Know Your Nuns - The Fruit of Dissent Edition

The last couple days I have put up posts about Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) leaders who signed on to the NETWORK letter endorsing the Senate Health Care bill that includes public funding. This letter is a public proclamation of their dissent from authentic Catholic teaching. 1 of those signers was Prioress Patricia Mulcahey OP of the Sinsinawa Dominicans.

Interestingly enough, as all this was coming down I got a letter from The Dominican Sisters of the Congregation of Saint Cecilia aka the Nashville Dominicans. The letter was a fundraiser for their current needs. The letter mentions the fact that last year they had 23 young women enter the community. It also mentioned that 8 women took their final vows. The Congregation currently has 250 sisters.

These sisters are faithful to the magesterium. Contrast that to the Sinsinawa Dominicans. While they may currently have 600 sisters the number joining is greatly outnumbered by those dying. According to their website they had 2 professions in 2009, 1 in 2008 & 2 in 2007. They have "hopefully" (their word) 1 for this year. It is interesting to note that unlike the Nashville Dominicans & the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist they do NOT have full statistics about the number of vocations they are getting. Why? Is it because of the fact that they aren't having the success that the tradition, faithful to the magesterium Dominicans are having in attracting vocations?

Now on to the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist in Ann Arbor, MI who were recently featured on Oprah. Like the Nashville Dominicans they are faithful to the magesterium & wear the habit. According to their website over the last year "Sixteen Postulants entered the community in August, bringing our total number to 98, Five Sisters professed perpetual vows, nine Sisters professed first vows, and nine Sisters received the Holy Habit of Saint Dominic." (As an aside, they have a link on their homepage to the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious (CMSWR). They ask people to visit their website at www.cmswr.org for a statement on the CMSWR position on the current health reform legislation.)

The Domincans were founded to battle heresy & promote authentic Catholic teaching, not undermine it by promotimg heresy. Sadly, the Sinsinawa Dominicans are betraying their charism.

We need to pray that the Sinsinawa Dominicans return to their authenic Domincan charism. In the meantime if you are looking for true Dominicans that are faithful to their founder, the Nashville & Ann Arbor groups definitely fit the bill.