Leadership Conference of Women Religious
The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is an association of American religious women in the Roman Catholic Church . The association was founded in 1956 and recognized by the Holy See . The LCWR is based in Silver Spring in the state of Maryland . Today, approximately 1,500 religious superiors are members, representing about 80% of the 48,000 women religious in the United States (as of 2015). This makes the LWCR by far the largest representation of women religious in the United States, ahead of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious , which was founded in 1992 and has around 180 members and represents around 20% of women religious in the country. However, the average age of women religious organized in the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is much higher than in the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious.
According to a 2009 study of recent vocations, 56% of those entering a religious community in the LCWR institutes were older than 40, compared with 15% in the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious . Only 9% of the religious institutes united in the LCWR had at least five novices ; in the CMSWR this figure was 43% of the institutes.
In 2012, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith , headed by Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller , initiated an investigation into the LCWR, as the organization had been accused for decades of increasingly representing and disseminating views that no longer correspond to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church Among other things on questions of the image of God, abortion , the ordination of women , contraception and homosexuality . The sisters of most of the institutes combined in the LCWR no longer wear a habit . Archbishop James Peter Sartain of the Diocese of Seattle was appointed as a commissioner to oversee reform of the LCWR.
In May 2014, Gerhard Ludwig Müller, as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, criticized the LCWR for disobedience and growing proximity to ideological concepts that contradict the teaching of the Catholic Church. In early September he pointed out in an interview that the LCWR does not represent all women religious in the United States, but only those groups that belonged to the association. "We have received many urgent letters from other women religious who belong to the same congregations and who are suffering extremely from the direction in which the LCWR is directing its mission."
Awards
On April 14, 2013, the LCWR received the Herbert Haag Prize .
Web links
- Website of the LCWR (English)