Mother Millea speaks about the visitation

On site visits to begin after Easter; notices mailed this week

Feb. 18, 2010

By John L. Allen Jr.

A little over a year ago, Mother Mary Clare Millea became the most talked-about nun in America almost overnight. In December 2008, the Vatican tapped Millea, a Connecticut native and superior general of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, to run arguably the most controversial "apostolic visitation" ever carried out in this country: A sweeping review of women's congregations, capping decades of tension about the state of the soul of religious life in America.

Sometime in the next few days, the first wave of letters will be reaching a sample of women's orders to say they've been selected for an on-site visit, with those visits slated to begin one week after Easter and to continue throughout the spring and fall of 2010. The visits mark "phase three" of the process, after exchanges between Millea and major superiors (phase one) and the collection of written responses to questionnaires sent to every congregation in the country (phase two).

The fourth and final phase will be the preparation of detailed reports on all 420 "units" of women's religious in America, meaning congregations as well as their individual provinces, to be shipped off to Rome, plus a comprehensive report at the end. What the Vatican may do with all that input, of course, is the great unknown.

In the eyes of some critics, the visitation amounts to an attempt by the church's male-dominated power structure to put the toothpaste back in the tube, trying to drive emancipated women religious back into a more obedient and traditional posture. Supporters extol the visitation as a long-overdue reaction to a crisis following the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) -- a crisis expressed in declining vocations, chronic dissent, and an overly horizontal spirituality that sometimes values political crusades or social ministry more than devotion and prayer.

In that sense, the ferment over the visitation isn't just about women's religious life, but the broader direction of the Catholic church in the early 21st century...

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