From NCR:
The Vatican decision last year to place the main representative group of U.S. Catholic sisters under the control of bishops was made without consultation or knowledge of the Vatican office that normally deals with matters of religious life, the office's leader said Sunday.That lack of discussion over whether to criticize the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), said Cardinal João Braz de Aviz, caused him "much pain.""We have to change this way of doing things," said Braz de Aviz, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Religious."We have to improve these relationships," he continued, referring to the April 2012 order regarding LCWR from the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- approved by Pope Benedict XVI -- that ordered the U.S. sisters' group to revise."Cardinals can't be mistrustful of each other," Braz de Aviz said. "This is not the way the church should function."
Of course Cardinals should be mistrustful of some other Cardinals. Cardinal Aviz, in particular, was probably the most mysterious name ever chosen by Benedict XVI to head a dicastery. He is just so out of his league in his position, so beneath the seriousness and overall preparedness required of the job, that one simply cannot understand what he is doing there - it would be humorous, were it not tragic. The rumor at the time of his nomination was that Pope Ratzinger asked for a token representative of the largest episcopate in the world following the departure of Cardinal Hummes, and that Avis was the name picked by some of the brightest minds of the local episcopal conference, and Benedict accepted it. Who can forget that Aviz even took part in shouting contests during the conclave?... He thought he was being tough on a Bertone already humbled by the circumstances of the papal resignation, and most Cardinals certainly do not forget that.
Now, who would wish to submit the decision on matters of the protection of the integrity of the doctrine of the faith, violated every single day by the rebel nuns of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, to the head of dicastery who himself had tried to derail the appropriate investigation started in his own Congregation by his worthy predecessor, Cardinal Rodé? Of course he was kept in the dark - as well he should have, and once again his new "revelation", done out of spite, reveals precisely why he was kept in the dark: his diplomatic skills, indispensable in any kind of "collegial" structure that "Progressives" like him advocate so hard, are clearly as lacking as his managerial competence.
Pope Benedict XVI decided the CDF intervention on the LCWR. Pope Francis, in his first decision on matters of the Doctrine of the Faith, fully confirmed all details decided by his predecessor. Should not this have been enough for Aviz? Or does he think the new Pope's style means who shouts the loudest in the kindergarten wins?
