American nuns face Vatican "visitation"

The NY Times has a fascinating piece this morning about a Vatican probe that aims to determine whether American nuns are “living in fidelity” with the Church and its doctrines.

Church historians said that the Vatican usually ordered an apostolic visitation when a particular institution had gone seriously astray. In the wake of the priest sexual-abuse scandal, the Vatican ordered a visitation of American seminaries. It is now conducting a visitation of the Legionaries of Christ, a men’s order whose founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, sexually abused young seminarians, fathered a child and was accused of financial improprieties. He died in 2008. But the investigation of American nuns surprised many because there was no obvious precipitating cause.

Nuns play a growing role in Roman Catholic life here in the North Country, even as their numbers dwindle.

In recent decades, a divide has existed between the Vatican’s conservative approach to faith and the attitudes of rank-and-file American Catholics and many of their clergy.