79: The Class of 2010 Women Religious

Jo Piazza: This was a bad week to be a small survey on women religious, what with prime news real estate being filled with Egyptian unrest, Hollywood rehab and a snowpocalypse of epic proportions blanketing the Midwest.

But a small survey on women religious was indeed released this week, on Groundhog Day (better known in some circles as Church’s World Day for Consecrated Life), by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Georgetown-based Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate.

The survey gave a general overview of the women who professed their perpetual vows in religious life (became full-fledged sisters)  in 2010 and was the first of its kind to evaluate a single year’s class of entering nuns. Of the 63% of orders who responded to the survey only 79 women took their final vows in the past year. Continue Reading →

Timothy Dolan Reader

A lot of commentary is stacking up about this week’s upset appointment of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan to the presidency of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, over the sitting Vice President, Tuscon’s Gerald Kicanis.  Still shaking your head at why and how the USCCB skipped their usual appointment of the VP? Wondering what it means for U.S. social policy? Continue Reading →

The USCCB Votes

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will vote on a new General Secretary this week during their Annual Fall General Assembly (November 15 – 18) in Baltimore.  The two candidates are Ronny Jenkins of Texas and David Kagan of Illinois.  You can read their bios at the USCCB website.  Also on the agenda for this year’s meeting:  “discussion of how their own statements should be produced, budgetary and structural questions and information about how they can better integrate new media into diocesan structures,” writes Free Republic.  Also on the agenda?  Baptism.  With the Anglican Communion in disarray over issue of homosexuality and women ordination, the Catholic Church has eagerly called for disgruntled Anglicans to reconsider the Catholic Church.  Clarification of baptismal procedures for “conversion” has become important.  It’s expected that the Conference will accept any baptism that includes water and the phrase, “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

The common agreement, which requires an up or down vote by the bishops and cannot be amended, was drawn up over the past six years by a team of scholars from the Catholic-Reformed dialogue group, made up of representatives of the USCCB, Christian Reformed Church in North America, Presbyterian Church (USA), Reformed Church in America and United Church of Christ.

Calling baptism “the sacramental gateway into the Christian life,” the agreement says baptism “is to be conferred only once, because those who are baptized are decisively incorporated into the body of Christ.”

For baptisms to be mutually recognized by the five churches, the baptismal rite must use water and the Trinitarian formula, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” the document says.

Which safely keeps them out of that“second baptism” wicket.

The assembly is being life-tweeted at http://twitter.com/USCCB.

UPDATE: Tim Dolan is the new President of the USCCB. Continue Reading →

A Threat to Catholic Unity

In the June 18th issue of the Catholic publication Commonweal, the magazine’s editors address a recent “remarkably defensive” letter from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), “Setting the Record Straight,” in which the directors of three of the conference’s initiatives, Pro-Life Activities, Immigration, and Justice, Peace and Human Development, chastise those who vocally dissented from the USCCB’s stand against the health care bill.

Those who broke from the USCCB included Women Religious and the Catholic Health Association, as well as a host of individual Catholic bishops and lay people and, ultimately, Representative Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) and Senator Robert Casey Jr. (D-PA); those who disagreed with the USCCB interpreted the new bill as not expanding government funding for abortion. Continue Reading →