At RNS, Mark Silk makes the connection:

The denunciation of the Leadship Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) by the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF, formerly known as the Roman Inquisition) puts this medievalist in mind of the Church's 15th Ecumenical Council, which wrapped up its business in Vienne exactly 700 years ago next week......While they were at it, the Council...suppressed a movement ofpious lay women who wore a distinctive habit and lived together in hospices, impressing many by their teaching and the sanctity of their lives. To the men who ran the church, they were dangerously out of line. As the Council put it:"The women commonly known as Beguines, since they promise obedience to nobody, nor renounce possessions, nor profess any approved rule are not religious at all, although they wear the special dress of Beguines and attach themselves to certain religious to whom they have a special attraction. We have heard from trustworthy sources that there are some Beguines who seem to be led by a particular insanity. They argue and preach on the holy Trinity and the divine essence, and express opinions contrary to the catholic faith with regard to the articles of faith and the sacraments of the church. These Beguines thus ensnare many simple people, leading them into various errors. They generate numerous other dangers to souls under the cloak of sanctity. We have frequently received unfavourable reports of their teaching and justly regard them with suspicion. With the approval of the sacred council, we perpetually forbid their mode of life and remove it completely from the church of God."So: Pressed hard by the secular power, the Council asserted its own shrunken authority by bringing the hammer down on a bunch of powerless women whose moral standing with ordinary folk was unsettling to ecclesiastical authority. Sound familiar?

Does it?

David Gibson is the director of Fordham’s Center on Religion & Culture.

Also by this author

Please email comments to [email protected] and join the conversation on our Facebook page.

© 2024 Commonweal Magazine. All rights reserved. Design by Point Five. Site by Deck Fifty.