During this visitation, surveys and interviews will take place across the US under supervision of a Rome-appointed Mother Mary Clare Millea, the superior general of her order, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

The last papal apostolic visitations in the US were to investigate pedophilia in the church after the recent scandals.

Further, the nuns get a second visitation. A "doctrinal assessment" will take place of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which has members from about 95% of all US religious orders. This organization is involved in an impressive number of social justice issues. The NYT states that the LCWR had failed to "promote" the church's teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality, and the primacy of the Roman Catholic church as a means to salvation."

For decades, especially after the Second Vatican Council, Roman Catholic nuns have been evolving their ministries. When I was a child, nuns all wore cumbersome and warm floor-length habits and veils, sensible shoes and had huge rosaries hanging from their belts. They lived in convents, and sometimes were cloistered (set apart from the world, living in private with only themselves as contacts). They were the "church housewives" taking care of the church cleaning, cooking for the priests, teaching in the church school and generally doing the "women's chores" of the church.

Since then it has become increasingly hard to tell who is a nun and who is not. The habit is largely gone. Nuns are as likely to be living in the apartment next to you, and teaching in a school, or working at hospitals or social service agencies or advocating for social justice issues.

While they still observe the tenets of poverty, chastity and obedience, the rules surrounding their everyday life have shifted a great deal. Some nuns have even openly advocated for changes in the church, such as ordaining women or allowing priests to marry.

Not only that, but the decline in their numbers is dramatic. The new York Times (2/7/09) reports that in 1965 the number of nuns in the USA was 180,000. Today it is about 60,000.

The Vatican has taken note.

Some nuns are not worried. Others have refused to cooperate with the surveys. Things do not look so positive for progressive nuns. This March, the Committee on Doctrine of the US Conference of Catholic bishops said Catholics should stop practicing Reiki. This is a healing therapy that has been used by and practiced by many nuns with ministries in hospitals and spiritual retreat oversight. The bishops decided this was un-Christian.

Whether you are a strict Catholic who feels that the nuns have crossed lines that they should not have, or a progressive who believes that the role of religious should evolve, there is no doubt that change is afoot. Will Rome be able to get the genie back in the bottle? Should they try?
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Mary Curtis notes:

Over the years, I saw their habits change, literally and figuratively. Most of the nuns I know now are working in the community, as teachers and social workers. They speak up, too. It goes down a lot better than the deference to priests, which – even in first grade -- I found pretty creepy. Considering what some of the priests were doing, more backtalk would have been a good thing.

It's no surprise that such a patriarchal institution is keeping a close eye on convent life. But if the church wants to encourage vocations to fill the diminishing ranks of the religious, a crackdown isn't the best recruiting tool.

Anne says this:

American priests got investigated by the Vatican for child sexual abuse--and now American nuns are facing scrutiny.

Their crimes?

1) Advocating that the priesthood be opened to women and to married men.
2) Using Reiki therapy.
3) Being too uppity.

The specific target is the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization with membership from 95% of women's religious orders in the US. This group famously asked Sr. Theresa Kane to speak out to Pope John Paul II when he visited the US in 1979, asking him to reconsider women's ordination.

Ellen sees this as an attempt to squelch feminism among nuns:

The investigation will look into how closely these nuns are following the rules and mission of their order, but it is also looking into the nuns that are members of groups that advocate the ordination of women and other issues that conflict with church teachings. Some believe that this investigation is in response to the threat these women pose to the Vatican, and may led to an effort to return convents and nuns to a more traditional, conservative role in the church.

The Pursuit of Harpyness points out:

- “The visitation focuses only on nuns actively engaged in working in society and the church, not cloistered, contemplative nuns.” In other words, the Church is only alarmed by those women who are not cloistered and who dare to actually try and help the communities they’re living in. They could be spreading dangerous womanly ideas! But no worries about priests (or monks) who are doing the same thing. Being a nun does not equal being a hermit — at least, it shouldn’t...
- Finally, nuns are not the only people within the Church who may choose to agitate for change. But they are women. The only time I can recall any kind of wide-scale scrutiny of male members of the Church is when it was part of pedophilia investigations, and not because of any perceived doctrinal missteps. In other words, when the Church’s sisters get out of line with their words and deeds, it becomes a Very Big Deal that must be investigated. If the Church’s fathers or brothers get out of line, it’ll be ignored and/or swept under the rug as quickly as possible. It’s enough to make me want to rap the Church’s knuckles with a very stiff ruler.

Time's Fool is where CE, Mata H, can usually be found blogging and wondering.