It doesn’t take a radical feminist insubordinate to recognize the chutzpah involved in a bunch of power-hungry old guys who live in a dysfunctional but opulent secret enclave in Rome stomping on thousands of American women who truly live the life of the Gospel.
Given the Vatican’s myopic view of moral leadership — and the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy’s sometimes conspicuous failure to exercise it — I find it astounding that officials whose own house is in disarray should be telling U.S. nuns that they’re deviating from the holiness rules.
Apparently many other American Catholics feel the same way, marching, holding vigils, circulating petitions and launching Facebook pages to show the enforcers, from Pope Benedict XVI on down, that they won’t let their sisters be bullied.
This all started after the Vatican issued a report in April giving a loud smack on the knuckles to the umbrella group that represents more than two-thirds of U.S. nuns. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious was scolded for having speakers at their gatherings whose unorthodox views on spirituality go far off track from church teachings; for focusing on social justice instead of stepping loudly into public debate about abortion and homosexuality; and essentially for not being sufficiently subservient to the U.S. bishops and their stands on volatile political issues.
An American archbishop was designated to oversee “reform” of the nuns’ organization. Representatives of the organization are supposed to travel to Rome soon to convey their objections in person.
The Leadership Conference last week called the Vatican’s accusations “the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency” and said the report has “caused scandal and pain throughout the church community.”
Here’s what riles some of us ordinary Catholics, not to mention those of other beliefs: We hear of wayward priests and bishops, who are supposed to be celibate, having affairs and fathering children, sullying the daily labors of many fine and earnest religious men and women. Yet, the message the Vatican really wants to emphasize is that devoting yourself to good works isn’t enough if you aren’t leading the charge against insurance subsidies for contraception or gay unions.
Sure, human sexuality raises many difficult moral dilemmas, but morality extends far beyond that. And the call to live a virtuous life involves myriad other ways in which we serve one another and allow our society to treat the least among us. The Leadership Conference is interested in issues such as shifting Pentagon spending to education and jobs programs; reforming immigration laws; improving health around the globe and preventing domestic violence and human trafficking.
When I think back to the nuns I knew in grade school, I can’t imagine Sisters Francis Clare, Fidelis, Jane Marie, Julietta, Cordula or Mary Catherine, all Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word, butting heads with the church hierarchy over conforming to doctrine. Of course, that was in the days when you could tell nuns by their habits, well before such “radical feminist” notions as equality between women and men moved to the mainstream.
Like so many others before them and after, those nuns taught, served as role models and no doubt were strong-minded women in their own ways.
A couple of decades after those Catholic-school years, when my husband and I were befriended by Sister Theresa, who led the program at our Maryland church for adults becoming Catholics, we so admired her dedicated, thoughtful and realistic approach to living her faith that we asked her to be our daughter’s godmother.
This distressing conflict between Rome and the nuns can only diminish the voice the church might bring to political discussion in this country. I don’t always agree with the U.S. bishops — for instance, suing the Obama administration over insurance coverage for birth control seems misguided — but they can add important perspective to public debates over the death penalty, war and, yes, abortion.
If the church can’t tolerate reasoned, rational internal debate, how can its leaders expect to be listened to in the public square?
On Monday, the Vatican warned Catholics away from a book by a nun who taught Christian ethics at Yale Divinity School because the text, published in 2006, doesn’t sufficiently condemn [filtered word], gay marriage and divorce.
Meanwhile, stranger-than-fiction intrigue swirls around the Vatican, with the pope’s butler being suspected of leaking internal documents that suggest power struggles and Machiavellian schemes designed to control the eventual selection of Benedict’s successor.
Is it any wonder that so many are standing with the sisters?
• Campbell is a columnist and editorial writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
Comments (12)
Add commentFiltered word evidence of Faith Pollution
The war-god Yahweh commands death for the act. That the Empire filtered a word which means self-gratification, is a reminder of just how deftly religion has infiltrated the minds of human beings regarding a psychologically normal, harmless behavior.
Religion poisons everything.
Mike
Even Bill Marr
Sided with the nuns on his show, and that's saying something.
How like Congress the Bishop's Conference and the higher-ups in the church are. They are about power, keeping power, their own interpretations of how things should be regardless of what is practical or moral, and non-compromise. They do not work with, nor empathize with, actual every day people.
It's time for some serious reform in how the church does business, and what it's true focus is. Go US Nuns.
Zealotry
poisons everything Mike. Evidenced by ninety percent of your posts.
Just another rebel, feminist
Just another rebel, feminist nun causing trouble within the ranks of an organization that she took vows with.
Here's a suggestion for the Sister - go work for the UN where your views will be appreciated.
"WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith warned June 4 that Mercy Sister Margaret Farley's 2006 book, "Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics," contains "erroneous propositions" on homosexual acts, same-sex marriage, mas turbation and remarriage after divorce that could cause confusion and "grave harm to the faithful."
"I do not dispute the judgment that some of the positions contained (in the book) are not in accord with current official Catholic teaching," she said. "In the end, I can only clarify that the book was not intended to be an expression of current official Catholic teaching, nor was it aimed specifically against the teaching. It is of a different genre altogether.""
I don't believe you, Sister.
"She was among two dozen U.S. women religious threatened with expulsion from their religious communities by the Vatican for signing on to an Oct. 7, 1984, ad in The New York Times arguing that Catholics should be free to hold a variety of views about abortion."
"In 2005, the Cardinal Newman Society protested her choice as a commencement speaker at St. Xavier University in Chicago, describing Sister Farley as "an outspoken dissenter from Catholic teaching on embryonic stem-cell research, sexual activity and homosexual 'marriage.'"
Read the article here -
http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1202308.htm
buy the ticket, take the ride
I agree the US nuns - nuns in general - are subjected to unequal treatment within the Church. But here's the rub: they joined the order. They volunteered, answered the call, felt the vocation to surrender their temporal aspirations to their faith.
IF the Catholic Church does not change tack for these US clergywomen, then it should not be surprised when their ranks dwindle and recruitment expectations fall short. The Church is a monolithic institution, meaning, the voices of US nuns may not be that significant. They are free to leave.
Slant aside, what is this Leadership Conference of Women Religious? Sounds multi-denominational, but the author's bias fogs the conference's agenda.
NewLife -
Not often, he's a little too self-absorbed for me, just happened to see it this week. I watch a lot of different things, including Fox "news".
I said "Congress", I meant "Congress" - in general.
By reform, I mean I hope that internally the church decides to join the 20th century. Women priests. Condoms for AIDS ridden-Africa. Birth control, since 98% of their members have used it anyway. Recognizing that freedom of religion also means that people are free to NOT practice your particular religion. I'm not saying anything different here - I care because I believe that religious groups should allow me the same freedoms I allow them: I don't tell them how to worship, whom among consenting adults they can marry, or what they can and cannot do to their bodies or in conference with their doctors - - - and they afford me the same freedoms......oh, wait, except they don't. They want to tell me, an athiest, that I must marry whom they find acceptable, and that I must make health decisions about my own body that they find acceptable, based on a book that I do not believe in. And that I find unacceptable.
As for Media Matters, I don't visit their website, so don't know much about them. I'm not sure what your point is, are you equating them to the Catholic Church? Are they a group who accepts billions in government funding, is allowed to practice discriminatory hiring, and actively promotes discriminatory legislation directly affecting those not in their membership?
Women Religious
Grendel, there's this thing called Google...
https://lcwr.org/
If you weren't fogged by your bias you could easily discover that it was not multidenominational, but rather a catholic organization.
"The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) is an association of the leaders of congregations of Catholic women religious in the United States. The conference has more than 1500 members, who represent more than 80 percent of the 57,000 women religious in the United States."
@Lat
thanks for the assist!
(see how effortless that was: no assault, no aspersions, no pretenses; nothing personal)
@grendel - +1
@grendel - +1
Both sides
It's a bad choice to marry someone with the idea that you will change or improve them; the same could be said of the monastic orders with which these nuns took vows. It's a valid point that the conduct and precepts of he Church were not hidden prior to their ordinations. On the other hand, unlike choosing a mate, it is indeed valid to seek to change an organization from within, because you feel that it has value and should be preserved but corrected. We do that all the time in the political arena - we seek to alter political decisions and criticize the conduct of politicians, leaders, and organizations precisely BECAUSE of our citizenship in the USA. We value our country and want to see it be the best that it can be - criticism is not a renunciation of citizenship.
These women obviously feel that their views are not inherently in opposition to the primary tenets of the Catholic faith; apparently, some folks in the hierarchy of the Church disagree.
While I was in seminary, Matthew Fox was ordered into a year of silence by the Vatican for his writings on "original blessing", as opposed to "original sin". I heard him speak several times after his year of silence and liked him very much; he was eventually dismissed from the Dominicans.
The evolution of the theology of the Church will, I think, decide its ultimate fate. Are the views of these women ultimately irreconcilable with the fundamental tenets of Catholicism, or merely with Catholic culture?
Changes
Perhaps I'm more aware of it now, but it seems that the catholic church's focus has shifted in recent years towards more activism against gays, contraception and abortion. I understand that their doctrine on these subjects hasn't changed, but perhaps the nuns are protesting the altered focus on these particular subjects at the expense of other needs.
Grendel, you're welcome. And touche' - you managed to embed the maximum snark into your anti-snark message that's possible in the English language. Tip o' the hat from a fellow snarkmaster.