U.S. Nuns Facing Sweeping Vatican Investigation

The New York Times:

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.

Read the whole story: The New York Times

Comments

[oregonbird]

“Why are the U.S. sisters being singled out, when women religious in other countries are struggling with many issues about the quality of their lives, in the Church and in their societies?”

In other countries the nuns are poor, hungry, housed inadequately and submissive to males whether they are priests or not, in America, ignored by the church for decades, nuns have made something of their lives. Become useful members of society, bringing their personal skills and education into play.

That's the actual problem, of course. While the church was losing assets to lawsuits and adherents due to abuse, they were too busy paying off attorneys to harass their anointed paedophiles' victims to keep their repressive systems in gear. Things have calmed down in the last few years. Rome finally noticed that the equality of women in American society was reflected in the autonomy of the nuns.

Naturally, the nuns weren't rolling around on beaches with girlfriends. They were doing their jobs, quietly and patiently. Teaching, tending the sick, offering food, clothing and shelter to the poor -- you know, hardline badarse stuff.

Hence -- a review, and a threat to break up the nunneries and societies of orders. They'll reassign, send offenders on retreats, and make sure these women understand that their lives, talents, passion to bring their religion to others through service -- mean absolutely nothing to the church.

Domination. It's what's on tap.

[Wombaticus]

Just looking at this story made me realize

Habit = Burqa

When will France ban the nun's habit??!!!! It's a sign of subjugation of the women of religion by the all male patriarchy. I guess this is ok because it's OUR sexist subjugation, not THEIRS?

I cannot figure out whether this is funny or sad or tragic or all of the above.

[oregonbird]

Tell me -- denying women the right to choose; how is that not subjugation? A man who is known for abusing his presidential power and surrounding himself with young women in various states of undress feels it is his right to simply declare an article of clothing illegal. An article of women's clothing he finds distasteful.

He doesn't intend to give Muslim women a choice. Many women, especially older women, would end up trapped in their homes, should he pass this law. They would feel as if they were being forced to walk naked in the streets. Their own families would refuse to allow them outside.

How does this improve the lot of Muslim women? How does it end subjugation? It adds to the subjugation, by removing their ability to interact in any way with the world.

What article of clothing are you prepared to have legislated from your life? Trousers? The church used the wearing of 'male garments' as one of the excuses to burn a young French girl; you'd be getting off easy, with a fine and possible jail sentence every time you showed up in pants. How about make-up? Wearing makeup has one purpose, to alter women's appearance. We are forced, by society, to wear makeup when we step out of doors, really. Any woman not wearing makeup is definitely someone bucking the trend. As some Muslim women do, in choosing not to wear a burqa.

No man has any right to take away a woman's choice.

[cruzy]

First, in the U.S., most nuns gave up wearing habits many years ago. Second, it's funny to read people posting criticisms of France when that country is usually held out as the shining example of a "progressive," "tolerant," and "open-minded" country--yes, it's open-minded alright----so long as you conform to the traditional French way of life. Finally, if someone voluntary chooses to dress a certain way, that's their choice and their right, whether it's wearing a habit, a burqa, or a plastic wrap. There is only a problem when individuals are coerced into dressing a certain way when they would prefer to wear something else.

[Diogenis]

You accepted the habit...now don't break it.

[MED1025]

That's why no one is joining up. There will be no more American nuns n a decade or two.

[Retrofuturistic]

Maybe then we can truly be in a post-Christian world....

[Jaywalkker]

If an over-arching religious institution like the Catholic Church is worried about a lost in translation version of teachings regarding "the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation," then I take it the country is moving in the right direction after all.

Cheers

[helonias]

But the below is not for popes or cardinals

"I also want women to dress modestly, with decency and propriety, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or expensive clothes, but with good deeds, appropriate for women who profess to worship God. (NIV, 1 Timothy 2:9-10)

"Your beauty should not come from outward adornment, such as braided hair and the wearing of gold jewelry and fine clothes. Instead, it should be that of your inner self, the unfading beauty of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is of great worth in God"s sight. For this is the way the holy women of the past who put their hope in God used to make themselves beautiful. (NIV, 1 Peter 3:2-5)

[naschkatze]

I think the church is contributing to SS for nuns these days, but at least until the 1980s it was not. Diocesan priests got SS but not nuns. My brother-in-law had an elderly aunt who was a nun and wanted to leave the order back then, but she couldn't afford to. The nuns almost sign themselves into slavery when they sign on.

[oregonbird]

Yep. That's the church I know and loathe. The worst part is, so many of the nuns and priests were the most extraordinary people, devoted, funny, determined -- true personalities. But the institution itself was always corrupt beyond belief.

[CrankyGal]

Nothing so benevolent, nasch. The church does contribute to SS for nuns, but the sisters never see a dime. The CHURCH collects their checks. I have a 75-year old aunt who is a nun. She has an MSW and is a social worker who is expected to find her own jobs and pay for her own room and board. After a lifetime of serving the poor, she owns nothing but her clothes (no habit).

She does not collect her own SS checks, the church gets them.

At a time in life when a priest gets to retire with a buick and a set of golf clubs, nuns are expected to work like slaves until they fall down and cannot get up, no matter what age that is, 75 or 95 or 105. They are then shipped to the old nun nursing home until they die. No retirement ever.

Oh, and by the way, they are apparently less concerned than you would think about the dearth of American women wanting to join religious orders. The church is bringing its nuns in from third world countries these days, largely from African and Asian countries. Women who are happy to escape the poverty of their homes for a chance to live in America.

Sign me: a happily recovered Catholic since the age of ten.

[naschkatze]

Don't over look the motivation of money here. When Cardinal Mahoney was facing bankruptcy over the pedophilia scandal in his diocese, he elected to close down some convents to save money. The Church will get rid of talented, thinking, devout women who have done great service to both the church and the United States and save some money for the guys in the process.

[ThinkCreeps]

A love a good witchburning

[Paulied]

The sisters ae becoming too liberal? Time to rein in those nuns-gone -wild! Put them back in the burkha/habits. This is precisely the attitude that has caused the vocational crisis in the Catholic Church. This is why I have never met a priest or nun under the age of 50 during 12 years of Catholic education. This is why the church will die out - hopefully - in my lifetime.

[NavigatorOne]

Gee, in the early seventies I attended a formerly all girls Catholic College in the midwest where the habit had become optional. One of my history professors was a mid twenties nun who just loved wearing fire engine red stretch slacks. I hear she went her own way sometime a decade or so later. The President of the school later on left the sisterhood and married a fireman and then became the computer science department head at a state university in another community.

[John Horner]

I'm always glad to read stories where people escape from slavery and servitude. Becoming a nun is one of the last ways a person can sign themselves over to a life as an indentured servant.

[CarmanK]

During grammar and high school, I was taught by nuns in habits. In college, the nuns began to shed their habits and don civilian clothes. They were mostly extraordinary women, who helped me to overcome the adversities of life through faith and how to earn a living through reading, writing and math. Pope Benedict is trying to reign in the troops and restore the "imperial pomposity of Rome". I hope he does not make the same mistakes by insulting nuns like he did the Jews, and contaminate the message of the Church with extreme dictums that elevate the papacy and have nothing to do with saving souls.

[John Horner]

Catholicism is unavoidably all about the papacy and the sub-powers beneath him.

[Mahi Joe]

Yeah can't give nuns to much freedom within the church or they might one day decide to become a priest, bishop, cardinal or heavens forbid a POPE! Better to force them again to wear those black habits so they know their place in the religious heirarachy.

[ez duz it]

It is ironic that a clutch of withered Roman clerics running around in purple Renaissance party dresses and fabulous color coordinated high hats are focusing their wrath on U.S. sisters and nuns who do not tow the official line regarding LGBT persons?

This is all the more ironic when considering that for GENERATIONS the Roman Catholic hierarchy knowingly shuffled pedophile priests, monks and brothers who preyed on children from one parish in Ireland and the United States to the next.

It is critical to say that being LGBT is in no way comparable to being a pedophile. Remember, in fact, that the most frequently reported type of pedophilia is incest. The most common type of this violent child abuse is father-daughter incest. [Herman, Judith (1981). “Father-Daughter Incest.” Harvard. p. 282.]

That aside, one sees, with little effort, why the Roman Catholic Church, with its wholesale aiding and abetting of pedophile ministers and subsequent deluge of lawsuits against it, is rabidly scrambling to rebrand itself.

Papal encyclicals praising the traditional family, touting abstinence and heterosexual marriage, and “theologies of the body” multiply. To solidify the conservative base, those crafty Roman dollies work feverishly to conflate pedophilia and homosexuality. The Church is collaborating with high--power PR firms like Rubenstein Associates in New York, Boston and Philadelphia to control damage and shift blame and public contempt away from the Church and onto LGBT persons. Shame!

Hang tough against the Vatican, sisters!

[kindGSL]

I bet you they are looking for me.

Rev. Sister Lauren
THC Ministry

I say outrageous things and I am for gay marriage as a civil rights issue. I also argue constitutional law, called on the new age, etc.

They can relax, I don't have anything to do with their precious sisters. I am a sister of the THC Ministry.

[oregonbird]

In Ireland, where the church ruled not only the people but the government as well, in the last ten years more than half its congregation has abandoned it -- due to paedophilia and child abuse. Ireland, just to put this in focus, at one time produced so many priests that the women of the country applied to the pope to allow priests to marry -- the birthrate had dropped to the point that the country was in danger of collapse. It probably didn't help that the church took any girl who was pregnant out of wedlock and used her as slave labor in the nunneries for the rest of her life. If she had a girl, the child was raised as an abused orphan and used as labor -- the boys were often adopted out or sold, often to the family of the man who was its father. A practice that continued into the 1970's.

[NoSillyName]

So, on top of the dwindling number of men aspiring to the priesthood, now the church wants to run off ta bunch of nuns?

Seems counterproductive IMO.

[who38]

They need to sell the nuns' residences to pay for the actions of their pedophile priests. It is what Rog did in Santa Barbara. No nuns; no need to maintain the residences.

[meko]

Good point. Many of their residences have been sold to pay for priests' lawsuits in the Midwest too.

Nothing like selling a home out from under an elderly nun who has worked all her life for the church and who has no pension or social security to cover for the crimes committed by your priests. That's the Catholic Church for you.

[Miketou]

The nuns should do what I did over twenty years ago. Tell the Vatican to f @ #k off!

[llisa]

Riiight. They should investigate the nuuuuns. For the sin of taking an active part in bettering the poor communities.

Take the pressure off the priests who have had an active part in buggering the poor boys..

[oregonbird]

It's the "active" role that bothers Rome. No religious order that involved itself in honest, practical work has ever received the approval of the catholic church. It thrives on being supported in high-style while living 'above it all'.