An Open Letter from CCCR to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious

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Note: The following letter was written by Karin Grosscup on behalf of the Catholic Coalition for Church Reform (CCCR).


Dear members of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious,

We are writing to express solidarity with you in your work, your thinking, and your responses from your heart. The recent document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith highlights what is blocking our church from manifesting the fullness of God’s love. In many ways Jesus made it simple, though challenging, when He distilled the laws of the day into the two greatest commands: love God and love your neighbor. The beatitudes give us guides to what it means to love. Thank you for listening from your hearts, taking the beatitudes seriously and, in so doing, challenging us all as well.

We are a group of laity greatly troubled by what is happening in the structure of our church today. We are wanting to live from the depth of the gospels and the wisdom that has been transmitted through the fullness of our church. We find the Vatican’s recent demands confounding. The importance of primacy of conscience is so clear in your attempts to respond to the needs of the poor and remain silent on those teachings in our church that are exclusionary and block the fullness of Love for all people. It is very painful to read the response of the CDF to your very attempts to listen and respond to the gospel with the necessity to refrain from voicing those teachings that are exclusionary. It is unacceptable and sobering to hear of people being silenced in our church for speaking out their understanding of truth and to hear of your being penalized for remaining silent on issues lacking in the fullness of truth.

Your struggle is our struggle. The Body of Christ needs us all to become fully who we are and to come together in Love to transform the world.


In solidarity,

Karin Grosscup