Texas nuns expelled from religious life after long dispute with bishop and the Vatican

A group of nuns from Texas (United States) have been expelled from religious life and have returned to the secular state after a long dispute with their bishop over the governance of their monastery.

Mother Mary of the Incarnation, president of the Association of Christ the King, said in a letter to the Diocese of Fort Worth on Monday that nuns at Holy Trinity Monastery in Arlington, Texas, have been dismissed from the Order of Discalced Carmelites and “reverted to the secular state” after more than a year of sustained defiance of their superiors.

The dismissal ends a bitter and divisive dispute between Carmelite nuns and Church authorities, from Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson to the Vatican itself.

The controversy began last year when Bishop Olson launched an investigation into the monastery amid accusations that the Reverend Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach had had an affair with a priest.

In May 2023, the nuns filed a lawsuit against Bishop Olson over the investigation, alleging violations of privacy and harm to the sisters’ physical and emotional well-being. Bishop Olson finally expelled Gerlach from religious life.

In April of this year, the Vatican declared that the Association of Christ the King in the United States of America would oversee the “government, discipline, studies, property, rights and privileges” of the Texas monastery.

The nuns, however, defied the Vatican order, even going so far as to associate with the Priestly Fraternity of Saint Pius (FSSPX), a traditionalist group that is not in full communion with the Catholic Church and has a canonically irregular status.

“Our only wish is that they repent”

On Monday, Mother Mary of the Incarnation said the nuns’ repeated defiance included denying the authority of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, as well as denying the authority of their bishop and her own. Mother Mary as her superior. He said the nuns also committed an “illegal formal association” with the SSPX.

These violations were “exacerbated by the illicit expropriation of the legal entity of the Carmelite monastery,” Mother Mary wrote.

The nuns “entrusted to laypeople” the assets of the monastery, he said, which “had been entrusted to them by countless benefactors, in order to serve Christ in the Church through the barefoot Carmelite life.”

The nuns’ expulsion from religious life was brought about “by their own actions,” Mother Mary wrote.

“I ask for your continued prayers and sacrifices on behalf of these seven women,” he said, adding that “our only wish is that the members expelled from Carmel repent, so that the monastic property can rightly once again be called a monastery, inhabited by barefoot Carmelite nuns, in good canonical standing with the Church of Rome.”

In a brief statement accompanying the announcement, Bishop Olson echoed Mother Mary’s call to pray for the expelled nuns, while also ordering that Catholics refrain from attending Mass at the monastery.

He also asked the faithful “not to offer financial support” to the nuns.

In a letter last month, Bishop Olson had responded to reports that the nuns had reinstated Gerlach as prioress in an illegal election. The bishop described the move as “scandalous” and “suffused with the odor of schism.”

In her letter on Monday, Mother Mary noted that a Carmelite nun “swears to live in accordance with the rule and constitutions of the Order of Discalced Carmelites.”

The nuns were given the opportunity to reunify with the Church, he noted, but “they have chosen otherwise, and their choices have brought upon them the different status that is now theirs.”

Translated and adapted by the ACI Prensa team. Originally published in CNA.