Nuns in the United States are too liberal, says the Vatican--too concerned with the rights of women and the poor, and not het up enough over abortion. Seattle Archbishop Paul Sartain has been appointed to bring them into line.
The action is directed at the Leadership Conference of Women Religious which represents the majority of 55,000 Catholic sisters in the US. The "radical feminism" was bad enough, but what really got their goat appears to have been the nuns crossing US bishops on health care reform.
“I would imagine that it was our health care letter that made them mad,” Sister (Simon) Campbell,(executive director of Network, a Catholic social justice lobby) said. “We haven’t violated any teaching, we have just been raising questions and interpreting politics.”
Sartain will certain have very wide parameters. He's to supervise revising LCWR statutes, reviewing LCWR plans and programs, creating new programs for the organization, reviewing and offering guidance on the application of liturgical texts, and reviewing LCWR's affiliations with other organizations, "citing specifically NETWORK and the Resource Center for Religious Institutes," says National Catholic Reporter.
In other words, the Vatican wants to change how the nuns organize themselves, who they hang with, how they think, what they do, and what words they use to worship.
I wonder where the Vatican thinks it can find more women to do the grunt work and heavy cleaning if these nuns get sufficiently fed up?
Posted by: Hypatia | April 24, 2012 at 01:14 PM
Exactly. While the big shots are out there self-righteously posturing, the nuns are the ones who are actually acting like Christians.
Posted by: John Petty | April 24, 2012 at 01:58 PM