ARLINGTON, Texas — A group of Arlington nuns has been dismissed from their Catholic order and religious life after a year of legal drama, the nun’s Vatican-appointed leader announced this week.
Mother Marie of the Incarnation said in the statement published Monday that the nuns are no longer members of the Order of Discalced Carmelites, which they’d belonged to.
“I ask for your continued prayers and sacrifice on behalf of these seven women, who have reverted to the lay state by their own actions,” the letter, which was published on the Diocese of Fort Worth’s website, reads.
It’s unclear what their dismissal means for the nuns going forward, but the letter indicated that they could return as nuns if they repent.
“Our only wish is that the dismissed members of the Carmel would repent, so that the monastic property could again be rightly called a monastery, inhabited by Discalced Carmelite Nuns, in good canonical standing with the Church of Rome,” the letter said.
The statement comes about a month after the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity announced it had completed the final steps necessary for the monastery to be associated with the Society of Saint Pius X, a group which has been the subject of controversy for decades and has no canonical status in the Catholic Church.
In response, Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson told members not to participate in sacraments at the monastery or offer them financial support as doing so, he said, would associate them with the "scandalous disobedience and disunity" of the nuns.
Monday’s letter is the latest development in a year-plus-long fight between the nuns and Olson. It began in June of last year after the bishop accused the monastery’s head nun, the Rev. Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach, of violating her vows of chastity with a priest from outside the diocese.
The monastery then filed a civil lawsuit against Olson and the diocese, accusing them of theft and defamation. That civil suit was dismissed in June of last year.
The Vatican placed the nuns under new authority, Mother Marie of the Incarnation, President of the Association of Christ the King, earlier this year, but the nuns wouldn’t allow Mother Marie onto the premises.
