CNA Staff, Sep 17, 2024 / 18:45 pm
After a string of controversies and disagreements with their local Fort Worth bishop, a group of Carmelite nuns in Arlington, Texas, announced on Saturday that they are associating with the Society of St. Pius X (SSPX), a traditionalist group that is not in full communion with the Catholic Church and has a canonically irregular status.
After making a “unanimous decision,” the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Arlington, Texas, said they have “completed the final steps necessary for our monastery to be associated with the Society of St. Pius X, who will henceforth assure our ongoing sacramental life and governance,” according to a Sept. 14 announcement on their website.
Bishop Michael Olson of the Diocese of Fort Worth had offered to reinstate sacramental life at the monastery if the sisters agreed to disassociate themselves from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, a controversial figure whom the Catholic Church excommunicated this summer for schism following his refusal to submit to the pope or the communion of the Church.
Olson also offered to provide a priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) — a group in communion with the Church that is dedicated to the Latin Mass — to offer sacraments for the sisters, provided they also acknowledge Mother Marie of the Incarnation, the prioress of the Carmel of the Most Holy Trinity, as their superior and recognize Olson as their bishop, and remove controversial content from the monastery website.
Mother Marie is the president of the Association of Christ the King in the United States — an association of Carmelite monasteries that the Vatican tasked with overseeing the monastery in 2023 amid the feud.
Mother Marie of the Incarnation explained in a Sept. 7 statement released by the diocese that she “extended … Bishop Olson’s offer of a renewed sacramental life, according to their preferred liturgical form, but with deepest sorrow I report today that none of the sisters have made any response, either to me or to their bishop.”
Olson made the offer in a July 26 letter, which Mother Marie said she shared with the sisters the following day.
“Over the past six weeks since they received this offer, the nuns have given no indication that they desire the gift of the sacraments, nor have they shown openness to any dialogue with us,” Mother Marie wrote. “In addition to that, they have elected to maintain upon their website certain links and statements which manifest contempt for their bishop and which obscure their claim to being in union with Rome.”
Mother Marie asked the faithful of the Diocese of Fort Worth “to redouble your prayer and sacrifice for our beloved sisters of the Carmel of the Most Holy Trinity.”
In a statement released on Sept. 17, Olson called the nun’s rejection of leadership “scandalous,” saying it “is permeated with the odor of schism.”
The monastery also announced that the nuns have reelected Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach as prioress for a three-year term. Olson had dismissed Gerlach from religious life after she was investigated for alleged sexual misconduct with a priest.
“Sadly, the deliberate and contumacious actions of Mother Teresa Agnes and the other members of the community have taken them further down the path of disobedience to and disunity with the Church and with their own religious order that they began to embark on so many months ago,” Olson said.
Olson has since clarified that “the attempted elections were illicit and invalid” because they did not follow ecclesiastical law and the constitutions of the Order of Discalced Carmelites.
Olson has since instructed Catholics not attend the daily Latin Mass at the monastery or offer the nuns any financial support.
“As your bishop I must plead with you … for the good of your souls you do not participate in any sacraments that may be offered at the monastery as such participation will associate you with the scandalous disobedience and disunity of the members of the Arlington Carmel,” Olson said.
The sisters said in their statement that in the past few years they have found “much joy and spiritual renewal in the rediscovery of the riches of the immemorial liturgical tradition of the Church,” a reference to the Latin Mass, the Roman liturgy that was used prior to the New Order of the Mass promulgated by Vatican II.
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“The motto of Pope St. Pius X was: To Restore All Things in Christ,” the statement continued. “Such is the case for our community as well, which has prayerfully, over a period of many years, sought to return to the fullness of our Catholic tradition and to restore all things in Christ, in both our liturgical life and in the way we live our Carmelite vocation.”
“We share an affinity with the Society of St. Pius X in its emphasis on training holy, dedicated priests, willing to sacrifice all for Christ, which coincides with our own vocation of prayer and sacrifice at the heart of the Church, pouring out our lives for the Church and especially for priests,” the nuns continued.
The late French archbishop Marcel-François Lefebvre formed the SSPX in the 1970s to promote the Latin Mass, but in 1988, he illicitly ordained four bishops without the permission of Pope John Paul II, leading to his excommunication along with the four bishops. Pope Benedict XVI lifted this excommunication in 2009 in the hopes of eventually bringing SSPX back into full communion with the Church, though he explained in a letter that SSPX does not have canonical status and therefore “its ministers do not exercise legitimate ministries in the Church.”
SSPX takes issue with the Second Vatican Council, according to its website, which reads: “[SSPX] is governed by the magisterium of the Church, which found its expression in the councils and teaching of the popes, and in light of which the Second Vatican Council and its subsequent popes must be judged, since what was true until 1965 cannot suddenly become wrong.”
Several Vatican statements in past years have cautioned Catholics against attending SSPX Masses except in serious circumstances, including 1995 and 1998 letters by Monsignor Camille Perl, then-secretary of the Pontifical Commission Ecclesia Dei.
“The Masses they [SSPX] celebrate are also valid, but it is considered morally illicit for the faithful to participate in these Masses unless they are physically or morally impeded from participating in a Mass celebrated by a Catholic priest in good standing,” read the 1995 letter by Perl.
A 1998 letter by Perl reiterates: “It is precisely because of this schismatic mentality that this pontifical commission has consistently discouraged the faithful from attending Masses celebrated under the aegis of the Society of St. Pius X.”
The nuns in April defied a Vatican decree by asking a judge for a restraining order against the parties that the Vatican had tasked with overseeing the monastery, an association of Carmelite monasteries and Olson. The April decree had entrusted the monastery to the Association of Christ the King in the U.S. and its president, Mother Marie. The Vatican instructed the nuns to accept Olson’s authority, as they made a statement earlier this year rejecting his authority.
The tensions with Olson followed investigations into the monastery. Olson investigated the Reverend Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach over alleged sexual misconduct with a priest and she was dismissed from religious life by the bishop. Gerlach allegedly admitted to inappropriate sexual conduct occurring via phone and video chats but later recanted the confession saying she was recovering from surgery and medically unfit at the time she was questioned.
The monastery filed a civil lawsuit in May 2023 against the bishop that was eventually dismissed by a judge. The bishop banned daily Mass and regular confessions at the monastery, which led to the nuns to issue a statement that appeared to reject his authority in governing the monastery.
The Vatican’s letter required the monastery to accept Olson’s authority and thanked Olson for his service to the Church. In June 2023, the diocese released two photographs purported to show cannabis products inside the monastery. The monastery attorney denied the allegations, calling them “ridiculous.”
“I invite the faithful of the Diocese of Fort Worth to join me in prayer and sacrifice for the nuns, for the restoration of order at the Arlington Carmel, and for the return to sober obedience and union with the Church by the members of the community,” Olson said in his Sept. 17 statement.
This story was updated Sept. 18, 2024, at 11:17 a.m. ET with information on the Sept. 17 statement from Bishop Olson.
Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for Catholic News Agency and a fellow of the College Fix. She has been published by the Wall Street Journal, the Denver Catholic Register, and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.
