Texas Carmelites file for restraining order, defying Vatican's latest governance directive - Catholic Review (2024)

A community of Carmelite nuns in Arlington, Texas, has filed for a temporary restraining order against Vatican-imposed leadership, underscoring their rejection of a Vatican decision to place its governance under a national Carmelite association. The legal maneuver continues a yearlong feud with its diocese’s bishop that began after he questioned the competence and sexual morality of the community’s superior.

The nuns filed the restraining order April 22 against Bishop Michael F. Olson of Fort Worth and the Carmelite Association of Christ the King (USA), a small organization of U.S. Carmelite monasteries to which the Arlington Carmelites belong, and to which a Vatican dicastery recently entrusted the nuns’ governance.

The nuns said they did not approve the Vatican’s decision to put their monastery under the association’s governance, calling it “a hostile takeover that we cannot in conscience accept.”

“To accept this would risk the integrity of our monastery as a community, threatening the vocations of individual nuns, our liturgical and spiritual life and the material assets of the monastery,” the nuns stated on their website April 20 about the association’s governance authority over their monastery, the Carmelite Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity.

“We are not ‘things’ to be traded or given away in back-room deals, but women vowed to the exclusive love and service of Almighty God, whose integrity is to be respected and protected for the good of their souls and for the good of the Church,” they said.

On April 18, the Diocese of Fort Worth, which encompasses the monastery within its boundaries, published a letter and formal decree Bishop Olson received from the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life stating that the Arlington Carmelites’ governance had been entrusted to Mother Marie of the Incarnation, president of the Carmelite Association of Christ the King, and the association’s council. The diocese also published a separate letter from the dicastery’s secretary to the Arlington Carmelites.

Both letters were dated April 18 and signed by Sister Simona Brambilla, a Consolata Missionary and the dicastery’s secretary, a role Pope Francis appointed her to in October. In the letter to Bishop Olson, she thanked him for his “heroic and thankless service” while serving as the Arlington Carmelites’ pontifical commissary, a Vatican-granted governance role that the sisters vehemently rejected.

“We are fully aware that the health and longevity of the Monastic community was always your goal, throughout the ordeals of the last year,” the letter continued. “Be assured that the welfare of the Carmel is also of utmost concern to this Dicastery.”

In late April 2023, Bishop Olson initiated an investigation under church law of the community’s prioress, Reverend Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach of Jesus Crucified, into allegations of her breaking chastity vows via video with a priest. The priest was later revealed to be Father Philip Johnson from the Diocese of Raleigh, N.C., who, at the time of the alleged inappropriate communications, was living at a Transalpine Redemptorist monastery in Forsyth, Mont. Mother Teresa Agnes has denied admitting to violating her chastity vow.

In early May, Mother Teresa Agnes and the sisters filed a lawsuit against Bishop Olson and the diocese alleging that they had been harassed and that the bishop had illegally seized their electronic communications devices in an effort to obtain their mailing lists. In mid-May, the bishop responded to the lawsuit with a statement that publicized he was investigating Mother Teresa Agnes for violating chastity. For a short time, he banned daily Mass at the monastery and limited their access to confession.

Over the course of the following weeks, the civil suit progressed alongside the canonical process, with Mother Teresa Agnes filing an additional civil defamation claim. On May 31, the Vatican granted Bishop Olson governance authority over the sisters in his role as the diocesan bishop.

On June 30, a Texas district court judge dismissed the nuns’ lawsuit. Because the nuns’ canonical process could not proceed without a resolution of the civil litigation, the nuns decided not to appeal the ruling, according to their civil attorney.

The same day, Arlington police concluded an investigation into both parties and declined to file criminal charges. Earlier in June, the police had received a criminal complaint filed by a local law firm over Bishop Olson’s actions, and also had received information from the diocese of potentially illegal cannabis use at the monastery.

On July 1, the bishop issued a decree finding Mother Teresa Agnes guilty of violating her chastity vows and dismissing her from the Carmelite order.

Amid the conflict between the nuns and the bishop, Mother Teresa Agnes, in her mid-40s, revealed that she is in poor health. The civil court hearing included an audio recording from Bishop Olson’s April visit to the monastery to initiate the investigation, in which she admitted to engaging in unspecified conduct with a priest by “video chat” via phone on two occasions. She said she did not interact with the priest in person.

Later she said that testimony was given while she was under the influence of prescribed sedatives. She continues to live at the monastery as the community’s prioress.

In August, the nuns released a statement saying they rejected Bishop Olson’s governance authority, accusing him of “spiritual and psychological” abuse, and forbidding him or other diocesan officials from entering their property. Bishop Olson responded with the suggestion that the nuns, and especially Mother Teresa Agnes, may have incurred excommunication by publicly rejecting his authority.

While the nuns’ statements show they continue to consider Mother Teresa Agnes their leader, the terms of office of the Arlington monastery’s leadership expired Jan. 8, according to the Vatican dicastery’s letters and diocesan statement.

Considering the monastery having an “absence of governance” due both to the term expiration and their decision in August “to remove themselves from” Bishop Olson’s “lawful vigilance as their Ordinary,” the dicastery entrusted the monastery’s governance to the Carmelite association effective April 18.

The dicastery’s letter to the nuns stated that the president of the Carmelite Association of Christ the King wrote the dicastery March 12 with the unanimous support of her council and monastery members, with the exception of the Arlington nuns, to entrust the Arlington community to its association. A decree for the governance change accompanied the letter.

“With this entrustment, the President of the Association of Christ the King is recognized as the lawful major superior of the monastery, and together with her council, she is to exercise full governance over the Carmelite nuns and Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity,” Sister Brambilla wrote. She noted that the nuns “are instructed to cooperate fully with the President of the Association.” The association’s current president, Mother Marie of the Incarnation, is a member of the Lake Elmo Carmelite community — also called a “carmel” — near St. Paul, Minnesota.

In an April 18 statement to the faithful, Bishop Olson said that with the dicastery’s appointment, “I consider my task and responsibility as Pontifical Commissary of the Arlington Carmel to have ended.”

“It is my prayer that the Arlington Carmel will now have the internal leadership needed to save the monastery and enable it to flourish once again, in unity with the Catholic Church,” he said. “It is also my hope that Mother Teresa Agnes and the rest of the Community will accept the authority and leadership of Mother Marie of the Incarnation and do what is required to live as healthy and faithful members of the Carmelite Order in accordance with their religious vows.”

The dicastery also called for the Arlington nuns to “regularize” their relationship with Bishop Olson and the Fort Worth Diocese by rescinding their Aug. 18 declaration rejecting the bishop’s authority over them.

In their public response, the Arlington nuns said that they were awaiting response from the Holy See to the “recourses we sent to Rome last year against the illegal action of the Bishop, as promised by the Secretary of the Dicastery in a letter to us received in early February.”

“We hope and pray that Rome will engage in dialogue with us directly to find a suitable way of moving forward that respects the integrity of our life and monastery,” the nuns said.

The Fort Worth Diocese issued a statement April 20 calling the nuns’ response to the Vatican’s directive “sad and troubling.”

“The Holy See has acted in a way to promote and foster unity in Christ for the healing of the Arlington Carmel and of each of the nuns who are members of the community — not simply the former prioress and her former councilors,” it said. “Please pray for all of the nuns that they accept the legitimate leadership of their Association entrusted to them by the Holy See.”

Michael Anderson, an attorney from Kelly Hart & Hallman, who is representing the diocese, called the nuns’ lawsuit “basically a rehash of the lawsuit filed last year” in an April 23 statement shared with OSV News.

“We will seek to have this new lawsuit dismissed at the appropriate time,” he said.

“The only new part to this latest lawsuit is that the Arlington Nuns have added the Association as a defendant due to the Holy See’s recent decision to entrust the Arlington Carmel to the Association of their Carmelite Sisters,” Anderson said. “The Arlington Nuns’ decision to file suit on this basis is squarely at odds with an affidavit filed in the first lawsuit, wherein Ms. Gerlach testified that the Arlington Carmel only answers ‘directly to the Pope.’ Apparently, this no longer applies since the catalyst for this new lawsuit was a decision by the Holy See.”

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