Carmelites in Arlington, Texas, have not responded to a conditional offer to restore their sacramental life, their Vatican-appointed superior said Saturday.
In a Sept. 7 statement, Mother Marie of the Incarnation, O.C.D., president of the Carmelite Association of Christ the King (USA), said the Arlington community had not replied to the offer from Bishop Michael Olson of Fort Worth, presented to them six weeks earlier.
In a July 26 letter to Mother Marie of the Incarnation, Olson said he would supply a priest of the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter (FSSP) to offer the Traditional Latin Mass and administer other sacraments if the nuns met four conditions.
The first condition, he wrote, was that the sisters “publicly disassociate themselves from Archbishop [Carlo Maria] Viganò and acknowledge Pope Francis to be the Vicar of Christ and Successor of Peter.”
Viganò, the apostolic nuncio to the U.S. from 2011 to 2016, was excommunicated in July after being found guilty of the canonical crime of schism.
The second condition was that the community received and recognized Mother Marie of the Incarnation as their legitimate superior.
The third condition was to receive and recognize Olson as their bishop.
The fourth condition was to remove material from the monastery’s website, as directed by Mother Marie of the Incarnation.
In his letter, Olson said the Arlington community’s leader, Mother Teresa Agnes of Jesus Crucified Gerlach, O.C.D., who is no longer recognized by the Vatican as prioress, had invited two priests of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, to offer Traditional Latin Masses.
“Each of these priests has been prohibited for grave reasons from exercising public ministry by their bishop, by my predecessor, and by me,” Olson wrote.
Mother Marie of the Incarnation said she sent the bishop’s offer to the Arlington community July 27, but “none of the sisters have made any response, either to me or to their bishop.”
“Over the past six weeks since they received this offer, the nuns have given no indication that they desire the gift of the sacraments, nor have they shown openness to any dialogue with us,” she wrote.
“In addition to that, they have elected to maintain upon their website certain links and statements which manifest contempt for their bishop and which obscure their claim to being in union with Rome.”
In a message to Catholics in the Fort Worth diocese, also published Sept. 7, Olson stressed that Mother Marie of the Incarnation had asked “on her own initiative” that her statement be published on the diocesan website.
He said the purpose was “to clarify for the faithful some confusion that has arisen regarding the sacramental life of the monastery and to request the continued prayers of the faithful of the Diocese of Fort Worth for the nuns of the Arlington Carmel.”
At press time, the Arlington Carmelites had not responded to the Sept. 7 statements posted on the Fort Worth diocesan website. A note on the community’s website says “the nuns will not respond to any media enquiries or grant interview requests.”
The dispute between the Arlington nuns and Olson began in April 2023, when the bishop launched a canonical investigation into Gerlach, who allegedly admitted to violating her vow of chastity with an initially unnamed priest.
Lawyers for the community and for Gerlach, both civil and canonical, have said that her supposed admission of an affair was made following a serious medical procedure, under the influence of painkillers, and when she was in and out of lucidity.
But Olson insisted that the prioress had repeated her admission to him during an in-person conversation, in the presence of several other individuals, and later released audio recordings seeming to confirm this. He said Gerlach was lucid and spoke clearly at the time, and was not recovering from surgery at the time.
The dispute has included a million-dollar lawsuit filed by the nuns against Olson, a move by the bishop to restrict the sisters’ access to the sacraments — which was rescinded days later — and images released by the Fort Worth diocese purporting to show tables inside the monastery strewn with large amounts of drug paraphernalia.
In May 2023, the Vatican appointed Olson “pontifical commissary” for the sisters and retroactively sanated (validated) any and all canonical procedural issues raised by Olson’s previous actions involving the monastery.
In June 2023, Olson issued a decree saying he had conducted an investigation, and found Gerlach guilty “of having violated the sixth commandment of the Decalogue and her vow of chastity with a priest from outside the Diocese of Fort Worth.”
Citing authority the Vatican gave Olson over the monastery, the bishop ordered Gerlach “dismissed from the Order of Discalced Carmelites.”
In August 2023, the nuns released a statement rejecting Olson’s authority.
They said they did not owe him obedience or cooperation after enduring months of “unprecedented interference, intimidation, aggression, private and public humiliation and spiritual manipulation.”
When Olson suggested that the statement may have triggered a latae sententiae (automatic) excommunication for the nuns, the sisters released a new statement claiming to recognize Olson’s authority as diocesan bishop, while also rejecting his Vatican-conferred authority to intervene over the Carmelite community.
In August 2023, the nuns also published a statement of support from Viganò, urging them to draw inspiration from the Carmelites of Compiègne, who were executed by guillotine in 1794, following the French Revolution.
In an April 18, 2024, letter to Olson, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (DICLSAL) noted that Gerlach’s term as prioress of the Arlington Carmel expired Jan. 8.
It said it was placing Mother Marie of the Incarnation, president of the Carmelite Association of Christ the King (USA) and her council in charge of the Arlington community.
In an April 18 decree, DICLSAL formally entrusted the Arlington Carmel to the association’s president and council.
In a statement two days later, the Arlington nuns complained they received no warning of the publication of the documents from Rome.
“The ‘request’ of the Carmelite Association of Christ the King (USA) to take over the governance of our monastery, made with the ‘counsel and full support’ of Bishop Olson, which Rome has accepted without our knowledge or consent, is in effect a hostile takeover that we cannot in conscience accept,” they said.
They added that “neither the president of the Association of Christ the King, nor any delegate of hers, is welcome to enter our monastery at this time.”
In an April 30 decree, DICLSAL nullified the decree from Olson expelling Gerlach from the Carmelite order. It also issued three other decrees, concerning recourse against the investigation, recourse against leave of absence, and recourse against a warning to the community.
Olson said May 22 that the Vatican had “upheld the decisions I made last year opening the investigation at the Arlington Carmel upon receiving information that Mother Teresa Agnes had violated the sixth commandment of the Decalogue and her vow of chastity, placing Mother Teresa Agnes on a leave of absence following her admissions of grievous misconduct, and admonishing the members of the monastery that obstruction of the investigation could result in the imposition of penalties.”
In a May 23 statement, the Arlington community said that Mother Marie of the Incarnation had sought on two consecutive days to enter the Carmel, “in spite of the prohibition on her from so doing.”
“We maintain our rejection of any takeover of our community or its assets, as has happened repeatedly to other monasteries of women in our country and throughout the world,” the statement said.
On July 18, Olson said two priests of the Scranton diocese without faculties for ministry had celebrated Mass at the Arlington Carmel at Gerlach’s invitation.
“I continue to work with Mother Marie of the Incarnation to restore the sacramental life of the Arlington Carmel,” he wrote.
“However, until the sisters accept her appointment as their legitimate superior, I am unable to grant permission or faculties for the celebration of the sacraments to any priest of the Diocese of Fort Worth or from another diocese or religious institute.”
