Vatican: Nuns who feuded with Texas bishop will be governed by monastery association

[Michie]

A Carmelite monastery that has engaged in a yearlong feud with Diocese of Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson will be governed by a religious association of monasteries going forward — but must normalize relations with the bishop, per a Vatican order.

The Association of Christ the King in the United States of America will oversee the “government, discipline, studies, goods, rights, and privileges” of the Arlington-based Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity. This decision ends the bishop’s role as the pontifical commissary, which had previously given him governing authority over the monastery.

“It is my prayer that the Arlington Carmel will now have the internal leadership needed to save the monastery and enable it to flourish once again, in unity with the Catholic Church,” Olson said in a statement.

A feud between the monastery and the bishop began in late April of last year when the bishop launched an investigation into the Reverend Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach. She was ultimately dismissed from religious life for alleged sexual misconduct with a priest over the phone and through video chats.

Continued below.

Vatican: Texas nuns must normalize relationship with bishop

A Vatican letter to Bishop Michael Olson thanked him for his “heroic and thankless service to the local church and the Carmel of Arlington as pontifical commissary.”

www.catholicnewsagency.com

 

[RileyG]

May God bless all those involved

 

[Michie]

As the Vatican tries to settle a chaotic yearlong dispute between a Carmelite monastery and Diocese of Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson, the nuns at the center of the controversy announced they will defy a Vatican decree that delegates their governance to an outside religious association.

The dispute centers on Olson’s investigation into the former prioress of the Arlington-based Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity: the Reverend Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach. The prioress, who is now defrocked, admitted to sexual misconduct occurring over the phone and through video chats with a priest — a confession she has since retracted and claims was given when she was medically unfit and recovering from an operation.

After nearly a year of back-and-forth — which included a failed civil lawsuit against the bishop for how he handled the investigation and allegations from the bishop that the nuns may have been engaging in drug use — the Vatican ordered that the monastery’s governance will be delegated to the Association of Christ the King, which is a Carmelite monastery association.

This governance was meant to be in place until the monastery can hold new elections to replace its leadership, which would be overseen by the bishop. The Vatican also ordered the monastery to regularize its relationship with the bishop, whom the nuns forbade from entering the premises and alleged did not have authority over their governance — a claim rejected by the Vatican.

Continued below.

Nuns who feuded with Texas bishop say they will defy Vatican order

The nuns referred to the Vatican’s order as “a hostile takeover that we cannot in conscience accept.”

www.catholicnewsagency.com

 

[Michie]

Texas Carmelites file for restraining order

A community of Carmelite nuns in Arlington, Texas, has filed for a temporary restraining order against Vatican-imposed leadership, underscoring their rejection of a Vatican decision to place its governance under a national Carmelite association. The legal maneuver continues a yearlong feud with...

www.oursundayvisitor.com

 

[Michie]

Arlington Carmelite nuns withdraw request, lawyers for Fort Worth bishop say | Fort Worth Report

Lawyers representing Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson say the nuns have withdrawn their request for a temporary restraining order without explanation.

fortworthreport.org

 

[joymercy]

Did the Bishop break the seal of confession? I mean, why would he have made it public that he felt she broke her vows?

Should he not be excommunicated?

Seems he misunderstood her as well as misrepresented what she said, and jumped the gun, so that he could go after their property?

And then there are the cries for prayer for more vocations....?!

 

[The Liturgist]

Did the Bishop break the seal of confession? I mean, why would he have made it public that he felt she broke her vows?

Should he not be excommunicated?

Seems he misunderstood her as well as misrepresented what she said, and jumped the gun, so that he could go after their property?

And then there are the cries for prayer for more vocations....?!

I would like to know how her specific sin entered into the public forum.

I do not believe that monks or nuns should be expelled from monasteries for failures of celibacy, unless their failure to adhere to that vow involves another monk or nun, since homosexuality within monasteries is particularly pernicious, and there have been issues of sexual abuse, for example, in Orthodoxy, we had a schismatic Old Calendarist monastery (that became schismatic when it left ROCOR, after young men who had been novices complained that the elder of the monastery had sexually harassed them, and ROCOR began an investigation). So the monastery separated from the canonical church in the 1980s to protect its hegumen (abbot) from investigation by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia (which at the time was in no respect connected with the church in the Soviet Union, but rather was the most stridently anti-Soviet group of Russian Orthodox emigres), and the monastery in question was a Greek Orthodox monastery that was under ROCOR because of its conservativism, as opposed to ethnic identity (Orthodox churches are not supposed to exclude people on the basis of their ethnicity; this is actually regarded by us as a heresy called “ethnophyletism”, and it was defined as such in the 19th century after an incident in Constantinople where the Bulgarians for a time refused to pray with the Greeks, but that schism was resolved. So that is why one would have a Greek Orthodox monastery in a Russian Orthodox church.

At any rate, about fifteen years ago it emerged that the allegations of sexual misconduct against the novice monks, young men, were in fact true, and the hegumen resigned in disgrace and died of cancer a couple of years later. It was quite a tragic fall for the man, for he was one of the proteges of Elder Joseph the Hesychast, along with Elder Ephrem of Arizona, but the former hegumen of this monastery failed. The monastery survived however and is still in operation, and despite its schismatic status, it sells a large number of liturgical books to Greek Orthodox churches, because it publishes English language liturgical texts that are specially arranged for use with Byzantine chant, and if you look at English language Orthodox liturgical texts, there are certain common features that churches that use Byzantine chant like to have in terms of how the text for the service is provided in the service books. These books are to a large extent hymnals, albeit with some rubrics and some prayers and other propers.

 

[The Liturgist]

Arlington Carmelite nuns withdraw request, lawyers for Fort Worth bishop say | Fort Worth Report

Lawyers representing Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson say the nuns have withdrawn their request for a temporary restraining order without explanation.

fortworthreport.org

That seems good, because while there are some unpleasant aspects to this scenario, St. Ignatius of Antioch said “Let nothing be done without the bishop,” and thus I really feel like the nuns should have obeyed the bishop.