Texas nuns are expelled by the Vatican for breaking chastity vows with online love affairs

A group of nuns from Texas has been expelled by the Vatican following a conflict with Fort Worth Bishop Michael Olson, who accused their Reverend Mother of violating her vows of chastity through an online romantic relationship.

In April 2023, Olson recorded an interrogation of Mother Superior Teresa Agnes Gerlach at her convent in Arlington, where she appeared to acknowledge a consensual long-distance phone relationship with Father Philip Johnson, a retired priest from Raleigh, North Carolina.

The bishop asserted that Gerlach’s involvement in this texting relationship constituted adultery, breaching the sixth commandment and her vow of chastity, as reported by Chron.

By October, the bishop responsible for overseeing the nuns had dissolved the religious order, and on November 28, the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life, a Catholic Church body that manages religious orders, issued a decree to suppress the Discalced Carmelite Monastery of Arlington, according to KERA News.

This decree means the monastery is now considered “extinct” and is no longer recognized by the Catholic Church. The women residing there are deemed “neither nuns nor Carmelites,” despite their ongoing claims to the contrary, Olson informed congregants on December 2.

He emphasized that any masses or sacraments conducted at the monastery are “illicit” and performed without the necessary permissions to minister within the diocese.

Olson cautioned that attending services at the monastery would be “gravely wrong” and could “harm the Church.”

“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.”

The nuns seem to have dismissed the Vatican’s ruling entirely.

They have consistently claimed that Olson is attempting to take over their 72-acre Arlington property, valued at $3.8 million.

In fact, the nuns filed a lawsuit against the Fort Worth Diocese and Bishop Olson in May 2023, seeking $1 million for purported breaches of privacy and for negatively impacting the physical and emotional health of the sisters.The following month, Olson dismissed Gerlach from religious life, saying she admitted to committing unspecified s£xual 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.

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.”