A bitter public battle between the bishop of the Fort Worth Catholic diocese and a group of secluded Arlington nuns is again escalating.
Calling the nuns “scandalous,” Bishop Michael Olson warned members of his diocese that supporting the nuns — either by participating in communion or providing financial assistance — would amount to “scandalous disobedience and disunity.” In a statement published on the diocese’s website Tuesday, Olson also said the nuns’ behavior is “permeated with the odor of schism.”
Olson’s letter came days after the Arlington nuns announced they were associating with the Society of St. Pius X, a breakaway traditionalist Catholic group. In a letter posted on their own website, the nuns said they reelected the Rev. Mother Teresa Agnes Gerlach for a three-year term. The nuns also invited the public to the monastery for private prayer or daily Mass in Latin, which Olson had previously halted.
“We are very happy to be able to share our life of prayer and the riches of the Church’s traditional liturgy with others,” the nuns wrote.
Olson said the monastery’s election is “illicit and invalid,” and that he is in touch with the Vatican about this development and the diocese’s next steps. The diocese declined to comment further Wednesday.
“Sadly, the deliberate and contumacious actions of Mother Teresa Agnes and the other members of the Community have taken them further down the path of disobedience to and disunity with the Church and with their own religious Order that they began to embark on so many months ago,” the bishop wrote.
This is the latest development in an extraordinarily public 18-month fight between the nuns and Olson that has played out in dueling statements, civil court and remarkable headlines. It began in April 2023 when the bishop accused Gerlach, the monastery’s head nun, of violating her vow of chastity with a priest.
In response, the reverend mother and monastery filed a civil lawsuit against the bishop and diocese, accusing Olson of invading the sisters’ privacy and overstepping his authority. The nuns said Olson and other diocese leaders stormed into the monastery, interrogated the nuns for hours, seized their computers and a phone and blocked priests from conducting Mass for them.
A nearly six-hour court proceeding included explosive testimony from diocese officials, references to “sexting” and drug use, and audio of a 40-minute conversation between Olson and the former head nun.
Gerlach admitted to breaking her vow of chastity on two occasions, but at another point in the conversation, she said she only spoke to the priest by phone.
“I was not in my right mind,” she said at one point. “Even a nun can fall.”
Gerlach had been hospitalized in November 2022 for seizures and was taking pain medication as a result, her attorney, Matthew Bobo, has previously said. Gerlach, who is in poor health, uses a wheelchair and feeding tube.
A Texas state judge ruled that civil court did not have jurisdiction to decide the church matter.
Earlier this year, the Vatican weighed in and placed the nuns under new authority, an association of Carmelite nuns. But the Arlington nuns said the decree amounted to a hostile takeover.
“We are not ‘things’ to be traded or given away in back-room deals, but women vowed to the exclusive love and service of Almighty God,” the nuns wrote at the time.
Before last year, the nuns had little interaction with the Fort Worth diocese. They live and work on 72 wooded acres in Arlington, spending their days praying, cooking, cleaning and caring for the grounds. They rarely leave the premises. The nuns have said they pray for the return of that quiet.
