I think the focus on feminism as the problem is turning this into a men v women problem. The 2003 article I linked above by a concern woman religious academic better explains what she saw then as the main problem.

I apologize for the long quote, but it is very apt. She is not calling for a return to the pre-Vatican II era. She focusses on the negative consequences of adopting New Age thinking and linking it with a claimed women’s religious sensibility.

If we are unable or unwilling to review the last 40 years and to make decisions based on that analysis, then it is unlikely that any amount of future planning will matter. Ambiguity and loss of identity will doom us. That is exactly where New Age falls short. Lacking theological substance, it can neither ground nor sustain our transformation. It has “feel-good-now” potential, but will only be replaced by the next, new, now moment as it unfolds. That points up the urgency of this dialogue. Honest conversations need to occur at every level of membership, direct conversations that focus on where we have come from as well as on our concrete hopes and desires for the future. If not, we risk allowing ourselves to be drawn willy-nilly into courses of change we did not intend.

This is not a call to return to the past. The challenge toward the future is not in romantic or nostalgic idealization of either religious life or Catholicity. Rather, it is in the ability to integrate and articulate an identity grounded in authentic Catholic faith tradition. Speaking to a convocation of theologians and bishops at Loyola University in New Orleans in March 2003, Monika Hellwig addressed the need for Catholic institutions of higher learning to take very seriously their task of grounding students in the “Catholic intellectual community that understands its own tradition in some depth.” She noted the following: “The question that I think we need to reflect on and consider is whether our student bodies are sufficiently grounded in their own tradition to be genuinely ecumenical in their study rather than simply confused” (Origins, 4/20). This is the task that faces women religious today as well. Only true clarity about our core identity and an appreciation of the depth of our Catholic tradition can liberate us to incorporate elements from a variety of spiritual traditions and still be credible ecclesial communities

1. Is it or is it not the case that many Catholic sisters adhere to New Age and/or feminist beliefs that are inconsitent with Catholic teaching?

2. If the answer to 1. is “there are many such Catholic sisters,” what, if anything, is inappropriate about the visitations?

One senses that those who are hostile to the visitations have problems with orthodox Catholic teachings. From my perspective, as somone who loves the Church in significant part for what she teaches, criticism motivated by a desire to change or undemrine Church teaching has no value at all.

I agree with Ken Briggs that “radical feminism” is perceived to be the villian. And it is the villian. Although I have not done the research Mr. Briggs has done, anyone who is familiar with the Church knows that feminism has infected large swathes of it and most particularly certain orders of sisters. And make no mistake about it: Feminism, with all its focus on autonomy and power, is antithetical to Catholicism.

I’d be even more presumptous than I usually am if I criticized the findings of your book while only having heard you interviewed about it on NPR. I simply wanted more diversity in people quoted in the article. I wanted to hear from more “ordinary” nuns — the ones going about their work quietly, the moderates, the ones in the middle. But I also understand, having written many stories, that sometimes time and space dictate who we include — and who gets left out.

Please stayed tuned if you have time — you may get some responses. While I’m sorry for the miscommunication and perhaps should have chosen my words more carefully, I’m glad that you have chosen to comment!

As for the experience of most US Catholics, I don’t know. Certainly some thriving orders, like the Nashville Dominicans and the Ann Arbor Dominicans (Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist) staff schools. A few send out principals, and many parish Directors of Religious Education are sisters. (Often not terribly orthodox about what they teach, alas.)

But in my neck of the woods, the archdiocesan plea for retirement funds for religious actually had to run a commercial where a young woman said she supported the fund because the sisters taught her grandparents. And that’s how far back you have to reach for most of us; Catholic schools are staffed by ordinary lay teachers and run by lay principals (if you can even afford to go to one).

Oh, and btw — there were a good number of sisters who got in trouble for sexual abuse of minors. Not as many as other groups involved in the Scandal, but it did happen. So if you want to worry about the fitness of people involved in the visitation, worry about that.

I was not comparing the visitation of religious communities of women to visitations of the Legionaries of Christ.

I was contrasting the visitation of institutions with the investigations into individuals such as Maciel Macel.

The reference to the linked article by a religious woman calling for a review of the past 40 years was intended to be a tip to reporters about a good person to contact about the need for a visitation and whether it might be welcomed by some elements of the women’s religious orders.

Investigations of individual people are different than visitations to institutions. There is also a current visitation to the Legionaries of Christ. On the other hand, there were investigations into the individual LC founder and he was ordered to drop out of the public eye and live the remainder of his life in seclusion and penance.

Here is section of and a link to a very interesting 2003 article in America magazine by an American woman religious academic calling for a survey of her sisters which may answer why the visitation was thought necessary to clarify what is going on in Catholic women’s religious life in the US.

The renewal mandated by Vatican II energized women religious with new zeal for mission and a desire to renew prayer and communal life. For the most part we conceived of this renewal within an essentially traditional ecclesial framework, seeking to adapt that core reality to contemporary times. But a minority simply could not find the energy to confront all the difficulties involved in revitalizing traditional forms of liturgical and communal prayer. They turned instead to emerging New Age spirituality. Here, they felt, women could create women’s prayer. This sounds more conscious and deliberate in writing than it was in actual experience: it was often as much a drifting as a choice. At times, truly beautiful prayers combining rich Christian tradition and contemporary New Age style grew out of our desire to be inclusive.

For some sisters New Age vocabulary came to be the only comfortable way of naming things. It fed their spiritual hunger without rousing the tensions that seemed inherent in ecclesial identity. They either severed emotional ties with the tradition or just let it gradually fall out of the picture. Most women religious, like the Sisters of Mercy, lived through this period with heroic amounts of forbearance, patience and accommodation to one another’s differences.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3067

I did the bolding in the following section:

among adherents of various faith traditions, including Christianity, are those who claim compatibility between their tradition and New Age thought and practices in ways that they experience as spiritually refreshing. This is what challenges women religious in America at the moment. The questions may be expressed as follows: Is the New Age phenomenon really, as some claim, a “shot in the arm” for our spiritual life? Or is it a major factor in our diminished clarity of identity and purpose, and thereby an unintended “shooting ourselves in the foot”? Can it possibly be both?

In the article the author who is an academic and a leader in her community also describes other large changes since vatican II and doctrinal matters that need to be clarified. America magazine is not known for being a mouthpiece of the Vatican.

A sharp reporter might give this author a call and ask her opinion on the current visitation and if it’s what she was hoping would happen.