The Wedge Strategy - Is the "crackdown" on American women religious a countermeasure?

Te De Laudemas points to this surprisingly even-handed PBS report on the Vatican's attempt to reign in the loony-tune aspect of Catholic religious women's institutions.

The sane Catholic position is set forth by Donna Bethel as follows:

The second point is that the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is an entity established by the Vatican, approved by the Vatican, its statutes approved by the Vatican for the purpose of supporting the Women Religious in their life and work. And so it's the responsibility of the Vatican to see that the conference is actually doing its job. And that's what it's done in this assessment.

The feminist position was articulated by Jeannine Hill Fletcher:

The other thing that the document does is, it criticizes the Women Religious for the things that they seem to be thinking or discussing or exploring. It criticizes their theological investigations within their own private conference, within their discussions among themselves.

And I think that that's a real -- one of the real problems for me as a scholar of women and religion is the document seems to be trying to tell Women Religious to stop exploring the dynamics of the faith and simply take the tradition as it's been handed to them. And I think that that's one fundamental difference.

Except, of course, that it is not "their own private religious conference." It is a Catholic organization and there are actually some settled Catholic distinctives.

You have to wonder about the timing of all this. The Vatican move has taken years to put together - but in light of the effort by the secular state and media and intellectuals to put a wedge between the hierarchical church and the laity, it almost seems that this is a countermove to eliminate a "Fifth Column."

And it appears that the women religious have been playing the role of Fifth Columnists. As Te Deum Laudemas points out:

The LCWR has effectively worked against the bishops in these "culture of life" issues, and on sexual morality. I say, "effectively" because they, and those with whom they collaborate, have worked the media and the White House like a well tuned orchestra. In fact, it was so effective, that the Obama administration admitted it didn't go to the US Catholic bishops to work through the Catholic issues on the HHS mandate; rather, it consulted "other groups" of Catholics.

Note: "LCWR" is the "Leadership Conference of Women's Religious."

During the recent HHS mandate controversy, the White House and leftist media appealed to groups other than the Bishops as being the "real" representatives of the Catholic Church.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and faithful Catholics, together with thousands of other religious leaders and their congregations, restated their opposition to the mandate and to the promised “accommodation.” But the President dismissed their concerns, knowing that his anti-life, anti-marriage, and anti-family policies had already permanently alienated these groups. That they should now be further disaffected by this assault on conscience and religious liberty is of little consequence to him. He instead elicited support from those “progressive” Catholics he knew would accept and promote the illusion that his “accommodation” corrects the abuses in the mandate.

He was right in thinking that his sleight of hand would give them an excuse to turn a blind eye to the truth of the matter. The CHA-USA and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) proclaimed their support for the “accommodation.” The latter group expressed its appreciation to the President for restructuring the mandate “in a way that respects the conscience rights of religious institutions.” The University of Notre Dame and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities also voiced their support for the “accommodation.” President Obama had succeeded in dividing Catholic opposition and in muting the voice of the bishops through the pronouncements of these dissident groups.