Religious Women in T's and Capris: Making Vatican II Irrelevant.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
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When religious orders get rid of Superiors, Reverend Mothers and Mothers General - they get a leadership conference of equals - with no leadership.  Thus explains the chaos of women religious congregations enlisted in the LCWR.  No leadership - no followers = no vocations.
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A friend sent me an NCR article dated August 12 on the LCWR speaker Richard Gaillardetz, Murray/Bacik Professor of Catholic Studies at the University of Toledo, and his address to the 750 U.S. women religious leaders gathered for the conference.  The theologian told them, "You are on an ecclesial tight rope with no net" as he praised their adventurous risk-taking in pursuance of  'creative fidelity', otherwise known as dissent.
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Working without a net.
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Drawing on his theological background and basing his talk on lessons learned by studying the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), Gaillardetz said he was appearing before the women not to recommend concrete responses to recent Vatican interventions into the LCWR organization and women’s communities, but rather to guide them to act with “creative fidelity,” a hallmark, he said, that has characterized professed religious life in the U.S. over the least five decades.
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“The people of God are watching you, looking for a way forward in their own ecclesial difficulties. As I am sure you know, you are not the only ones experiencing the pain of ecclesial tensions. There are other faithful Catholics who struggle with abuses in ecclesiastical authority on many fronts. They know well of certain bishops who chose the protection of abusing priests over the protection of victims. They see young clerics who emerge from the seminary more preoccupied with their own ontological uniqueness, clerical garb and proper title than with the genuine pastoral needs of God’s people. They suffer under an enforced Eucharistic fast necessitated by a decision to place the weight of longstanding practice above the sacramental needs of the people of God. They find themselves ashamed when one of their most precious convictions, the dignity of all human life from conception to natural death, is effaced by church actions that suggest that the rights of the unborn eclipse the rights of the already born.”
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The theologian continued: “Many of us in the church are doing today what we have done for so long, looking for you to show us a way forward. We are looking for you to model what authentic discipleship looks like in the face of ecclesial conflict. As catechetical leaders are wont to say, this is a teachable moment.” - Women Religious

I'm not looking at these women or taking instruction from any of them.  The majority of these women are  amongst that dying breed of dissidents who have made Vatican Council II irrelevant.  Maybe Gaillardetz was a good student under their tutelage, but his speech does little more than flattering the vanity of elderly women.
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'Ecclesial dysfunction' - exploiting their interpretation of battered wife syndrome.
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However, he noted that “in the current situation it is getting very difficult to avoid the impression that we are now veering dangerously close to an instance of ecclesial dysfunction. If this is the case, then it suggests that the ecclesial tensions you are experiencing in the present moment may have a significance that goes well beyond your own circumstances.
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“The increasingly dysfunctional character of the current tensions,” he said, “appears more likely to be the result of a failure (by the bishops) to recognize the distinct and complementary role of professed religious life within the life of the church.”
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Vatican II taught that professed religious do not belong to the church hierarchy, he said. “This means that the unique contributions of professed religious cannot be subsumed under the magisterium’s own responsibility to make fidelity to the apostolic heritage its singular concern.” - Women Religious experiences have implications for the entire Church

See what I mean by "making Vatican II irrelevant?"
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H/T Paula