live apart from it in the same way a hermit or cloistered religious is. They are called, again, to live countercultural lives which summon the world to become the Kingdom God wills it to be --- the Kingdom where the Divine completely interpenetrates reality and all of us live as brothers and sisters in God. Afterall, this incarnational way of working for the Kingdom is precisely the way Jesus lived it and summoned his disciples to do.

Remember that "separation from the world" can have a number of meanings and expressions. While some treat this term as meaning separation from anything except a convent, monastery, or hermitage environment and life, in canon law it means separation from that which is resistant to Christ and NOT from the whole of God's good creation. Given this latter sense women religious who live more radically countercultural lives rooted in prayer and commitment to a love that does justice can be said to be every bit as faithful to this element of their lives as anyone else. In fact, to the extent they really are grounded in the countercultural values and vision of Christ, they may be more sincerely faithful to it than the so-called hermit who closes the door of her hermitage out of selfishness or individualism and does whatever she wants, or the Sister who lives comfortably in her convent pursuing personal holiness but who cannot or will not muster the compassion or real concern she should have for those living in poverty and/or in separation from love that makes whole.

You complain that the Sisters whose congregations belong to the LCWR are too involved in social justice to the detriment of any personal pursuit of prayer and holiness. But remember that Jesus spoke often about things like feeding the poor, visiting prisoners, etc, and one of the Gospel counsels we have is, "Whatsoever you do for the least of my brothers and sisters, that you do for/to me." Apart from what I have already mentioned above about commitment to a love that does justice and flows from personal holiness, what seems to be critical for the Sisters we have been speaking of is the reason they are engaged in social justice. Sister Simone Campbell, who was featured in the video I posted, once noted that early on in the days of the civil rights movement she scanned the room in which a lot of fellow demonstrators were clustered and realized that while they all agreed on the action taken, no one else there was there on behalf of the Gospel of Christ. The Sisters who are involved in social justice activities are involved not only because of a holiness which issues in a love that does justice, but precisely because they take the Gospel counsels seriously --- including the counsels about the poor and least. I would suggest to you that this may not be maintained UNLESS the person is deeply grounded in prayer.

The life of women and men religious is a large and vital reality. It is composed of many streams and tributaries. We mustn't make the mistake of identifying one stream or current as the sole representative of a religious life of holiness and prayer, nor one as the only cogent expression of separation from the world. At the same time we cannot draw an absolute dichotomy between social justice and concern with individual holiness and lives of prayer. To do so is to call Jesus and the Gospel of Jesus liars. I hope this answers most of your objections and questions. The question of garb is one I will write about separately if you don't mind.

Personal Holiness is driven by a Love that does Justice: Reflecting on Nuns on the Bus

I have read a lot of comments in response to the Sisters of LCWR and Network being too political, not sufficiently concerned with holiness or grounded in prayer. I have to say that my own understanding of the Gospel supports the clear connection between concern with social justice (which implies political engagement), holiness, and the prayer that is the source of both. Even hermits whose lives are focused in the ways of solitary prayer and the silence of solitude know that genuine holiness stems from prayer and issues in compassion while compassion issues in ministry and ministry is a form of love doing justice. We see this dynamic clearly from the remarks of Sister Simone Campbell as she and a group of Sisters begin their Nuns on the Bus trip.



I am reminded in Sister Simone's emphases (social justice and prayer) and the way they dovetail so well that one of the truly wonderful renderings of the NT's term "righteousness" is "covenant behavior". This is a translation that NT Wright uses. What this means is that we are righteous when we act out of the fact that God is actively and truly our God and we (together) are actively and truly God's People. Both words in this translation are critical: covenant, which points to the dialogical or communal nature of our existence, and "behavior" which focuses us on the living, compelling, and effective nature of the love which stands at the heart of this covenantal reality and also issues from it. Another word for the righteousness that results when God's reconciling love does justice within us and within our world, is "holiness". Unless there is a "love that does justice" at the heart of our being, and therefore, a love which impels us beyond ourselves to extend this justice-making love to our brothers and sisters, our society, and our world, we are not dealing with that "covenant behavior" --- that holiness --- which Jesus' life, death, and resurrection made real in our world. Genuine holiness does justice; the two simply cannot be separated from one another, and they certainly cannot be separated from one another in the lives of ministerial or apostolic religious.

It is not always easy to be transparent about one's prayer. Neither is it easy to make it clear that for Sisters involved in either apostolic or ministerial religious life a passion for social justice stems from prayer, is supported by prayer, and leads back to prayer. (Too often in discussions and debates critics arbitrarily draw lines between faith and political action, for instance, and we are left with a truncated and inadequate perspective on what it means to be a person of faith, a person committed to holiness, to covenant behavior in our contemporary world.) But Sister Simone managed all this in her comments above. My thanks to her for so clearly revealing the heart of this vital form of religious life.