(OSV News) — Members of a women’s religious community in Arlington, Texas, have pledged to continue their “vowed life of prayer and sacrifice in the Discalced Carmelite tradition for the Church and the world” despite their bishop’s Oct. 28 notice that they have have been dismissed from the Carmelite order and Catholic religious life.
“Given our recent acceptance for association by the Society of St. Pius X last August, any ‘dismissal’ declared by Mother Marie of the Association of Christ the King is a moot point. The Vows we have professed to God cannot be dismissed or taken away. By virtue of them we belong to Him and are His,” the nuns said in a statement posted on their website Oct. 30.
The sisters’ dismissal was publicized in Oct. 28 statements from Bishop Michael F. Olson of Fort Worth, Texas, and Mother Marie of the Incarnation, whom a Vatican office appointed as the community’s major superior in April.
The bishop and major superior attributed the dismissal to the nuns’ decisions “to break faith with their Mother, the Church of Rome” through denying the authority of the Vatican Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life that comes from the pope, as well as that of their bishop and the dicastery-appointed major superior.
In rejecting Mother Marie of the Incarnation’s authority, they also rejected “the Order of Discalced Carmelites, whose Rule and Constitutions they have spurned in praxis in multiple ways,” Mother Marie of the Incarnation wrote in her Oct. 28 “Statement to the Faithful of the Diocese of Fort Worth.”
The nuns also entered Sept. 14 into an unlawful, formal association with the Society of St. Pius X, a traditionalist religious order in irregular communion with Rome, and soon after illicitly transferred ownership of their Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity to a nonprofit organization of laypeople, the statement noted.
“I declare with great sorrow that the nuns of the Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity are no longer members of the Order of Discalced Carmelites,” Mother Marie of the Incarnation wrote. “I ask for your continued prayers and sacrifices on behalf of these seven women, who have reverted to the lay state by their own actions.”
The nuns defended their actions in their Oct. 30 statement. “What began in April 2023 with a false accusation against our Mother Prioress and that has been pursued relentlessly since then by Bishop Olson for his own ends has been compounded over time so that we have now reached the point where it is asserted that we are dismissed from religious life and that we have somehow ‘defected notoriously from the Faith,'” they said. “These assertions are egregiously false.”
The nuns also contested any suggestion that they are no longer Catholic, likely due to their affiliation with the SSPX. The Vatican regards the SSPX as being in irregular communion, but not formal schism.
“Given that we pray every day for the Holy Father, Pope Francis and our Ordinary, Michael Olson, any claim that we have departed from the Catholic faith is ridiculous,” the nuns’ statement said. “We firmly believe and profess all that the holy Catholic Church believes, teaches, and proclaims to be revealed by God. Disputes about one man’s wishes and man-made rules do not exclude us from the Church.”
The nuns’ website has been their mainstay for public communication over the past 18 months as they have openly fought with Bishop Olson following his allegations in April 2023 that their community-elected prioress, Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach, had committed unspecified sins against chastity.
The nuns filed a lawsuit against the bishop, launching a feud that has involved both civil and Church courts, as well as law enforcement, and included allegations that the bishop wanted access to the nuns’ donor list or property, and that the nuns were engaged in illegal cannabis use. The bishop has also placed various restrictions on the nuns’ access to the sacraments, and the monastery’s access to the public.
The dispute included a June 2023 court hearing that revealed the bishop had investigated Mother Teresa Agnes for breaking chastity vows via phone communication with a priest of the Diocese of Raleigh, North Carolina. She has denied the allegation and has attributed to her poor physical health and mental state what she described as “a horrible, horrible mistake” in an April 2023 audio recording. The unspecified admission, played in court, was made during Bishop Olson’s questioning of her during his visit to the monastery at the start of his investigation.
The nuns’ monastery is located within the boundaries of the Fort Worth Diocese, which Bishop Olson has led since 2014. He sought in June 2023 to dismiss Mother Teresa Agnes from the Carmelite order, but she appealed his decree, and it was nullified in May 2024 by the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, which oversees matters pertaining to consecrated religious life.
The nuns have publicly rejected the governance authority the Holy See granted Bishop Olson in May 2023, and in April 2024, they filed a restraining order – which they later withdrew – against Bishop Olson and the Carmelite Association of Christ the King (USA), a small organization of U.S. Carmelite monasteries to which the Arlington Carmelites belonged. Mother Marie of the Incarnation, who belongs to a Carmelite community in Minnesota, is the association’s president.
In his Oct. 28 statement, Bishop Olson reiterated that the diocese “makes no claim and has never made a claim to the property and assets” of the monastery. He also repeated his request for Catholics not to attend Mass or other services there, nor support the monastery financially.
The Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity sits on 72 acres in what the nuns described in their initial lawsuit as a “quiet, wooded secluded location,” where, as of April 2023, around 50 people joined them for daily Mass, with at least 10 more joining them for Sunday Mass. At that time, they described their community as including their prioress, seven sisters and two novices, women in formation to take vows. As cloistered, contemplative nuns, they have lived apart from the world to dedicate their lives to prayer.
Recalling in her statement that she, as a girl, had attended the 1985 Mass dedicating the chapel of the newly completed Monastery of the Most Holy Trinity and toured its grounds, Mother Marie of the Incarnation lamented that the Arlington nuns’ choices led to their dismissal from the Carmelite order and religious life.
“In making religious profession, a Carmelite nun vows to live according to the Rule and Constitutions of the Order of Discalced Carmelites,” she wrote. “When the Arlington Carmel petitioned to join our Association (the Carmelite Association of Christ the King) at its inception four years ago, our relationship with the nuns became closer, and we had hoped that they would share our common aspiration to an ever-deeper fidelity to our profession of vows.
“Unfortunately, in the course of our developing relationship, and through the testimony of the nuns themselves, we learned that their religious life, in many respects, deviates from multiple points of the Rule and Constitutions, and so we strove to lead them into a more faithful adherence to these,” she continued. “If our efforts had been met with openness by the nuns, the Carmel would already, today, be upon a sure path to restored autonomy. The nuns would be living and praying in accordance with all the sound traditions of Carmel and in accord with their preferred liturgical form, all under the aegis of the one, holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church, founded by Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”
Mother Marie of the Incarnation noted that among the Arlington nuns’ accusations against herself and Bishop Olson was that they intended to “disperse their community.”
“Their claim that the Association of Christ the King would disperse their community has, in a sense, become a self-fulfilled prophecy, actualized by their own choices and actions,” she said. “In fact, however, the Association of Christ the King is not stepping in to disperse them, but rather, is leaving it to their own consciences, to admit the reality of their status as dismissed from religious life, and to behave accordingly.”
Neither statement from Bishop Olson or Mother Marie of the Incarnation indicated what the Arlington community members’ next steps might be.
“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,” Mother Marie of the Incarnation said. “Please join me in prayer for this intention.”