Texas nuns are expelled by the Vatican for breaking chastity vows with online love affairs
The Vatican has expelled a group of Texas nuns amid a yearlong dispute between the sisters and Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson after he accused their Reverend Mother of breaking her chastity vows with an online love affair.
Olson recorded his April 2023 interrogation of Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach in her Arlington convent, in which she seemed to admit to a consensual long-distance phone romance with Father Philip Johnson, a retired former priest from the diocese in Raleigh, North Carolina.
The bishop claimed that by engaging in the sexting relationship, Gerlach committed sins of adultery in violation of the sixth commandment and her vow of chastity, according to Chron.
By October, the Catholic leader assigned to oversee the nuns dismissed the religious order, and on November 28, the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life - a group within the Catholic Church that oversees matters relating to religious orders - issued a decree of suppression to the Discalced Carmelite Monastery of Arlington, KERA News reports.
That means that the monastery is 'extinct' and no longer recognized by the Catholic Church, and the women who live at the convent are 'neither nuns nor Carmelites, despite their continued public self-identification to the contrary,' Olson wrote to congregants on Monday.
He said that any masses and sacraments that are held at the monastery are hereby 'illicit and done so without faculties or permission to minister' within the diocese.
Olson then warned that Catholics would be 'gravely wrong' and would 'do harm to the Church' by attending services at the monastery.
'The actions of the former nuns have perpetrated a deep wound in the Body of Christ,' he wrote. '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.'
Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach seemed to admit in an interrogation to a consensual long-distance phone romance with Father Philip Johnson, a retired former priest from the diocese in Raleigh, North Carolina
The Vatican has now expelled the nuns of the Discalced Carmelite Monastery of Arlington
But the nuns have apparently shrugged off the Vatican's decree after themselves with the Society of St. Pius X, a Roman Catholic priestly group that broke with the Vatican over Latin Mass.
They have repeatedly accused Olson of wanting to gain control of their 72-acre, $3.8million Arlington property.
The nuns even sued the Fort Worth Diocese and Bishop Olson in May 2023 for $1milion for alleged violations of privacy and harming the physical and emotional well-being of the sisters.
The following month, Olson dismissed Gerlach from religious life, saying she admitted to committing unspecified sexual conduct over video chat with Johnson but claimed no physical act ever occurred.
'I made a horrible, horrible mistake,' Gerlach is heard saying on the recording, according to a partial transcript published by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, which described her voice as 'barely audible'.
An attorney representing the convent has since claimed Gerlach was 'under heavy medication from a procedure' after being hospitalized for seizures and did not recall her statement to investigators.
Fort Worth Diocese Michael Olson announced the group is 'extinct' in a letter to congregants
At the time, Olson tried to dismiss Gerlach from her position, and by April 2024, the Vatican named Mother Marie of the Incarnation, the president of the Association of Christ the King in the US, as 'lawful superior' to 'exercise full governance' over the monastery.
But the nuns instead sought to keep Gerlach as their leader, and announced their new affiliation with the Society of Saint Pius X in September.
They then called Mother Marie's dismissal a 'moot point.'
'The vows we have professed by God cannot be dismissed or taken away,' the nuns declared, according to the Dallas Morning News. 'By virtue of them, we belong to Him and are His.'
'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,' they continued.
Attorney Matthew Bobo, who represents the nuns, said they are now 'safe from the efforts of Bishop Olson and continue their devotion to their life of contemplative prayer.'
He had previously explained that he helped the sisters transfer their sprawling property from the nonprofit monastery to the newly-formed Friends of the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Arlington in September 'to add a very ironclad and certain barriers to any claim Bishop Olson thinks he ever will have on that property.'
Bobo also claimed the society is 'addressing the latest attempts by Bishop Olson to harass the nuns, and we are confident in that process.'
But John Cuccaro, a spokesman for the Diocese, insisted to Chron that it 'never wanted the Arlington land, nor does it want the land now.
'The Arlington residents are no longer nuns, and the property is no longer a Catholic monastery, per The Holy See,' he added.
Meanwhile, all the civil lawsuits filed by the nuns against the diocese and Olson have either been dismissed by a judge or voluntarily dropped by the sisters.
