This is the second in a series of articles, being jointly reported by NCR and GlobalPost.com, that examines the background and the principal players in the Vatican’s investigations of U.S. women religious.

Bishops Investigating US Nuns Have Poor Records on Sex Abuse Cases

From its palace in Vatican City, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith monitors compliance with Roman Catholic moral teaching and matters of dogma for the oldest church in Christendom. These issues have little bearing on most of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics. Faith, for them, rests in parish life and the quality of their pastors. In the 1980s, for example, when the congregation punished theologians who dissented from the papal ban on artificial birth control, the majority of Catholics who believe contraception is morally acceptable did not change their opinion … ” By Jason Berry in National Catholic Reporter

Click here to read the first article in this series, which appeared in GlobalPost.com.