COLLISION COURSE recounts the conflict between The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (the LCWR), representing more than 80 percent of the 52,000 nuns in the United States, and two congregations of the Roman Catholic Curia, the governing body of the Catholic Church. The Vatican chose to consider the sisters' dissent as defiance; they charged them with "corporate dissent" on issues of abortion, women's ordination, the promotion of "certain radical feminist themes," ministry to the "homosexual community," and an "over-involvement in issues of social justice."
The sisters were then placed under the mandated authority of an archbishop; they were to make no decisions without asking and receiving his permission. In fact, over the next two years, they never did either; they simply continued to act as if the event had not taken place. Just as the most powerful of the two congregations, irate at their perceived continuing disobedience, made their most dire threats, the mandate was ended, three years earlier than had been planned.
Both congregations had given ground. The nuns had clearly triumphed, but very quietly; one congregation issued an almost-apology, the other, a terse eleven hundred word report, without apology. Neither required any significant modifications from the sisters. But none of the former accusations were repeated. No one imagines that the enmities no longer smolder; the conservative men of the Vatican have long memories. And it is just such events that rankle and rankle deeply.
This extensively researched book provides a timeline of relevant events in the conflicts; recounts the events of Vatican Two, the worldwide council summoned by Pope John Paul XXIII, which instructed the sisters of America to "modernize"; focuses on the concept and history of obedience as well as the morality of recantation; and features interviews with iconic nuns telling their stories in their own words.