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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.
In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, 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 that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests.
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.
“They think of us as an ecclesiastical work force,” said Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California. “Whereas we are religious, we’re living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet.”
RTFA. You’ll delight in the tasks of an Apostolic Visitation. Then there’s the bureaucratic inquisition on tap for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. It seems they’re failing to promote the church’s teaching on male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the Roman Catholic Church as the sole means to salvation.
Phew!
#36, Alphie,
… the church is entirely within its rights to insist those who are employed by it, follow their rules.
Nuns are not employees of the Catholic Church. They happen to be strong believers that give up the ultimate gift to their god, themselves.
#32 & 33,
If we are “statists”, would that make Alphie a “stator”.
New question. Does modern medicine have a name for it if 306,982,714 Americans are wrong and only Alphie and Crazy Davey are right?
Alphie style nuns
If you aren’t a Catholic then you don’t have a dog in this race. Stick a sock in it.
Now I’m going to take my own advice.
A few points here for the uninitiated. The RCC does not “employ” a religious member, or even a diocesan priest for that matter. Although these nuns need to follow the norms of church law, they are not under holy orders – but are under a vow of obedience to their mother generals who is responsible for their conduct.
What’s peeving them off is that the Vatican is messing around inside their orders while it’s still way, way out of bounds. In no way, shape or form have they violated church law. If they had violated church law they would be open to excommunication which is absurd in this situation.
Basically it’s more of Ratzinger clamping down on religious orders, which he’s been doing for years (he was J2P2’s heavy hitter). BTW, you may notice that he’s conveniently clamping down on religious women and avoiding the religious men who’ve been doing the same thing forever.
Good explanation, qb. Maybe it’s time for the nuns to request an audience with His Holiness to better express their concerns in person…
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2128/2360231141_82d315dc02.jpg
To be really pedantic about this (this is Catholicism after all) any problems with a religious community or order should be done through the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life and the Order General (or Prior).
This is being conducted by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Basically it looks like it’s shaping up into a major league slap down much like the way they dealt with Liberation Theology. If that happens nuns like Sister Sandra Schneiders could be forbidden to teach, write, or speak publicly and her order would have nothing to say about it.
Gee, I’m sorry I’m late to the party on this one. American women religious are the best-educated group of Catholics in the world. We learned that religious life is a charism – a gift from the Holy Spirit to the Church. The history of religious life is a history of the church hierarchy trying to exercise control over the communities. So, some groups of women who banded together refused to take vows or call themselves “nuns” because they would automatically be enclosed in convents. Read up on some history – the church for many years made all nuns live an enclosed life, even if they were teachers (the students came in to them). Communities that were founded to help the poor or sick in their own homes were forced behind grated windows. This led to “third orders” and “externs”, which most of the Sisters with whom you would be familiar actually are. They have the simple vows of the extern sister, as opposed to the solemn vows of the cloistered num. In the US we have a bad habit -haha – of calling all the sisters ‘nuns’. Most of you have never seen a ‘nun’ because they are all in cloisters.
I did a vocation talk for a class of sixth-grade Catholic school kids many years ago. One girl asked, why do sisters have short hair? I explained that we didn’t spend our time or money on our hair; I had to be at morning prayer at 5:45, Mass at 6:15, work at 7. The parish priest stepped in and contradicted me, telling them it was to “avoid vanity”. But, see, this is from centuries of the church trying to turn Sisters into genderless creatures.
Religious life, it’s really great. I think the sisters are their own worst enemies. Trying to join a community these days is like trying to break into Fort Knox.