Divide and conquer: Are Catholic entities really undermining the Bishops authority?

"They're in the Church" news items continue.

National Catholic Register has an article reviewing all the news stories which have revealed the great divide that exists within the Church in the United States - between the bishops and Catholic entities, such as the  Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA), and Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR).  These two have been the most prominent in the news because of the HHS mandate and its challenge to religious freedom.  Many have written about these matters, and we best be paying attention.  There is a strong trickle down effect which deeply influences the average Catholic in the pew.  (Talking normal Catholics who don't read Catholic blogs or watch EWTN, never heard of Fr. Z or Michael Voris, don't know the difference between the old ordinary form translation from the new one, and who either like the Gather hymnal or just don't care.)

So who really has the authority to teach?  It should be the bishops:

Neither the sisters (LCWR) nor the CHA hold any authority to speak for the Church on faith and morals: That authority belongs to the bishops alone, as Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City, Kan., told Catholic News Service during his recent ad limina visit to the Vatican. He said that his group of Midwestern bishops also spoke with Vatican officials about the public support of the CHA and LCWR for the so-called “accommodation” in the HHS mandate. The bishops have rejected the “accommodation” because it still requires religious institutions to provide insurance that covers immoral services.

“Those efforts are really undercutting the Church and trying to divide it again by setting up two teaching authorities when there’s only one within the Church,” Archbishop Naumann said. “It’s a very serious issue, I think, particularly when religious try to insert themselves in the role of trying to be the teachers within the Church. They have important roles to play, but they are not the ones to teach on these matters.” - NCRegister

Catholic entities meets sensus fidelium.

They are not the same.  Although Catholic entities may be canonically established institutions or congregations which can dissent from Church teaching or adopt policies in opposition to Catholic authority.  While the false sensus fidelium may be Catholic groups within the Church who do the same thing - in effect, both are actual entities within Catholicism.  Since no one gets excommunicated these days, and few, if any, are ever barred from the sacraments, they remain Catholics.  In other words, as I've been pointing out, they are in the Church.  Get it?  The Catholic entities within the Church have been (and continue to do so), undermining the teaching authority of the Bishops - not the USCCB - but the individual Bishops in their respective dioceses.  Then there is the whole question of that other Catholic entity in the room, which more or less has been the voice of dissent for all of these years, The National Catholic Reporter, which Bill Donohue says "rejects the teachings of the Catholic Church on sexuality." 

It took an anti-Catholic President of the United States to wake people up to what has been going on for decades - and it is just the tip of the iceberg.  These Catholics have a new set of rules, a new mysticism, a new morality, without patriarchy or hierarchy: they are Catholics for equality, and they are indeed an entity.

Photo:  LCWR 1958  When they were Roman Catholic nuns.  They never should have been allowed to organize.