Religion & Law

A reader responds to the posts on the investigation of women religious:  

?I have read with interest the posts on MOJ about the Vatican investigation of women's religious orders.  I have noticed that some of the nuns who have commented on the issue, as well as R. McBrien, take the position that the Vatican is acting in bad faith and is pursuing these investigations in order to put women back into the role they had in the 1940s, or as a witch hunt, or as a means of diverting attention from the sexual abuse scandal.  Of course, they have no evidence to support these claims; they just presume to know the intentions of the Vatican I think, out of charity, we should do better and at least presume that the Vatican officials are acting in good faith until we have demonstrable proof that they are not.?

Thoughts?  My own reaction to the New York Times Francis Clines piece is that it might be painting with an overly broad brush to imply that the Vatican is specifically targeting the creative efforts of women religious to meet concrete social needs such as those of mothers in prison.  My guess is that there might be widely varying situations in different communities, and even different convents within the same communities, and that we might need finer instruments to get a picture of the complexity.