Vatican Nun Crackdown Targets Freewheeling, Rule Breaking US Nuns
First-grade me, terrorized daily by Sister Adelaide, would probably giggle evilly to myself before doing several decades of the rosary in penance for that upon hearing of the Vatican nun crackdown.
People speak of a kinder, gentler Catholic church in recent years (at least those of us old enough to have a few tics left over from being whapped over the head with A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints), but was anyone scarier to a kid growing up back then than an angry nun? Jaysis. Even as a kid I remember older ones joking that celibacy took a toll on the Sisters and accounted for their strictness and propensity for violence, but the Vatican nun crackdown, alas, was not prompted in response to how many ruler slaps you got for not sitting like a lady at Friday Mass.
Actually, for all the residual fears many of us have regarding nuns, it seems that this time around at least, it’s their “radical feminism” that has attracted the attention of Rome and sparked the Vatican nun crackdown. It appears that nuns in the US are going off the reservation when it comes to women’s issues, and the men that run the show think the girls need to get back in line stat, less Catholic girls get the wrong idea.
NPR quotes the Associated Press on the matter:
“The Vatican agency cited the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the largest umbrella group for Roman Catholic religious sisters in the United States, for using materials that ‘do not promote church teaching’ on family life and sexuality, for sometimes taking positions in opposition to the nation’s bishops and for being ‘silent on the right to life from conception to natural death, a question that is part of the lively public debate about abortion and euthanasia in the United States.'”
The site also says the missive expresses concern about “radical feminism” posing “risk [to] distorting faith in Jesus and his loving Father who sent his Son for the salvation of the world.” When it comes to the Vatican’s nun crackdown, are you Team Nun?
