Are Americans in Rome behind the nuns crackdown?
http://www.christiancentury.org/article/2012-05/are-americans-rome-behind-nuns-crackdownMay 04, 2012 by David Gibson
c. 2012 Religion News Service (RNS) When the Vatican last month announced a doctrinal crackdown on the leadership organization representing most of the 57,000 nuns in the U.S., the sisters said they were "stunned" by the move. Many American Catholics, meanwhile, were angry at what they saw as Rome bullying women whose lives of service have endeared them to the public.
Vatican watchers also were perplexed since a broader, parallel investigation of women's religious orders in the U.S. was resolved amicably after an initial clash. That seemed to augur a more diplomatic approach by the Vatican to concerns that American nuns were not sufficiently orthodox.
Now it turns out that conservative American churchmen living in Rome -- including disgraced former Boston Cardinal Bernard Law -- were key players in pushing the hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, or LCWR, which they have long viewed with suspicion for emphasizing social justice work over loyalty to the hierarchy and issues like abortion and gay marriage.
Vatican observers in Rome and church sources in the U.S. say Law was "the person in Rome most forcefully supporting" the LCWR investigation, as Rome correspondent Robert Mickens wrote in The Tablet, a London-based Catholic weekly. Law was the "prime instigator," in the words of one American churchman, of the investigation that began in 2009 and ended in 2011. The actual crackdown was only launched in April.
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the very conservative Rome hierarchy. And given the bureaucratic structure, likely to hear complaints passed up the line from conservative Catholics here in the US and act on them.
(aside) I so wish the Cardinals had chosen the Brazilian (?) under consideration for the Papacy. A latino, South American pope would have probably reinforced the social justice aspects that are one of the key tenets of RC, which seems at jeopardy.
IMO, the real reason the cardinals are cracking down on the sisters of LCWR is that the cardinals are redoubling their efforts at diverting attention away from the sexual abuse scandal, using Church doctrine as a weapon to keep the sisters in particular, and women in general, silent and subservient to radical patriarchy.
Cardinal Law was the prime instigator of this crackdown....I get it now! Cardinal Pedo Enabler himself! He has to take the heat off him for having protected sexually abusive priests under his watch, so he goes around bullying women, twisting Church doctrine to use it as a weapon against sisters who may have been falsely accused of defying Rome, for no other reason than to cover up for his own crimes.
I wonder if the sisters have seen firsthand the consequences of clerical sexual abuse on those they cared for. 
