Editor’s Note: This is another sad chapter in a case which has scandalized the Catholic world for the numerous incidents of malfeasance by the local Bishop and Pope Francis’ canonically non-existent “Dicastery for Consecrated Life” erected during his anti-pontificate.
First the mother superior was accused of a grave violation of her vow of chastity for having engaged in “phone sex” with a priest, a violation of purity which is not included in any traditional book of morals regarding the observance of the vow of chastity or virginity, which requires an external physical act with another person or in their presence.
Second, the nuns were publicly ridiculed as violating their religious vows for their intemperate use of cannabis as a pain killer, a practice which is also not a crime in canon law, though it is an offense against right morals. Monasteries and Convents throughout the world and especially in the Andes have used herbal healing for centuries. In fact, the whole concept of a pharmacy was invented in Monasteries, since these were the only institutions which for centuries had the wherewithal to grow, collect and prepare herbal remedies in a highly ethical and consistent context.
Third, the public defamation they suffered from the local Bishop, which he uses to justify an attempt to take their property and control their internal affairs, even though he seemingly takes quite a light hand with his own priests who are involved in sexual offense.
Finally, the denial of the Sacraments to these religious women, the denial of their right to keep, take and live their vows to Jesus Christ and the irregular intervention of the Vatican declaring them “defected from the Catholic Faith” for having taken on spiritual care from the clergy of the Society of Saint Pious X, an entity which in which membership has never been characterized by any Papal Law or Act as “defecting from the Catholic Faith”.
Moreover, the attempt to suppress their monastery and declare them no longer Catholic is a most grave attack on their persons, since they have by vows to Our Lord Jesus Christ promises perpetual poverty, whereby they can only live by alms. As Saint Thomas Aquinas teaches, to publicly vilify a person who lives by alms is equivalent to murder.
I agree with Attorney Bobo, who is leading their defense, along with the president of Gonzaga University (Jesuit founded school), that these Carmelites have had their canonical and civil rights grossly offended by the local Bishop and Pope Francis’s “Curial Administration”. Furthermore, I am of the opinion that canonically, all the actions taken against them are invalid in the sight of God, since they transgress numerous canons of the Code of Canon Law regarding proper procedures and rights of religious communities.
The correct pastoral procedure, from day one, would have been to counsel temperance in the use of herbal remedies and forbid the use of the phone to those sisters who are misusing it, while encouraging them to walk more faithfully in their vocation by a life of solitude and penance, not to mention a more strict observance of cloister.
