dispatches from TJICistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02n…

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…

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

“reinterpreted their calling for the modern world” often means “embraced syncretism, hard-line leftism, and/or lesbianism in their ranks”.

No, that’s not just my fevered imagination (my imagination spends very little think thinking about nuns), but a report from an ex-nun that I know, corroborated by dozens of reports I’ve read.

…many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations…

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

Oh noz! Brides of Christ are expected to work with in the Church, instead of receiving paychecks to “work in academia and do political advocacy and grass roots organizing” !?!?!

How regressive and Medieval the Church is being!

Given this backdrop, Sister Schneiders, the professor in Berkeley, urged her fellow sisters not to cooperate with the visitation, saying the investigators should be treated as “uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house.”

A delegation sent from the Vatican to inspect Church organs is “an uninvited guest”.

That tells you pretty much everything you need to know about the nun from Berkeley.

Each congregation of nuns will be evaluated based on how well they are “living in fidelity” both to their congregation’s own internal norms and constitution, and to the church’s guidelines for religious life, Mother Clare said. For instance, if a congregation’s stated mission is to serve youth, are the nuns doing that? If they do not live in a convent, are they attending Mass and keeping the sacraments?

Wow. That seems just so insane!

Sister Janice Farnham, a part-time professor of church history at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, said, “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?”

Mmmm….because there haven’t been hundreds of reports of syncretism, heresy, sexual amorality, environmentalism, and communism among the nuns of Iceland?

Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to “promote” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.

The letter goes on to say that, “Given both the tenor and the doctrinal content of various addresses” at assemblies the Leadership Conference has held in recent years, the problem has not been fixed.

“Failure to promote” basically means “acting entirely heretically”.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 2nd, 2009 at 7:07 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.