Vatican Orders Crackdown On American Nuns

rugcat

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WASHINGTON – The Vatican has launched a crackdown on the umbrella group that represents most of America's 55,000 Catholic nuns, saying that the group was not speaking out strongly enough against gay marriage, abortion and women's ordination.

Rome also chided the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) for sponsoring conferences that featured "a prevalence of certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith."
Meanwhile:

The directive, which follows a two-year investigation by Rome, also comes as the Vatican appeared ready to welcome a controversial right-wing splinter group of Catholic traditionalists back into the fold, possibly by giving the group a special status so that they can continue to espouse their old-line rites and beliefs.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-04-18/american-nuns-vatican/54396560/1

Looks like the war on women is not just confined to the political arena.
 

Calla Lily

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[VERY opinionated opinion follows]

This is what happens when you elect the head of the Inquisition as Pope. I read the Christian Science Monitor article, and they cite the exact department that's doing the inspections--it's the Inquisition under its new, friendlier name. (Srsly.)

Nuns teach the kids, and the RCC [WARNING, VERY OPINIONATED OPINION CONTINUES] does not want to change even a little--it wants the world to return to the way it was, when the Pope was the most powerful world leader of all.

[signed] The Lily, who if she'd somehow survived longer than 4 years in the convent, would've been kicked out on her rump long ago anyway.

I feel sorry for my friends who are nuns. The vise is about to be tightened and the endless good works they do will be hampered.
 

Zoombie

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Gee, hold up there Catholic Church! You almost had a branch that I didn't despise!

Seriously, Catholics are (by and large) good people...but how long can good people stay in something whose upper branches are acting like the freaking evil empire?
 

Plot Device

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And just what constitutes a "crackdown??"

Will the Pope be breaking oiut a hickory switch to administer corporal punishment to the nuns?

Cutting off funding to convents?

Banishing non-compliant nuns to obscure, remote, cloistered convents off in the mountains? (The Sound of Music anyone??)
 

Calla Lily

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Wait -- they've got a crisis, a decades-old paedophilia scandal finally coming to light and their big push is ...

Crack down on nuns?

You thought the Vatican would go after pedophile priests?

:ROFL:

Nuns teach little Catholics.
Little Catholics who toe the line become compliant adult Catholics.
Therefore, nuns must toe the line.

End of story.

Sigh. I know--who better than me?--that by joining the convent you agree that the RCC way is the way you want to live your life. Yet change must come from within and nuns truly are the ones doing so much good, so much work, affecting so many people in a positive way that it is a sin and a shame that their voice is stifled and ignored.
 

citymouse

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Now there arose up a new king over Egypt... Therefore he did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens.


[VERY opinionated opinion follows]

This is what happens when you elect the head of the Inquisition as Pope.
 

Deleted member 42

I know--who better than me?--that by joining the convent you agree that the RCC way is the way you want to live your life.

I snorted at the reference to "biblical" strictures, in the context of nuns not being outraged over same-sex marriage:

David and Jonathan
Ruth and Naomi
Daniel and Ashpenaz
 

The Tourist

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The pope is a foreign sovereign. I am a free American. I give a flying fig what he thinks, what he says or what he does.

He cannot even control a bunch of nuns. What makes him think he can control me? Pixie dust?
 

rugcat

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The pope is a foreign sovereign. I am a free American. I give a flying fig what he thinks, what he says or what he does.

He cannot even control a bunch of nuns. What makes him think he can control me? Pixie dust?
No, it doesn't affect you. But nuns who displease the church hierarchy can have their lives made impossible -- be uprooted, transferred, or worse.
 

maxmordon

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The Church's power and legacy rests not in marble buildings or golden tiaras but in the hearts and minds of Catholics around the world who still, despite the abuse from one side and the mockery from the other, profess their faith with abdication. Shouldn't then the Church also correspond to these folks? Shouldn't be caring and be part of their members instead of alienating them? I know there are wonderful people in the Church but they tend to lose among the few and the powerful in the highest spheres, so disconnected of everyone and everything they don't do the harm that they do to the Church.
 

MattW

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As if nuns aren't given enough trouble by being the second class clergy, and the only option for Catholic women to pursue a devotion to god.

Radical feminism encroaching on Catholics? I'd it's sign of the times - most Catholics disagree with some (or many) of the Church's more antiquated beliefs. I guess cracking down on nuns is easier than excommunicating the millions of pro-choice Catholics who still donate.
 

citymouse

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I believe that Ratzinger (emphasis on Rat) will run over anyone who differers, challenges, or questions papal authority. Sounds pretty pharaoh like to me.
But I think he should take a lesson from Rammy and avoid getting too close to deep water. Sing to the LORD, for He is highly exalted; The horse and his rider He has hurled into the sea.
I have no love for the old institutional church, except for the Latin liturgy. Nor do I love this new one. My old Jesuit professor once said that the church will gain the glory she seeks when she begins to love and to serve, rather than command.
 

Calla Lily

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No, it doesn't affect you. But nuns who displease the church hierarchy can have their lives made impossible -- be uprooted, transferred, or worse.

This. :(

Methinks they're an "easy" target for the Inquisition (I call it what it is--evil is still evil no matter what name it adopts) and the heirarchy has no concept of the destruction they will cause. They thought that the post-Vatican II mass exodus of nuns and priests was apocalyptic in scope? If the Inquisition goes attack-dog on nuns, that exodus will look like a grade-school outing.
 

citymouse

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I remember when I was in a class (Jesuit again) and a fellow studying for the priesthood smugly asked just what is the ratio of women to men in the church's religious houses. The instructor relied, 'About the same as it was at the foot of the cross-three to one.'

This. :(

Methinks they're an "easy" target for the Inquisition (I call it what it is--evil is still evil no matter what name it adopts) and the heirarchy has no concept of the destruction they will cause. They thought that the post-Vatican II mass exodus of nuns and priests was apocalyptic in scope? If the Inquisition goes attack-dog on nuns, that exodus will look like a grade-school outing.
 
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Plot Device

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Fears of the Catholic Church again becoming the king-maker/king-breaker it once was??

Five years ago, I would have laughed at such a prospect. But I no longer doubt that such could become the case again one day.




All through human history, our kings (our various governments) have always been in bed with/under the thumbs of one of the following three entities at any given time:

religious leaders
military leaders
business leaders

The Founding Fathers wanted very much to eliminate the possibility that the govenment of the new fledgling United States would ever get into bed with religious leaders. Thus the separation of Church and State we are all so familiar with.

But sadly, while we have avoided full-on religious infiltration (so far), our government has gone in another direction and crawled into bed with business leaders instead. Not that the Fathers didn't see that other possibility and try to prevent it. One of the first things they did after 1789 (after the Constitution was ratified and adopted) was to mandate that ALL state capitols in each of the 13 new states be situated in cities that were NOT the key financial cities of each state. Thus, New York City (one of the most important fincnial centers of the New World at the time, and to this day one of the Top Five most important finacial centers in the whole world) was no longer allowed to be the capitol of New York. The legislators of New York traveled over 100 miles northward to Albany to set up that old mill town as the new state capitol (a full 4 days away on horeback). Ditto for Philadelphia -- no longer allowed to be the capitol of Pennsylvania, the citizens placed the new capitol in Harrisburgh, over 100 miles west. The point was to place as much geographic distance as possible between the capitols and the centers of finance in each state. And the capitol of the USA itself also could not be a center of finance. And so Washington DC was situated with the intentionn of placing as much separation as possible between the seat of government and the seat of finance -- separation from New York City (the original American capitlol) and separation from Philadelphia (the second choice US capitol after New York). Washington DC was a kind of an odd effort at economic quarantine so that the people running government wouldn't be living next door to the same folks running finance, nor attending the same churches as them, nor attending the same clubs, etc.

Look at all the other states:

Illinois has Chicago as the seat of finance, but Springfield as the seat of government.

Nebraska: Omaha is their financial center but Lincoln is their governmental center.

California: San Francisco is their finacial center, but Sacramento is their governmental center.

All the states (except for a few of the New England states -- too old and too geographically tiny to be able to restructure themselves like that) have done this as a deterrent to government being in bed with finance.

And yet ... we failed even in that. Washington DC is totally owned buy huge corporations. And that 4 day horseback journey from New York City to Albany is now (thanks to modern transportation) a 2.5 hour journey. So I do not doubt that we could one day step sideways into a situation with our government getting swooped up into the clutches of religious leaders as well.

As for that OTHER villanous bedfellow -- military leaaders -- that possibility is also something I don't doubt one day happening.


I guess trying to keep those three evil infiltrations out of government is like trying to battle the three-headed hydra. Try to lop of one head, and two more grow back in its place. So there is no winning this battle for as long as humans are what they are.
 

Deleted member 42

He cannot even control a bunch of nuns. What makes him think he can control me? Pixie dust?

I care about my fellow humans--I especially care about other women because guys like you don't.

You probably couldn't keep up with the average nun's workday, beginning with prime, often still observed as a pre-dawn prayer service.
 

Alessandra Kelley

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Plot Device, I don't think it's about anti-church fears. I think it's about the Princes of the Catholic Church making scapegoats of the hardworking nuns and making their lives miserable in order to divert attention from their own corruption.
 

Calla Lily

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Plot Device, I don't think it's about anti-church fears. I think it's about the Princes of the Catholic Church making scapegoats of the hardworking nuns and making their lives miserable in order to divert attention from their own corruption.

Bingo. (pun intended)