Prologue
Standing on the rich history of our past and the communion present among us, we, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, commit ourselves to seeking God who beckons to us from a future abundant in grace, full of challenge, and rich in possibility. As we live the years ahead, we remain inspired by the radical call of the Gospel, filled with hope, and committed to discerning together the leading of God’s Spirit. Affirming LCWR’s mission and setting direction for the coming years, we embrace our time as holy, our leadership as gift, and our challenges as blessing.
We are ecclesial women, living in hope, rooted in the mission of Jesus. We claim our prophetic role and inherent responsibility in the church by grounding all we are and all we do in a contemplative stance, by living in right relationship with all creation and being in solidarity with the global community.
We live in a world filled with the action of God’s creating love and are partners of that divine activity in a time when major social and global change creates both enormous challenge and significant opportunity. We recognize that technology shrinks time and distance, creating new ways of thinking and relating. We experience the reality that growing inequity breeds oppression. Unbridled consumption and unfettered capitalism imperil the common good and environmental degradation threatens all God's creation. We desire to understand and address root causes of systemic evil and work with others to meet global needs in a way that reflects the spaciousness of God’s abundant love in the world.
We abide in a church whose members experience a renewed call to live the heart of the Gospel. We commit ourselves to work with others to nurture a church that is a more inclusive, welcoming community, one that encourages meaningful expressions of faith and spirituality. We seek to bring science, theology, and lived-experience into greater dialogue and desire to create safe, honest places for open exploration of the pressing questions of these times. We have been nourished and sustained by our faith tradition and stand in solidarity with others who long to pass on a vibrant faith and rich tradition to succeeding generations. We desire strengthened relationships between church leaders and the community of the faithful and pray for genuine forgiveness and healing within the Body of Christ.
We lead congregations faithful to the call of the Gospel that attempt to bridge the tradition which grounds us and the future which calls us forward. Our members are challenged to live their call on the margins of society, to welcome more ethnic and cultural diversity and honor shifting worldviews. They yearn for a deepening of mutual respect and trust between women religious and church authorities and desire significant and sustained collaboration with the laity. Their life and ministry is grounded in a contemplative stance that helps them face the significant shifts in demographics that hold substantial implications for them. They experience major transitions in their lives, ministerial presence, and influence and, in some cases, the completion of their mission. Within these realities, they rejoice in hope and promise as consecrated women and place their poverty with the richness of God’s action for the good of the world.
In response to these realities, we, the members of LCWR, hear God's call and commit ourselves to engaging the following initiatives for the next seven years:
