Tom Fox has some things to say that are relevant both to nun pride, and the role of the laity.
He notes that the bishops are beginning to exhibit an interesting pattern of praising the deeds of women religious but rejecting their thinking
http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/lcwr-women-religious-congregations-same-corpus
An episcopal technique I have come to notice in recent months involves placing heaps of praise at the feet of our women religious congregations while blasting the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. This “good sisters,” “bad LCWR,” back flip deserves some attention.
Each LCWR member, nearly 1500 in all, has been elected from within her congregation to represent its thoughts, interests, aspirations and concerns.
LCWR is as bottom up as the Catholic hierarchy is top down. It is, in fact, a different model of Catholic organization, the most public and democratic model in the U.S. church today.
LCWR, then, indeed represents the collective thinking of some 80 percent of the women religious congregations of America. If the congregations, through their works of mercy, represent the body of service; LCWR represents the mind of service.
This noted episcopal dualism – good women, bad leadership – intentional or not, separates the way the women act from the way they think, as if this were possible.
It’s another way of saying, “We like what you do, but we don’t want to hear the way you think.”
“We’ll take your bodies, but not your minds.”
This seems to be a part of a larger pattern (e.g. health care policy) in which the bishops want to do all the thinking and speaking, regarding any disagreement with their priorities and policies by laity as a matter of dissent.
Nuns and laity should pray, do and obey;
thinking, and speaking are reserved to the hierarchy.
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