The bill requires religious organizations to obey city laws forbidding discrimination against gay men and lesbians, though they would not have to perform or make space available to gay weddings.

Fearful that they could be forced, among other things, to extend employee benefits to same-sex married couples, church officials said they would have no choice but to abandon their contracts with the city.

“If the city requires this, we can’t do it,” Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said Wednesday. “The city is saying in order to provide social services, you need to be secular. For us, that’s really a problem.”

Several D.C. Council members said the Catholic Church is trying to erode the city’s long-standing laws protecting gay men and lesbians from discrimination.

Catholic Charities serves 68,000 people in Washington DC, including one-third of the city’s homeless.

The Holy See press office released rules and guidelines, known as an Apostolic Constitution, as part of efforts to make it easier for disillusioned, traditionalist Anglicans to cross over to the Roman Catholic fold.

Under the Vatican’s initiative, Anglicans, turned off by their own church’s embrace of openly gay clerics, women priests and blessing of same-sex unions, can join new parishes, called “personal ordinariates” that are headed by former Anglican prelates

Vatican officials had previously stressed that married Anglican priests would be allowed to remain in the priesthood on a case-by-case basis as they join the Roman Catholic fold.

Still, the Vatican’s decision to allow Anglicans to keep some aspects of their liturgy and identity had raised questions over whether the Roman Catholic requirement for celibacy might change.

On Monday, the Vatican reaffirmed its resolve to leave the celibacy requirement unchanged.

“The possibility envisioned by the Apostolic Constitution for some married clergy within the personal ordinariates does not signify any change in the Church’s discipline of clerical celibacy,” the Vatican said.

It praised priestly celibacy as “a sign and a stimulus for pastoral charity.”

Apparently seeking to squash any speculation that Rome had been courting the disaffected Anglicans, the Vatican said the “Holy Spirit” inspired Anglicans to “petition repeatedly and insistently to be received into full Catholic communion” individually and as a group.

The Vatican also sought to justify setting up new structures to accommodate any Anglican desire to convert.

Simply assimilating Anglicans in existing dioceses would have led to the “loss of the richness of their Anglican tradition,” the Vatican said.

Allowing them to keep liturgical, spiritual and pastoral traditions, with Vatican approval, brings the Catholic church “a precious gift,” the new document said.

The rules also confirmed statements by Vatican officials that while married Anglican bishops could be ordained as priests after converting to Roman Catholicism, they will lose bishop’s rank.

But Rome said these former bishops could be invited to participate in meetings of local Catholic bishops’ conferences “with the equivalent status of a retired bishop.”

Without elaborating on the theology involved, the new rules said “many doctrinal questions have had to be addressed, and such questions will continue to arise” as the Anglican converts join their Roman Catholic brothers.

Pope Benedict XVI, at the helm of a 1.1 billion member Church, has made it a priority of papacy to press for unity of all Christians, including the 77 million-strong Anglican communion worldwide.

Both the Vatican and the Anglican Church have pledged to continue unity efforts.

The Vatican’s reaching out to the would-be converts doesn’t “deflect” the Church of England from its “long-standing commitment to seeking the unity of all the Churches, including the Roman Catholic church,” said the Rt. Rev. Christopher Hill, bishop of Guildford, England, and chairman of the Church of England’s Council for Christian Unity.

The Church of England was established in 1534 when English monarch Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment by Rome.

Pope Benedict XVI approved a new church provision that will allow Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while maintaining many of their distinctive spiritual and liturgical traditions, including having married priests.

Cardinal William Levada, the Vatican’s chief doctrinal official, announced the new provision at a new conference.

In the past, such exemptions had only been granted in a few cases in certain countries. The new church provision is designed to allow Anglicans around the world to access a new church entity if they want to convert.

The decision immediately raised questions about how the new provision would be received within the 77-million strong Anglican Communion, the global Anglican church, which has been on the verge of a schism over divisions within its membership about women bishops, an openly gay bishop and the blessing of same-sex unions.

The Anglican’s spiritual leader, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, downplayed the significance of the new provision and said it wasn’t a Vatican commentary on Anglican problems.

“It has no negative impact on the relations of the communion as a whole to the Roman Catholic church as a whole,” he said in London.

Conservative Party lawmaker Ann Widdecombe, who left the Church of England because of its policies for the Catholic Church, welcomed the Vatican’s decision.

“I’m delighted if it does become easier, because when we had the last big exodus in 1992 over the ordination of women, the Catholic Church was not ready,” she said in London. “There were enormous discrepancies up and down the country, and the direction from the Vatican came late in the day.”

The new Catholic church entities, called personal ordinariates, will be units of faithful established within local Catholic Churches, headed by former Anglican prelates who will provide spiritual care for Anglicans who wish to be Catholic.

They would most closely resemble Catholic military ordinariates, special units of the church established in most countries to provide spiritual care for the members of the armed forces and their dependents.

“(This will) facilitate a kind of corporate reunion of Anglican groups” into the Catholic Church, Levada said.

Anglicans split with Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment.

The new canonical provision is a response to the many requests from Anglo-Catholics who want to come back, increasingly disillusioned with the progressive bent of the Anglican Communion. Many have already left and consider themselves Catholic but have not found an official home in the 1.1-billion strong Catholic Church.

By welcoming them in with their own special provision, Benedict has confirmed the increasingly conservative bent of his church. The decision follows his recent move to rehabilitate four excommunicated ultra-conservative bishops, including one who denied the full extent of the Holocaust, in a bid to bring their faithful back under the Vatican’s wing.

Levada declined to give figures on the number of requests that have come to the Vatican, or on the anticipated number of Anglicans who might take advantage of the new structure.

One group, known as the Traditional Anglican Communion, has made its bid to join the Catholic Church known. The fellowship, which split from the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1990, says it has spread to 41 countries and has 400,000 members, although only about half are regular churchgoers.

The new canonical provision allows married Anglican priests and even seminarians to become ordained Catholic priests – much the same way that Eastern rite priests who are in communion with Rome are allowed to be married. However, married Anglicans couldn’t become Catholic bishops.

The Vatican announcement immediately raised questions about how the Vatican’s long-standing dialogue with the Archbishop of Canterbury could continue. Noticeably, no one from the Vatican’s ecumenical office on relations with Anglicans attended the news conference; Levada said he had invited representatives to attend but they said they were all away from Rome.

Just last week, the Vatican’s top ecumenical official, Cardinal Walter Kasper, told reporters: “We are not fishing in the Anglican pond,” when asked about the Vatican’s negotiations with would-be converts.

Levada stressed that ecumenical dialogue with the global Anglican church would remain a priority. But he said the goal of that dialogue for 40 years had been to achieve “full visible unity.”

To downplay suggestions of poaching, the Catholic archbishop of Westminster and Williams, the Anglican leader, issued a joint statement saying the decision “brings an end to a period of uncertainty” for Anglicans wishing to join the Catholic Church.

And at a press conference in London, Williams tried to put the best face on the decision.

“It has no negative impact on the relations of the communion as a whole to the Roman Catholic church as a whole,” he said.

But Williams’ representative in Rome, the Very Rev. David Richardson, called the Vatican’s decision “surprising,” given that the Catholic Church in the past had welcomed individual Anglicans in without creating what he called “parallel structures” for entire groups of converts.

“The two questions I would want to ask are ‘why this and why now,’” he told The Associated Press. “Why the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has decided to embrace that particular method remains unclear to me.”

Also unclear, he said, was the Vatican’s target audience: those Anglicans who have already left the Anglican Communion, or current members. Levada said it covered both.

“If it’s for former Anglicans, then it’s not about our present difficulties, then it’s people who have already left,” Richardson said. If it’s current Anglicans, “There is in my mind an uncertainty for whom it is intended.”

The Anglican Communion has been roiled for years over disagreement on the role of women. But the long-standing divisions over how Anglicans should interpret the Bible erupted in 2003 when the Episcopal Church consecrated the first openly gay bishop, V. Gene Robinson of New Hampshire.

Williams has struggled ever since to keep the church from splitting, frustrated by moves by churches in the United States, Canada and elsewhere to bless gay relationships.

At least four conservative U.S. dioceses and dozens of individual Episcopal parishes have voted to leave the national denomination since 2003, with many affiliating themselves instead with like-minded Anglican leaders in African and elsewhere.

The Vatican announcement was kept under wraps until the last moment: The Vatican only announced Levada’s briefing Monday night, and Levada only flew back to Rome at midnight after briefing Catholic bishops and Williams about the decision.

That’s right—a Catholic nun. Not even a lesbian nun, as far as I can gather. Sr. Julie was one of my theology professors in college, and she was one of the first people I confided in after busting open the closet door.

She had the sort of reassuring demeanor that inspired confidence, in both senses of that term: I shared secrets with her, and her support emboldened me. Looking back, I suspect that some of my candor was excessive, but Julie never let on if it bothered her.

The advice in question regarded a crush I had on a straight neighbor named Neil. I had a penchant for crushes on straight guys then—probably because I knew so few gay ones.

Hoping to see more of him, I would ride my bicycle repeatedly up and down his street so that I might “accidentally” catch him venturing outside to fetch the mail.

I would write about him in my journal at night, and my heart would leap every time he would call—which was never often enough.

When I did get to spend time with him, I would fret for days beforehand about what to wear, how my hair looked, etc.—things that I knew he never noticed, or cared about.

In short, I was a 20-year-old behaving like a 12-year-old—and a pretty desperate one at that.

I knew how silly I was acting, and in fact I was quite ashamed of it—though apparently not too ashamed to tell Sr. Julie.

“Julie,” I fretted, “I’m a college student—an adult!—and I’m acting like an adolescent.”

She looked at me with her serene eyes and said firmly, “But you are an adolescent…”

“No,” I interrupted—I mean I’m acting like I’m in Junior High.”

“Of course,” she explained gently. “Because, when it comes to dating, that’s precisely where you are. In Junior High, when your straight friends were all dating, what were you doing? Keeping to yourself. You never had those adolescent experiences that others did. They’re silly, sure, but they’re part of the process. You’re just starting out. So be patient with yourself.”

It was one of those “lightbulb moments”: You’re new to this; be patient with yourself.

I had only been out about a year, without any real dating experience, and yet I was beating myself up for failing to handle my crush like an “adult.” (Eventually I would learn that even adults don’t necessarily handle their crushes like adults.)

Then Sr. Julie sang “Climb Every Mountain” and sent me on my way.

Okay, I made that last part up. But the rest of the story is true, and the exchange has stuck with me for two decades.

I should mention that it came as no surprise to me that a Catholic nun could give such good relationship advice—to a gay guy, no less. The priests, nuns and brothers I knew in college were sensitive, humane individuals. It saddens me that, in the minds of the public, their humanity is often eclipsed by the misdeeds of the hierarchy.

Still, even though I no longer share their Catholic faith, I carry their lessons with me.

I remember Julie’s insight, for example, each time a young gay person comes to me for relationship advice. “You’re new to this; be patient with yourself,” I tell them.

I remember it, too, when I reflect on the various ways in which homophobia harms people. It is difficult to exaggerate the enduring damage done by robbing youth of key formative experiences. And while I’m grateful that more gay youth today can experience their adolescent growing pains alongside their straight peers, we still have a long way to go.

And I remember it when, even now, I notice myself replaying the scripts learned in Junior High. It’s not just about romantic life—though I sometimes suspect that, contra Freud, it’s really 7^th grade that holds the key to one’s sexual psyche. It is, rather, a more general insecurity, a nagging doubt: “Will they really like me?” followed by the vestigial coda, “But what if they knew my secret?”

It is no longer a secret, of course. I’m an out gay man happily in an eight-year relationship. Neil is a distant memory. Sr. Julie, whom I have not spoken to in decades, is now a high-ranking university administrator. I owe her a thank-you.

********************

John Corvino, Ph.D. is an author, speaker, and philosophy professor at Wayne State University in Detroit. His column “The Gay Moralist” appears Fridays on 365gay.com.

For more about John Corvino, or to see clips from his “What’s Morally Wrong with Homosexuality?” DVD, visit www.johncorvino.com.

The son of the country’s most famous Catholic family defied church teachings when he divorced his first wife, then was granted an annulment only after he admitted he wasn’t being honest when he promised her he’d be faithful. His most significant and public break with the church came with his support for abortion rights.

Yet Kennedy also advocated for signature Catholic causes, such as help for the poor, health care and immigration reform, and opposition to the Iraq war. His faith remained a regular part of his life until it ended this week with a priest at his bedside.

The apparently conflicting portrait of a man loyal to the church despite widening disagreement on key issues “almost perfectly represents” the views of most American Catholics, said Boston College professor Alan Wolfe.

“He’s an effect of a process that’s been going on for a very long time that started long before Teddy Kennedy was born and will continue long after Teddy Kennedy is dead,” Wolfe said.

Kennedy’s mother, Rose Kennedy, set the roots of his faith, emphasizing Christ’s teaching in the Gospels that “to whom much is given, much will be required.” When her kids were teens, she made sure they went to a weekend religious camp every year, even if they’d rather be sailing, said Adam Clymer, who worked with Kennedy on his biography. She took them to church during the week, so they knew church wasn’t just for Sundays.

In his eulogy during her 1995 funeral, Kennedy called his mother’s faith “the greatest gift she gave us.”

A commitment to Catholicism was not always evident in Kennedy’s personal life, which was marred by problems with alcohol and philandering. In 1983, he was forbidden from receiving communion after his divorce – which the church forbids – from his first wife, Joan.

The public learned more than a decade later that he’d been granted an annulment after he was seen accepting Communion at his mother’s funeral. Joan later said that Kennedy requested the annulment, which she did not oppose, on grounds that his marriage vow to be faithful had not been honestly made, Clymer said.

Kennedy never discussed his annulment and also rarely spoke publicly of his Catholicism.

“I think faith oftentimes is deeply felt in the marrow of your bones, it’s a matter of the heart,” said Kennedy’s friend, the Rev. Gerry Creedon, a Washington-area priest. “He had trouble articulating his inner feelings, his deepest conviction and matters of emotion, the heart.”

One of Kennedy’s longest discussions of his faith came in 1983 in an unlikely place – political foe Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University:

“I am an American and a Catholic; I love my country and treasure my faith,” Kennedy said. “But I do not assume that my conception of patriotism or policy is invariably correct, or that my convictions about religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this pluralistic society. I believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but who among us can claim a monopoly on it?”

In the same speech, Kennedy referred to abortion, criticizing some religious people for wanting government to “tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives.” His pro-abortion rights stance was a flip from early in his career and tough for many Catholics to accept, even those who admire his other work in other areas they consider “pro-life” – such as anti-war, anti-poverty and anti-death penalty causes.

“There’s this big, ‘What if?’” said Catholic author Michael Sean Winters. “If Ted Kennedy had stuck to his pro-life position, would both the (Democratic) party and the country have embraced the abortion on demand policies that we have now? And I don’t think so.”

Russell Shaw, former spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said when Kennedy defied the church on issues such as abortion and later, gay marriage, he reinforced a corrosive belief among Catholics that they can simply ignore teachings they don’t agree with.

Kennedy’s differences with the church never kept him from Mass. When he was in Washington, Kennedy would attend Blessed Sacrament Church in Chevy Chase, Md., and sometimes stop in at St. Joseph’s on Capitol Hill, said Susan Gibbs, spokeswoman for the Washington Archdiocese. In his last days, Kennedy leaned hard on his faith. Creedon said he visited with Kennedy last Friday, offering him a blessing and praying the Lord’s Prayer with him.

“He just was a man of deep piety and devotion, as well as public commitments in the area of the Gospel,” Creedon said.

Kennedy’s relationship with the Catholic church was rocky, Shaw said, but there’s no doubt it was enduring. Judging the quality of Kennedy’s faith isn’t for him, he said.

“Now it’s up to God,” he said.

The Catholic Church in New Jersey is gearing up for a fight against same-sex marriage. By gearing up I mean writing to 2300 supporters the following:

“The Catholic Church teaches today and has always and everywhere taught for 2,000 years that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. …This great truth about marriage is not some obscure doctrinal fine point but a fact of human nature, recognized from time immemorial by people of virtually every faith and culture.”

It amazes me that the opposition continues to make these ridiculous claims. It amazes me that they continue to resonate with people.

The only conclusion I can come to – assuming that we agree for a moment that the union between one man and one woman has not been practiced for very long nor has it been very common around the world in other religions and cultures – is that once an individual or group of individual engages in a practice, they automatically assume that their practice is rooted in history and fundamentally correct to the exclusion of all others.

It makes sense. Though we claim to be innovators, we really don’t want to be doing anything that isn’t backed by the guarantee of history and moral approval. Just because the people receiving this letter happen to be in a heterosexual monogamous relationship, they nod with approval when the church makes grossly overstated and patently untrue claims.

Sigh.

It’s nothing new. But as the Catholic Church gears up to attempt a defeat of same-sex marriage in New Jersey. I can’t help but get a little frustrated with decent men and women of that State who read these ridiculous letters and believe every word.

The accuser is a young man “in his early 20’s,” (Barber is 53), and the alleged assault happened at Barber’s home, sometime between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning.

Um…

Barber has not spent his entire career as a Catholic priest. He used to be an Episcopal priest, but left the church because he disagreed with the new policies of allowing LGBT priests and sanctioning same-sex relationships.

Um…

Obviously, I have no way of knowing what happened between the accuser and the accused.

And I’m sure this is a painful situation for Barber’s congregation. Please believe that compassion is in my thoughts when I say this:

Duh, you guys.

This is what happens when you try to force people to be something that they aren’t. Or worse, when you tell them that what they fundamentally are is a bad, bad thing.

Many people will run away from your flock (have you noticed?), but some will try their best to squeeze themselves into the rigid boxes that have been set up for them.

And while they tie themselves up in knots and pray to be better people and hate themselves for not being straight, some of the gay can’t help but leak out the seams.

And what you get is this: A situation that was either nonconsensual or consensual at the time but so wrapped up in guilt and loathing that it’s now being reported as an assault. Who is being brought closer to God by this?

We’ve been shown over and over that spirituality doesn’t have to be like that. There are two stories today on 365Gay alone that note the widespread, active involvement of members of the LGBT community in Christian churches, and other religions with open, inclusive attitudes see similar enthusiastic participation.

Spirituality, while hardly essential for a happy, moral, and fulfilling life, can be a wonderful thing, adding a heartening and invigorating depth to one’s experience.

I get sickened and saddened when I see it twisted into a vehicle for showing – or hammering home – what is “wrong” with people.

I just saw Jesus Camp for the first time this weekend. Many of my friends were most disturbed by the political indoctrination, and, yeah, that’s creepy as all get out.

But what struck me the most was the number of times the kids in the movie – kids of 8 or 9 – were shamed into crying. In between being told they were to be the new young warriors of God, they were taught, over and over, how unworthy they were.

I bring it up because, while it’s hard to feel sympathy for the adult Barber’s homophobia, I do feel some compassion for the young Barber and the process that turned him into what he is.

We all know, both from anecdotal evidence and the occasional psychology experiment, that the people who rail hardest against The Gay tend to be people who are fighting off their own same-sex desires. Which makes sense: You don’t have to worry about people or magazines or television turning you gay if you’ve never been interested.

And heaven knows Barber tried not to be gay. He got married and had kids. (The Catholic Church allows converted priests to maintain their marriages.) He fought against LGBT encroachment in his own church and finally ran to Catholicism to get as far away from it as he could.

And yet somehow there he was with a young man in his house sometime after 3:00 in the morning.

I don’t know Barber or the situation well enough to say anything about whether he, personally, is good, bad, or somewhere in between.

But I do know that the process that leads to these painful situations is awful. And it doesn’t have to be this way.

So how do we offer compassion and a lifeline to people who are caught in the middle of it? As tempting as it is to peacefully demonstrate at, say, a rally by a hostile Evangelical church with literature and helpline phone numbers, it seems like setting up an ongoing game of Rainbow Rover would be unproductive in the long run.

And would probably play into the accusations of trying to “turn people gay”.

But I still feel bad for the young people being hammered into those little boxes, or the people who are still trying to fit even when there is so much that squeezes out the edges in such a painful way.

I take heart in the fact that so many religions are offering a warm welcome to those in the LGBT community, and hope that word gets out that being who you are doesn’t have to mean giving up your favorite deity. In fact, it can help you meet a friendlier, more relaxed, and more positive version.

And I also take heart in the fact that information tends to seep out the seams on the Internet too.

If you’re here because of a Google search and some feelings you’re not comfortable with, hello and welcome. Take a look around and know that there are plenty of organizations – including churches – that don’t think there is a thing wrong with you.

Take care and good luck.

The Empowering Spirits Foundation said its challenge was filed at an Internal Revenue Service office in Dallas. The San Diego-based group said the diocese is engaging in political activity by collecting signatures for the referendum, violating IRS rules applying to nonprofits.

The ballot question would overturn Maine’s gay marriage law. Gay marriage foes need the signatures of at least 55,087 registered voters to get the question on the ballot. The petitioners have until three months after the Legislature adjourns, which is expected to happen in mid-June, to collect the signatures.

IRS policy allows the diocese to participate in the campaign and help collect signatures, said Marc Mutty, public affairs director for the diocese. He rejected the IRS challenge as a “bogus attempt to sidetrack the campaign.”

Leonard Cole, a Portland attorney who specializes in tax and nonprofit issues, suggested that the church’s involvement could put it at odds with IRS rules that restrict lobbying by tax-exempt nonprofits.

“It’s hard for me to imagine how you seek someone’s signature on a petition without it arguably at least being an attempt to influence their vote once the measure was on the ballot,” Cole said.

Meanwhile, about a dozen gay-marriage supporters gathered in a park across the street from Maine’s Capitol to thank the Legislature for enacting the bill and Gov. John Baldacci for signing it earlier this month. The gathering also marked the start of the supporters’ campaign to defeat the referendum.

One of the participants, Carla Hopkins of Mount Vernon, said she was not discouraged that a same-sex marriage bill in New Hampshire has been set back by a House vote. Efforts are under way to negotiate a compromise acceptable to Gov. John Lynch.

“We’re riding high on what’s happening here in Maine,” said Hopkins, adding that she hopes to see similar laws passed throughout New England.

Four other states, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts and Vermont, allow gay marriage.

©365Gay.com 2009

Pope Benedict XVI said last month that condoms weren’t the answer to Africa’s AIDS epidemic and could make the problem worse.

France, Germany, the U.N. AIDS-fighting agency as well as the British medical journal The Lancet criticized the comments as irresponsible and dangerous. The Belgian parliament passed a resolution calling them “unacceptable” and demanding that the government officially protest.

Belgium’s ambassador to the Holy See lodged the formal protest April 15, prompting the strongly worded Vatican statement Friday.

Criticizing the Belgian vote, the Vatican said it deplored “the fact that a parliamentary assembly should have thought it appropriate to criticize the Holy Father on the basis of an isolated extract from an interview, separated from its context.”

It said the remarks had been “used by some groups with a clear intent to intimidate, as if to dissuade the Pope from expressing himself on certain themes of obvious moral relevance and from teaching the Church’s doctrine.”

It wasn’t immediately clear which groups the Vatican was referring to. The Belgian resolution, which passed April 2, said Benedict’s comments ran against numerous international declarations and actions taken by the United Nations and others who have been fighting AIDS and other transmittable diseases such as malaria.

It said they were “unacceptable” and that the Belgian government didn’t share them.

A similar resolution is under consideration by the Belgian Senate.

In its statement, the Vatican decried what it said was an “unprecedented media campaign” in Europe that was unleashed by the pope’s remarks about condoms, while ignoring Benedict’s fuller message about the need to care for those suffering from AIDS.

The Vatican said it was consoled that Africans and “the true friends of Africa” had praised and appreciated the pontiff’s remarks.

The 82-year-old pope, who marks his fourth anniversary as pontiff on Sunday, has faced enormous criticism recently. In addition to the uproar over his condom comments, his decision to remove the excommunication of a bishop who denied the Holocaust sparked outcry, even within his own church.

The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an association that gathers the leaders of most of the country’s women’s congregations, said it was informed of the “doctrinal assessment” in a letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog.

The doctrinal investigation is separate from another Vatican-ordered study looking into the quality of the life in more than 400 U.S. women’s religious institutes. That study was launched as the church grapples with the dramatic decline in the number of American nuns and sisters over the past several decades.

In a statement, the Leadership Conference said the new doctrinal study would look into its activities and initiatives, but it provided no details.

Calls to the Vatican spokesman were not returned late Wednesday. A spokeswoman of the conference, Sister Annmarie Sanders, declined to comment beyond the statement.

The National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper, said the Vatican ordered up the probe because the sisters had not addressed problems raised by the Vatican in 2001 about their promotion of church teaching on homosexuality, salvation and the priesthood, which the Vatican says is reserved for men.

The newspaper cited a letter from the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Joseph Levada, to the conference saying the Vatican had concluded that the problems raised in 2001 remain based on the “tenor and the doctrinal content” of speeches given at the conference’s annual meetings.

The conference said it was confident going into the investigation, saying it believed it had been faithful to its mission of serving leaders of women’s orders “as they seek to further the mission of Christ in today’s world.”

The conference says it has more than 1,500 members, who represent about 95 percent of the 59,000 women religious in the United States.