Following years of controversies, the Vatican has expelled a group of Texas nuns in Arlington after a back and forth with the Forth Worth Bishop Michael Olson. Bishop Olson interrogated Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach back in 2023. Then, she admitted to having an online love affair with Father Philip Johnson, a retired priest from North Carolina.
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This admission and further overseeing by Bishop Olson was the catalyst for the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life to issue a decree of suppression for the Discalced Carmelite Monastery of Arlington.
"The actions of the former nuns have perpetrated a deep wound in the Body of Christ," Bishop Olson said, according to KERA News. "I ask all of you to join me in praying for healing, reconciliation and for the conversion of these women who have departed from the vowed religious life and notoriously defected from communication with the Catholic Church by their actions."
A letter issued by Mother Marie of the Incarnation, a Vatican-appointed "lawful superior" of the Monastery, clarified that their wish is for the former nuns to repent. "Our only wish is that the dismissed members of the Carmel would repent, so that the monastic property could again be rightly called a monastery, inhabited by Discalced Carmelite Nuns, in good canonical standing with the Church of Rome," reads the letter published on the Fort Worth diocese website.
The Vatican's expel means the church has reduced the nuns to "lay status." No excommunications have taken place. Moreover, the Catholic Church does not recognize the Discalced Carmelite Monastery of Arlington as a catholic monastery. However, the nuns did not take this decision kindly.
Further Controversies
The nuns, according to the Daily Mail, have accused Bishop Olson of wanting to control the 3.8 million Arlington monastery. For that reason, the nuns transferred the ownership of the monastery to "Friends of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Arlington Inc." a newly established group, in September, according to KERA News.
Matthew Bobo, who serves the the nuns' attorney, said that "the nuns are safe from the efforts of Bishop Olson and continue their devotion to their life of contemplative prayer." Furthermore, the nuns issued a statement, refusing to abide by the Vatican's ruling. "The vows we have professed by God cannot be dismissed or taken away," the nuns said, according to the Dallas Morning News. "By virtue of them, we belong to Him and are His." They would label their Catholic faith departure "ridiculous."
The Forth Worth diocese has continued to claim that they do not want the land at all. Moreover, judges have dismissed some civil suits filed by the nuns. The Texas nuns dropped others themselves, according to the Daily Mail. The nuns continue to operate, not acknowledging Mother Marie of the Incarnation at the time and even denying Gerlach's recorded admission.
