ABSTRACT
This chapter contends that the Apostolic Visitation (AV) initiated in 2009 has a lot to teach us about the politics of both religious and gendered conflict and collaboration. The Apostolic Visitation (AV) was precipitated by ostensible concerns—overwhelmingly held by more conservative or traditional Catholics—about two 149things. First, many communities of sisters in the US were experiencing a precipitous decline in membership. While there were approximately 180,000 vowed women in the mid-1960s, numbers had decreased to less than half that number forty years later. Second, while sisters traditionally had worked in congregationally sponsored ministries such as teaching and nursing, many 21st-century sisters were engaged in pastoral ministry, spiritual direction, and social justice-related activities. Facing coercive Vatican power, the nuns resisted and reframed the visitation as a “liberation event.” They responded to the Vatican Kyriarchy with deliberation and decision-making through consensus and non-hierarchical and collaborative alternatives.
