August 5-11, 2007 Issue |
Posted 7/31/07 at 11:45 AM
SPOKANE, Wash. — Fifteen nuns left a schismatic community
and are now in communion with the Catholic Church under the auspices of the
Diocese of Spokane.
The sisters had been part of the Religious Congregation of
Mary Immaculate Queen at the religious community of Mount St. Michael in
Spokane.
Mostly K-12 teachers, they left Mount St. Michael June 22,
at the end of the Mount St. Michael Academy school year. One of the nuns who
left had been teaching at the congregation’s small, two-teacher school in
Detroit — a move that has closed the school.
“This is an answer to prayers,” said Spokane Bishop William
Skylstad, “We are really grateful for the courage of these sisters, as some
were part of that community for 30 to 35 years.”
The priests and nuns at Mount St. Michael are
sedevacantists, believing that no pope has served legitimately since Pope Pius
XII, who died in 1958. Members of the Mount St. Michael community say they
prefer the term “traditionalist” over sedevacantist and argue that the Novus
Ordo Mass is similar to a Protestant service, in that it has no references to
the Mass as a sacrifice. Some acknowledge that Pope Benedict XVI has worked to
restore traditionalism and to facilitate the Latin Mass, but they complain that
Vatican II still reigns.
The mother general of the 36 nuns who didn’t flee said the
split has left “traditionalists” concerned that others in the movement may
follow the lead of the 15.
“I do have that concern, and I do get the sense that
traditionalist Catholics are alarmed by these sisters leaving and believe that
this may cause others to leave for the official Church, for lack of a better
term,” said Mother Mary Dominica.
Pope Benedict’s decree to allow wider celebration of the
Mass according to the 1962 Missal was made to advance the cause of unity with
traditional Catholics who have gone into schism over their dissatisfaction with
Novus Ordo Missae (Mass of Pope Paul VI).
Mother Dominica was elected mother general of Spokane’s
sedevacantist sisters because the reigning mother general and the past mother
general were among those who left.
Mother Mary Katrina had served as mother general of the
order for decades, and taught Mother Dominica in the seventh grade. As a child,
Mother Dominica had attended St. Joseph the Worker Catholic School in Los
Angeles, and her parents pulled her out because of their disagreements with
Vatican II.
“They put me in public school for a short time, and then we
moved to northern Idaho to be with people who were holding on to the
traditional Latin Mass,” Mother Dominica said. “My first teacher in Idaho was
Mother Katrina. She’s the one who taught me why the traditional Mass was
important. She taught me all about my faith. So this has been really hard. She
came to say goodbye to me, and she went on for a while about how she had come
to this decision. She was actually hoping that all of us would go together and
be reunited with Rome.”
Rome Pilgrimage
Though Mother Dominica suspects some other adult
sedevacantists might follow the lead of the 15 nuns, she’s certain the children
at her school are questioning much of what the school teaches.
“Many of the students in our school here have been shaken by
this, and some are saying maybe we should give this whole thing another look,”
Mother Dominica said. “I hate what it is doing to these kids.”
Mother Dominica said some of the students have such respect
for the nuns who fled that they can’t help but desire more information from
them about Pope Benedict, the Church and even the Novus Ordo. Some of the
students, she said, are planning visits to the departed nuns.
“We can’t tell the kids not to go see them, and what may
result from these visits is a concern for me,” Mother Dominica said.
The nuns who left are living at Spokane’s Immaculate Heart
Retreat Center, where Bishop Skylstad said they will pray and spend the next
year discerning how to serve.
“This is their home now, and they are absolutely welcome here,”
said Deacon John Ruscheinsky, director of the retreat center. “Their long-term
future? That will be determined by God’s will.”
The 15 sisters declined to speak with the Register, and
Deacon Ruscheinsky said they have chosen to convene speaking publicly only
after selecting their new habits through a process of prayer and discernment
that could take weeks.
“They want to keep their focus on that right now,” Deacon
Ruscheinsky said. “This has been a very difficult time for many of them.”
Several sisters told the Inland Register, the news magazine
of the Diocese of Spokane, that they began seriously questioning their
separation from the Vatican during a 2000 visit to Rome.
“It was not what we had been told,” Sister Francis Marie
said. “Every church was full. There was modesty, confessions. Masses. We saw an
extraordinary pilgrimage of holiness.”
Stereotypes
Five years later, the funeral for Pope John Paul II caused
them to seriously question their separation from the Church. The televised
rites, said Sister Francis, were “very moving and rich. … We were moved by that
loss.”
She and other sisters began following the story of Pope
Benedict XVI, and his former work as prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
“I noticed the good that he was doing,” Sister Francis said.
“I sat up and paid attention: We had a good man, a good pope.”
As the sisters questioned their distance from the Church,
they began meeting with Bishop Skylstad and with priests in the diocese.
One priest, who worked with the nuns as they made their
decision, reported to the Inland Register that a sister began to hear truths
about the Church by listening to Sacred Heart Radio.
Mother de Lourdes, who was serving as mother general of the
sedevacantist nuns during the breakup, said: “We did this because of the
promises of Christ to his Church: that it was founded on Peter, and that Christ
would be with them for all days.”
Mother Dominica said she has been trying to understand why
the departed sisters felt “misled” about the Church and the Novus Ordo Mass.
She thinks it might have to do with stories of extremes, sometimes told in
sedevacantist circles to highlight the community’s points of contention with
the Church.
“Sometimes, when we have spoken of the errors of Vatican II,
we have stressed some of the more outrageous things, like the folk Masses and
the clown Mass,” sister Dominica said. “So maybe they got the idea the Novus
Ordo could never be done in a reverent way, which isn’t true, just because there’s
a clown Mass. So maybe when they saw that it could be done in a reverent way —
that it’s not always a folk Mass or a clown Mass — they began to question some
of the notions they had developed about it being some extremely weird thing all
of the time, which clearly it is not.”
Charity Rules
Mother Dominica said she has questioned her own stand, and
she suspects all “traditionalists” go through bouts of doubt.
“This has not happened to me recently,” Mother Dominica
said. “I’m very strong in my beliefs right now.”
Mother Dominica said the split has been stressful, but
cordial.
“I think we would still consider ourselves friends,” Mother
Dominica said. “We certainly keep them in our prayers all the time, and there’s
still a very deep love for all of them, and I’m sure they feel the same about
us.”
Mother Dominica said her congregation has agreed to pay the
health insurance of the departed nuns for the next year, and will continue
giving them a small stipend while they spend a year praying and discerning
their future direction.
“We also gave them a couple of cars and let them take their
computers,” Sister Dominica said. “On both sides this has been done as
charitably as possible.”
Bishop Skylstad said he doesn’t know whether the reunited
nuns signify a trend, or whether it’s an isolated event. He plans to continue
praying that all believers will come to know the truth about the Church and
will submit to the authority of the pope.
“There are people who felt that Vatican II was such a
tremendous break with past tradition that they could no longer be part of the
Church at all,” Bishop Skylstad said. “It’s pretty strong stuff to say that the
Pope is not the pope, and to set oneself aside from the Church. I think our
role in this is to pray and to be available as healers and reconcilers.”
Wayne Laugesen is based in
Boulder, Colorado.
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