Visitations are usually awe-inspiring and terrifying. They go with thunderbolts, particularly when conducted by Head Office. So the news that the Vatican will conduct a visitation of United States female religious congregations was naturally received with some anxiety by many of its beneficiaries.
But in this case the style of visitation seems disarming. It follows a recent Vatican visitation of United States seminaries which passed equably.
It is to be conducted, not by Bishops, but by two religious sisters. Its terms of reference are broad and not loaded. The visitors are to look at the life of different religious congregations, examine their contribution to the church and society, and reflect on their future service of the church. The visitation website invites comments.
The questions posed, too, are of interest to the wider church, given the huge contribution made by religious women in the United States. In the last half century the number of religious sisters has declined greatly, the average age of the members has risen, and the future of many congregations is not assured.
None of these things, however, will completely allay anxiety. In their relations with the men who have authority in their local parishes or dioceses, sisters have always needed to defend their proper autonomy.
In parish convents the tension was handled ceremoniously. When Father came to celebrate morning Mass, he was invited to breakfast in the parlour. The place, the doilies, casters, saucers, plates, butter pats and thinly sliced toast were both a sign of welcome and a reminder that he was a guest whose writ did not run over the life of the community.
In their early years, too, many congregations struggled with local bishops over the limits of autonomy. Some founders, like Mary MacKillop (pictured), were even excommunicated. It is not surprising that ancestral antennae sense danger when male church leaders decide on visitation.
This visitation also takes place in a climate of lively conversation about the place of women in church and society and about the scope of the Second Vatican Council.
Discussion of the place of women often focuses on feminism. Catholics are divided between those whose instinct is to praise feminism for its unflinching advocacy of equality and freedom, and those who associate feminism with the extension of the demand for freedom to sexual morality and the transmission of life, and associate equality with the denial of difference. The latter point has consequences for the priestly ordination of women.
Catholics also argue about the extent to which Vatican II endorsed radical change. It certainly encouraged significant changes to religious life, which have been welcomed by most women religious. For others the changes in the rules of religious congregations, in dress, in customs and the opening of a public role outside the Christian community explain why religious vocations have diminished and many religious have left their congregations.
They find support for their argument in the growth of some religious congregations that wear the ordinary women's dress of earlier times and follow a traditional rule.
These issues are important and need to be debated. Many women religious, however, fear that in the visitation a negative attitude both to feminist aspirations and to the changes brought about by Vatican II will be assumed as its starting point. They can find historical grounds for this fear.
Take, for example, the experience of Mary Ward in the early 17th century. In the previous century women's congregations had been reformed by the insistence on enclosure — the confinement of sisters to their convent — which safeguarded space for prayer and sobriety of heart.
Mary Ward saw the growing need of young women for education. She asked that her sisters be free from the obligation to sing the office and that they be able to go about as their work of spreading the faith and of education demanded.
Her work prospered, but she met resistance from within the Catholic Church. Like our own, it was a time of consolidation. A Papal Bull was dedicated to 'completely suppress and extinguish them, subject them to perpetual abolition and remove them entirely from the Holy Church of God'.
The Bull appealed to attitudes to women that were patronising and demeaning. It can be seen now to be driven by fear rather than by the freedom of the Gospel. It described Mary Ward's companions in these terms:
'Free from, the laws of enclosure, they wander about at will, and under the guise of promoting the salvation of souls, have been accustomed to attempt and to employ themselves at many other works which are most unsuited to their weak sex and character, to female modesty and particularly to maidenly reserve — works which men of eminence in the science of sacred letters, of experience of affairs and of innocence of life undertake with much difficulty and only with great caution.'
The example of Mary Ward suggests how easily women's desire to express the freedom and energy of the Gospel can be frustrated by cultural prejudice dressed as traditional wisdom. The visitation of the sisters in the United States calls for and offers an opportunity for a more confident engagement.
Andrew Hamilton is the consulting editor for Eureka Street. He also teaches at the United Faculty of Theology in Melbourne.