The lawsuit seeks $1 million in civil damages and asks the court to block the bishop’s and the diocese’s access to any records obtained by confiscating the reverend mother’s property.
In turn, the diocese argues that the dispute is an ecclesiastical matter and should not be heard in a civil court.
The civil hearing on the case is set for June 23.
After the monastery filed the lawsuit, Olson denied Gerlach’s ability to choose her canon lawyer, choosing one himself to represent her in the ecclesiastical investigation. Though the canon lawyer has already filed paperwork on her behalf, the reverend mother denies that he represents her in these matters.
Bobo told CNA that “the bishop’s own canon lawyer is compromised.”
“Bishop Olson rejected four canonical representatives of Mother Superior’s choosing and then forced his own canonical lawyer (lackey) on her with whom she has never spoken,” Bobo said.
In response to the monastery’s claim of ecclesiastical autonomy, the diocese announced Wednesday that Olson had been appointed pontifical commissary over the monastery by the Vatican’s Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.
As pontifical commissary, the diocese says Olson is “the pope’s representative in the matter” with “full authority for the Monastery.”
Though he has now reinstated daily Mass, for a time Olson banned the monastery from celebrating daily Mass and blocked access to regular confessions.
He did so on the grounds that the nuns’ actions violated the obedience owed to the “Holy Church and to her holy Pastors” in a manner “unbecoming of their religious state.”
The ban was lifted on Thursday in a diocesan statement that read: “Given the time that has passed and now having completed the investigation into the grave misconduct of the Reverend Mother … and having found her guilty of having violated the sixth commandment of the Decalogue and the vow of chastity, and having dismissed her from the Order of Discalced Carmelites, Bishop Michael Olson … has decided to reinstate daily Mass at the Carmel for the nuns of the Monastery beginning on Wednesday, June 7, 2023, at 7:30 a.m.”
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The diocesan statement added that “given the pending lawsuit, Mass will remain closed to the participation of the lay faithful for the time being. The only Mass intention will be for the restoration of peace and good order of the Monastery.”
The diocese has not publicized the exact nature of the affair nor named the priest or any other diocese possibly involved.
Though the diocese says that Gerlach has admitted to the misconduct, Bobo said that Gerlach was under the influence of pain medication related to a surgery when she is alleged to have admitted to the affair and “has not admitted to any grave misconduct that would warrant his extreme and emotionally damaging measures.”
According to Bobo, Gerlach, 43, was suffering from serious medical issues and had just undergone surgery when she was said to have admitted to the misconduct.
“Bishop Olson has publicly defamed Mother Superior on matters of the moral law that are NOT canonically actionable,” Bobo told CNA. “His ‘investigation’ was never announced as such to Mother Superior nor the nuns. With a 30-minute window before appearing at the monastery, he advised them he was coming without providing the rationale for his visit and then showed up with the diocesan chancellor and forensic expert and then proceeded to interrogate Mother Superior just after a medical procedure while she was still recovering from the medical use of fentanyl.”
Bobo added that Gerlach “is in a wheelchair and her health has deteriorated.”