Catholic Nuns: An Idea Whose Time Has Gone?
I was “raised by nuns” from “nursery school” — that’s what we used to call daycare — to Grade 13 (a now defunct Canadian thing).
Because I was born in 1964, I watched Catholic sisters transform outwardly after the “reforms” of Vatican II.
The nuns who stirred giant pots of boiling noodles for our nursery school lunches wore wimples, veils, and heavy floor-length habits.
By the time I got to high school, they wore over-the-knee black skirts, white blouses, and black cardigans adorned with tiny gold cross pins.
When I got caught up in the Reagan-era no-nukes movement, I eagerly applied for a job at a progressive, “social justice” Catholic newspaper. My only real qualifications were that I’d read a lot of Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton, and could tell the Berrigan brothers apart. I got the job.
The staff was a mix of lay people and “women religious,” as I quickly learned they preferred being called. These nuns wore running shoes and unglamorous, casual (usually polyester) clothes. Only their severely cropped hair and lack of jewelery, perfume, nail polish or makeup distinguished them ever so slightly from the average woman.
Except for their ages. With one exception, they were all well into their 60s.
Otherwise, I soon realized that “nuns were just like everyone else.”
And although I was ashamed to admit it, I didn’t approve.
Since there are various religious orders of nuns, it’s unfair to lump them all into the “not-really-Catholics” category. This article documents the increase in the number of women joining traditional religious orders: http://the-american-catholic.com/2010/05/21/booming-traditional-relgious-orders/
Fr John Zuhlsdorf, aka Fr Z, has been all over what he calls the Magisterium of Nuns for some time. Go to http://www.wdtprs.com and take a look for a lot more documentation of abuses
This does not comport with my experience. As my wife and I regularly work with four different orders of nuns — Daughters of Wisdom, Benedictines, Josephites and Cenacle of St. Regis — I’d like to see some substantiation of your claim.
Perhaps Canadian nuns are a different sort, like your 7-day work week.
Really Francis, you are AWFULLY touchy for a grown man. (And lazy perhaps?)
Just as your personal experience does not comport with mine, mine does not comport with yours. See how that works? Easy peasy!! But I’m the one with the byline. That’s ALSO how it works.
However, in terms of actual statistics, the Vatican itself issued this new report on the largest group of women religious on earth, and determined that they were abandoning traditional Catholic teaching for liberal politics and New Age fads.
Take up your quarrel with them. Clearly the Vatican isn’t as Catholic as you are!
There are plenty of good nuns out there, and the good orders are growing and spreading. Heck, the Ann Arbor Dominicans practically need their own zip code, and they’re coming en masse to teach in schools that haven’t seen nun teachers for thirty years.
The LCWR numbers are padded; and many of the women they “represent” would far rather be in the other American nun consortium, or just on their own. Pity the older nuns back in the Motherhouse, who never signed on for any of this crud.
But I guess that the dying orders who sold off most of their property are just more willing to use up their real estate money on froufrou bus hype, because they’re not expecting their orders to have any members after the next thirty years are over.
Probably what will happen is that the gone-bad orders will collapse, and their last few members will be cared for by the new and the faithful orders.
“Really Francis, you are AWFULLY touchy for a grown man. (And lazy perhaps?)”
Ms. Shaidle seems not to have read the guidelines of the site she blogs for:
3. Disagree, but avoid ad hominem attacks.
Ms. Shaidle is read and appreciated for her entirely biased and usually–assertive–attitude. The commenter hit first.
Concerning monastic life, your article, Ms. Shaidle (are you a Ms. or what?) bears in part the title: “An Idea Whose Time Is Gone”. Here I stumble and feel, as a former professionial of literature that I once was, if perhaps and inversion might have been proper. What inversion?. “An idea, indeed timeless, whose people have gone”. This second formulation places the weight of analysis on those who bear and live (or fail do do so) an idea and not upon the validity of the idea itself. Your formulation leaves me with the opinion that you actually think that monastic living has lost all bearing to modern life and, for that reason, is gone and past as an idea. This would amount obviously to a critique of the idea itself. My inversion suggests that those who have left the idea behind are the ones deserving sad critism and, from my monkish point of view, prayer. Which version is correct? Which version do you prefer? Is the monastic life a thing of the past, and good riddance, or is it an ideal that, alas, the upto date hip-hoppers foolishly pass by. Frankly, I believe to read in your words a nostalgia for that what apparently never came to be, subject as you were to nunnies of Post-Vat. II (my God, most of them are so ugly that they should wear a Muslim veil). Or, since you are not a character in a fiction story, rather a confused incarnation of the ambiguity that is human, all too human, you must take a stand somewhere, I hope. The atheist Nietzsche once wrote that “all desire seeks deep, profound eternity.” What do you desire in your profound depths? If you share Nietzsche’s evaluation of “desire” concerning its depths, then the idea of a monastery is, as I maintained above, timeless. Or have you forgot all that. I am just another confused man who cannot comprehend what the heck that other sex means.
> I am just another confused man who cannot comprehend what the heck that other sex means.
Leonard, we find agreement at last!
Glad to hear from you again, Michael. So, praise the Lord and pass the whisky and, because I am inevitably a sinner, past the “dumb, but sexy broads” too. You know it took me 50 years to figure out why men call women “broads”. Too much philosophy, probably. Women remain a delicious, but confounding mystery. That’s one reason old age can, under circumstances, be liberating in itself. What I do not understand, no longer can lead me astry. Till we meet again, your “moins manqué”.
To Leonard,
My dear young man, it seems that your early education has a few holes that should have been corrected long, long ago.
The long running B’Way musical and later film adapted from Michner’s Tales of the South Pacific had a wonderful sound track by Rodgers & Hammerstein and in this particular number, performed by Ray Waltson and Mitzi Gaynor.
Song lyrics to Honey Bun:
Nellie:
My doll is as dainty as a sparrow,
Her figure is somethin’ to applaud.
Where she’s narrow she’s as narrow an arrow,
And she’s broad where a broad should be broad.
A hundred and one pounds of fun,
That’s my little honey bun!
Get a load of honey bun tonight.
I’m speakin’ of my Sweetie Pie,
Only sixty inches high,
Ev’ry inch is packed with dynamite!
Her hair is blond and curly,
Her curls are hurly-burly.
Her lips are pips!
I call her hips ‘Twirly’ and ‘Whirly.’
She’s my baby, I’m her pap!
I’m her booby, she’s my trap!
I am caught and I don’t wanna run,
‘Cause I’m havin’ so much fun with honey bun!
I am caught and I don’t wanna run,
‘Cause I’m havin’ so much fun with honey bun!
Believe me sonny!
She a cookie who can cook you ’till you’re done,
Ain’t bein’ funny!
Sonny, put your money on my honey bun!.
Not trying to put you on but you triggered a real great memory. The first verse says it all!!
Glad to hear from you again, Michael. So, praise the Lord and pass the whisky and, because I am inevitably a sinner, past the “dumb, but sexy broads” too. You know it took me 50 years to figure out why men call women “broads”. Too much philosophy, probably. Women remain a delicious, but confounding mystery. That’s one reason old age can, under circumstances, be liberating in itself. What I do not understand, no longer can lead me astry. Till we meet again, your “moins manqué”.
Pardon the double answer. I guess I drank the whisky I mentioned. Whoops!
Jeezuz, Leonard. You REALLY need to take a chill pill.
You’ve heard the expression — during your vast exposure to “literature” — “An idea whose time has come”? Right?
Well. See?
It’s a, I say, it’s a joke, son!
Maybe the reason you’ve had such a hard time figuring out the opposite sex is because you are so windy and pedantic you don’t give ‘em a chance to explain themselves to you?
Holy hell. Get a hobby. The outdoor kind.
There’s a book by Jacques Barzun called “Simple and Direct.” I suggest he get that before he gets a hobby. I’m still trying to decipher that paragraph.
To Ms Schaidle and other critics:
Oh my, I thought Germans are numb to irony, particularly of a literary nature. I say that “with vast experience in literature”. Oh, really, Leonard, you sound like a blowhard”. Perhaps, but I was a professor for literature for years (based upon my firt doctorate), then a professor for philosophy (based upon my second doctorate) and, if health had not brought me down, with my third doctorate I would have become a professor of culture. So, kiddies, you slung your arrows dipped in the poison of ignorance. “Kidies” say I, being 73 years of age. In that brief span of time I have had just a bit of experience with women. For instance, a 25 year marriage before an unfortunate accident ended it. Beyond that I note that I have had at least 6 chances for remarriage (but have decided that is not desireable for me), still have close female acquaintances in 4 countries where I speak the language and in one (Russia) where I am still learning the art of interlocution. So, please do not make aspersions about my ignorance of females. Catch the irony, kiddies, catch the irnony! Be literary! Like all humans, I do not fully understand myself. Do any of you claim such success? In so far as experience reveals something about women I have it as much as anyone else of male persuation; besides a reading of Goethe’s “Selective Affinities” will reveal insights into the male/female dynamic, independent of consulting many a study on what is a “female” archetpye and what is “male” one.
I in no way have asserted anything negative about female (or male) religious orders that focus upon service to the needy and not so needy of “real” life. I had the marvelous opportunity to observe both male and female activities of this sort while teaching at a seminary in Brasil. And who do you think were my teachers when I was young? So no ignorance there. Irony, children, irony! Be literary!
I may have missed the point of the article. I did not understand it as an attack upon nuns active in world, but against those whose new found post-Vat II callings are ones that end up countering Church doctrines. Last night I received notice per e-mail from the Newman Society which listed a series of items, one of which bore the title “Former President of Catholic College Supports Women’s Ordainment and Predicts Death of the ‘Institutional Church’”. Any nun, priest or lay person who contributes to the “Death of the Institutional Church”, that is seeking to “modernize” (sic) historical doctrines away, does not receive my blessings. Period! I evidently misunderstood, Ms Schaidle, your real intent. You were, I guess, not critizing such orientation as much as supporting it. Or? Tell me. I await your “female” enlightenment. I suspect it would fit well in to “The Ship of Fools” of Erasmus.
What is it that concerns me? Just consult, if nothng else, Ricardo de la Cierva’s “Las puertas del infierno”, the pages on the 19th and, particularly, 20th Century wherein the author gives an overview of the effective slayers of said “Institutional Church”. In stead of, simply put, contributing to elevating the world to the eternal dimensions of the Church (which deal with the central problem of death), such modern stalwarts have sought to locate the divine mission in improving this world. I my add that out of this attitude there developed the theologies of liberation with Marxistic tendencies (oh yes, I have printed two books on Marx and know the subject well). However, if I have been remiss relative to my hermeneutics of your epistle, Ms S, (for which I apoligize), you and have shown a similar one relative to my comments (and also the literaryly benighted commentators after you).
One of the lessons learned that we with “vast experience with literature” or any beginnger in my classes has, is to realize that literature (be it artistic or daily discourse, including PJM commenting) must be understood in context. My comments, beyond a possible misunderstanding of your intent, entail ironic mention of whisky, etc. These were directed at Michael, with whom I have had PLEASANT and non-pretentious dialogue elsewhere in PJM. That dialogue, and that dialogue offers the context for some of my ironic utterances. Although none of you know of the other contact, it is as obvious as the upper lip of your mouth (unless you look like Nietzsche) that I was also in converation with Michael. So, once having missed the context, one wails away with derogatory remarks directed at me, remarks that simply have nothing to do with the semantic content of my communication to Michael. Sadly, none of you have had the good fortune of attending my classes, or the classes of any one else aware of the dialogic structure of the litary form of comments between old friends.
If the “sin” of ignorance is to be placed upon a literary soul of anyone, I feel in the comments that mine is most free of said sin. For those who found difficulty in understanding me, I can only suggest, however much in vain, to get an eduction!
Thanks to all the nuns that whacked my knuckles, pulled my cheeks, hair, and ears, and threatened me with eternal damnation, I never had to endure the anguish of having to sit through a class of “Leonards”.
Of all my classmates that I have kept acquainted with, there’s an equal number of disgruntled liberals and successful conservatives, even after an overwhelming indoctrination of Catholicism.
“windy and pedantic” – yup,sums it up nicely, I’d say.
This article contains some interesting observations but is hampered by your ignorance, begging your pardon, of the history of female religious life. First – the “female religious” who work as nurses, teachers, journalists, etc., are more properly known as “sisters” rather than nuns, though the use of the latter term is common enough.
Nuns take “solemn” vows and live a monastic life within a cloister, meaning that they have only limited contact with the outside world. Their vocation is prayer. Sisters are female religious who take “simple” vows and, though they may live in community, do not live in monasteries and are not cloistered. Their vocation is service, the specific type of service depending on the order to which they belong.
Nuns in the cloister have a much longer history than sisters. Through much of Christian history, society ( set its face against single women living outside the protection of the cloister. Until the 17th century, all attempts to found active communities of female religious were sooner or later defeated by social disapproval. The whiff of scandal, families who did not want their daughters entering such orders; and confusion over their legal status, were often what undid them.
In the 17th century, women, with the help of priests like Vincent de Paul, began once again to try to introduce “active” orders for women. Vincent, cannier than earlier founders, decided to encourage the women in these orders of “sisters” NOT to wear religious habits, or live in community, but to dress like the local women and live in small groups of 3 or 4, even perhaps remaining in their parents’ houses. If questioned about whether they were “religious”, they were to respond no, they were merely doing good works. Keeping their heads down and their mouths shut, such women made themselves so useful that, in time, they finally won official status from Rome and the support of their temporal communities. Oh yes, and the right to wear religious garb, though their clothing remained quite similar to that of working-class women of early modern Europe – a black dress with a white apron and white kerchief on the head.
Sorry this is so long.
Interesting historical background. You bring up an important distinction, one that makes these sisters’ behavior more understandable. Obviously, they’re not just “rogue nuns.” It might be useful to know whether this is a really a new trend or if women religious have been involved in other social movements over the years. For example, did they agitate for women suffrage in the early 20th century?
I think the point still stands, however: the women in question seem to have gone from “active” to “activist,” and not in a good (i.e., traditionally Catholic) way.
Oh, I wouldn’t disagree with you there. Some women’s orders have clearly lost any sense of their Catholic mission. My main wish in my previous comment was to remind people not to confuse active and contemplative orders. As a minor point, I wanted to suggest, also, that the change in sisters’ habits into ordinary working clothes is not *necessarily* a sign of a loss of faith.
I don’t think that any orders of nuns or sisters was ever “activist” before our own time. The Church was cautious about provoking social and state disapproval after the French Revolution brought the execution/murder of so many priests and nuns. From the early 19th century until the 1950s, it kept a firm grip on its religious of both sexes, with regard to what they were permitted to preach, teach, and publish.
If you saw my personal library, you might think twice about calling me “ignorant” of the history of Catholic religious orders.
However, I wasn’t writing a pedantic history of those orders here. I was writing about my personal experience, of which I am decidedly not ignorant either.
Here on planet Earth, normal people use the words “nun” and “sister” interchangeably.
Writing for a popular audience is not the same as writing an academic paper, a simple concept that many of the commenters here seem, well, ignorant about.
Beneath all the nitpicking and faux erudition a la Confederacy of Dunces — do you people type with quill pens?? — I detect the true motivation for these comments:
Profound irritation that the byline here is mine and not yours
Oh, piffle, Kathy S.! don’t mind that it’s your byline and I’m ;happy to have you out there expressing my aggressions for me (sometimes, at any rate). Nor was I trying to write the academic paper that I thought you ought to have written in this post. But if you were as knowledgeable as you claim to be (and I’m pretty sure you are not), you wouldn’t refer to sisters as nuns, which is a common error but, like the confusion of “immaculate conception” with “virgin birth,” one that tends to irritate more knowledgeable Catholics.
It’s odd how so many women who claim to dislike our sex’s tendency to take to the ad hominem fallacy will do so themselves when annoyed. Why say that my erudition is “faux” without giving me an example of my errors?
Sigh. The last time I attempted to comment on a post about nuns (another blog, another time), although I neither corrected nor criticised its author in any way, I was subjected to a volley of insults: anti-Catholic, feminist,ignorant, etc. Strangely enough, that blogger too was a woman who claimed to dislike our sex’s inherent weaknesses.
But I never expected to receive similar treatment from YOU. Ah, I said to myself as I began to write, “another INTj” (well, I’m an ENTJ or INTJ depending on my mood when I fill in those durned things). “Now at last here is a woman with whom I may disagree – often – but to whom I can speak my mind without fear of offending her!” Please do not tell me that I was mistaken, Miss Shaidle…
Hi, Kathy, and hi, L. Legault! To L.: Calling mere sisters “nuns” is not on the order of saying “immaculate conception” when you mean “virgin birth.” The latter is a stupid doctrinal error made by the media types who think that “original sin” means a kinky sex position. But ordinary Catholics have been calling sisters “nuns” at least since I was growing up during the 1950s, the time benchmark by which I measure all things Catholic. “Nuns” was standard usage for those ladies in long black skirts, clanking waist-rosaries, and those fabulous lace-up, Cuban-heel “nun shoes” (that’s what we called them) who taught in my parochial school. I got an “A” on my third-grade composition claiming (utterly falsely, as I knew even then)that I wanted to be a “nun” when I grew up. Yes, technically, only a sister in monastic life is a nun, but the words are interchangeable in ordinary usage. Even those “Nuns on a Bus,” who are riding around pestering Paul Ryan and misspending the gas money donated to them by dotty elderly Catholics who think they’re still Sister Mary Angelus from Dear Old St. Tarcissus School, call themselves “nuns,” even though technically they’re not. So it’s not a matter of error; it’s a matter of informal usage. To Kathy: “Legault” is not “Leonard”‘s last name! I know L. Legault, and I can assure you that L. is on your side!
Ha. Amusingly enough, Charlotte, my father’s name does happen to be Leonard. Did Kathy S. try to google me, and get the impression that he was me and that the Leonard above was, er, him? All wrong. I’m not my father and my father is not the Leonard who writes here.
Anyway, I agree that insisting on the usage of nun for contemplatives only is a pedantic point, but I wanted to make a clear distinction between them because nuns have not really suffered the same kind of loss of faith as their active sisters, though they have suffered a drastic decline in numbers. Some readers failed to distinguish between the two, so I decided I would.
Knowing that women’s active orders actually provoked enormous public and to a lesser degree Church disapproval when first established may help people to understand them better. Religious and priests who are active “in the World” seem to be the most vulnerable to its fads and follies. Consider the recent history of the Jesuits, if you like, for an example.
I thought maybe it was Lance Legault, well-known Catholic scholar and star of the hit TV series, “The A-Team.” Any relation?
‘If you saw my personal library, you might think twice about calling me “ignorant” of the history of Catholic religious orders.’
Gee, Kathy, if you saw my private library, you might think I was an expert on politics, literature, science, psychology, etc., etc.
“If you saw my personal library, you might think twice about calling me “ignorant” of the history of Catholic religious orders.”
Those things only work if you open them and actually read them.
For a rundown of the loony ideas propagated by the LCWR types, just look over the list of their annual convention keynote speakers. The dim but pious holy-card piety of an earlier age has been replaced with equally dim but impious New Age enthusiasms.
New motto for the LCWR: “We put the ‘coven’ in ‘covenant’.”
Love the part about ‘sabbaticals.’ It was so true about that type of Sister. May they RIP…
I live behind a convent, in a house I bought in 1989 in the Italian Bronx neighborhood where I grew up. They are the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal of the Convent of San Damiano.
There are perhaps a dozen wonderful young women. It’s hard to tell, but I would say not one is older than late 20s. I don’t see them as liberal, or political at all, except for being anti-abortion.
I changed a flat tire for them last year and have since been invited to attend the ceremonies they have when they take their vows. The last time, on May 20th, was presided over by Archbishop Timothy Dolan.
They are the nicest group in my neighborhood. They all know my name, never fail to say hello and pray for me. I couldn’t ask for anything more.
I attended 16 years of Catholic school. Most of the teachers in my grammar school were nuns from the same convent, but a different order.
The women that I know are brave, kind and enthusiastic in their mission. Sometimes, if I have the windows open, I can hear them laughing and singing. If anything, the sisterhood is more alive today than it has ever been.
Congratulations, you live in community with one of the young, flourishing orders, who can be marked out by the joy, orthodoxy, faithfulness to the church, praying in community, living close to Jesus, serving their apostolates with humility and joy.
The other groups, aging, sour, feminist in the ugly meaning of the word, man-hating – they are dead or dying orders. The ones that taught me in grade school, nearly dead, absorbed into another group. The ones from high school, dwindling, the faithful few aging out and going to Heaven, the ones left are hard, tough, Gaia-loving, Jesus-avoiding and won’t last another ten years as an order. I get their newsletter and my alumnae one, too, and read through them to see what’s what and it’s sad, so sad.
Ugly, parasitic women need a place to practice their Marxist nonsense, and be fed (and have access to free contraceptives).
It’s no longer called a convent. They’re called covens.
Bingo.
PS Leonard —
“Am I a Ms or what?”
Turn up your hearing aid for a sec.
Can you hear “Hotel California” playing in the background right about now?
Because the 1970s called.
They want their crabby old lonely man cliches back.
An excess of erudition, compounded by reconditeness, can interfere with the comprehension of distinctions and render it opprobrious.
Cheers
What the he.., oh, heck, are you blabbing about? I turned up my hearing-aid and got only confusing literary (yes, literary) references. I was just jesting about “The Ship of Fools” of Eramus, but you seem to have reserved a linguisic sea on boardt, worse of all exactly where the ship is leaking. Thank “The Beach Boys” (I was a teenager during those days), I am living in Germany now and do not have to worry about the “Ms” designation. German, Wotan be blessed, does not so easily allow such lingusitic forms of feminist aggression. Alas, while still a professor in America, we were informed in writing one day, literally out of the blue, under the authority of some mysterious “female” power (I guess a herd of Ms’s) that henceforth I and all professors (male or female) were to write “she” and “he” nevermore. (I eventually, following my penchant to irony, came upon “s/he”, which I have used in publications pleasing the “politically correct” needs of many an editor.) I quickly learned in the rarified atmosphere of my university that the the world of polite forms of address had been stood upon its head, as much as Marx did that to Hegel. After a certain point, I simply became tired of how to address a “female” (not “wo-MAN”) without fear. So I selected the strategy, if I speak with an American “female”, to inquire early on as to the preferred manner of address. In addition to enabling “polite” conversation, the use of “Ms” can communicate some information about the value system of the concerned “female”. It was the wounds of such experiences in America that constituted the background to my inquiry about your status via appellation. I was also trying to use the form as an interpetative tool to understanding your article and comments.
As to your being a non-”Ms”, so illustrated by the music you are listening to, you are a bit of a mystery. My age forces me, when a return to early music is wished, to wander back to the 50′s. Heck, I remember when rock and roll just began. Today, I turn on Sergei Rachmaninov’s “Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom” and levetate into the spheres of eternity (or until the CD ends). This “crabby old lonely man” business leaves me in the depths of (literary) confusion. It almost sounds as if you had sipped from my and Michael’s whisky. But then I am a man and we such creatures, as the Volkswisdom says, do not understand women. Pax vobiscum!
That was both unnecessary and inappropriate to the purpose of this article. Take your pettiness to another venue.
You are in rare form today – very funny, despite what Harry the spiller says…
A brutal and much needed beat-down of a particularly notorious segment of the religious community, ugh….. that I even said that. Thank you, Kathy…….
I have found Eastern Orthodox Christian churches welcoming towards progressive-fleeing Catholics.
And we have only nuns living in monasteries, not sisters. Not even “orders” – they’re just nuns. One of the surprises of becoming Orthodox was seeing how much the Orthodox love their monastics; many people in my church use vacation time to go and stay at a monastery.
There you are right, so wonderfully right. Reading Orthodox such as the theologian Vladamir Lossky or the Orthodox philosopher Simon Frank (friends and expats from Lenin’s Russia) there is a transcendent dimension strikingly evident in contrast to, alas, the effects, planned or not, of post-Vat II “reforms” (sic) which have reduced much to a pale reflection in many quarters. Social activity is all too often THE mission, leading to a degenerative form of (in my opinion) worldly religiosity about which (Ms?) Seidle talks in here article. Here in Germany, Catholics learned to sing like Protestants and, like Protestants, leave the Church in droves. The tradionalist Pius Brotherhood is a thorn in the “reformed” Catholic side. The Brotherhood grows in communicants and in priests. “Reformed” Catholicism is coming to resemble an empty Cathederal.
For a wonderful visual/tonal presentation of the monastic center of Orthodoxy view in internet “Steps to the Skies”, Parts 1-7 (particularly Part 6). The videos focus on the monastery of Valaam on the islands of Valaam in the Lagoda Lake north of St. Petersburg, Russia. I have visited there and would like to spend my declining years on those holy islands. At any rate, the beauty of environment, the explanatory words of the monks (in Russian with English subtitles) and the liturgical activities communicate in an enthrawling manner the Monastic and Mystic heart of Russian Orthodoxy. However, I do not want to be too negative about spiritual life in Catholicism in W. Europe. The remaining monasteries do attract very many visitors. In Belgium there is a monastery dedicated simultaneously to the Western Rite (Latin is heard) and to the Eastern Rite (Russian is the language of liturgy). Such a monastery represents the transcendence in Catholicism that has survived the immanentization following Vat.II.
Looks like the Holy Roman Catholic Church, which has been searching for a worthy opponent ever since the fall of ‘Godless Communism’ may be turning in upon itself. Lord knows there is enough infected deadwood within to require years of pruning. Leave the poor litle nuns to their own devices, the’re just feeling their oats! Time enough to work on them if they ever start demanding contra…s and ab..s. and ALTER GIRLS to play with.
That is the correct blog for anyone who desires to search out out about this topic. You notice a lot its nearly exhausting to argue with you (not that I really would want…HaHa). You positively put a brand new spin on a subject thats been written about for years. Great stuff, simply great!
Kathy, you are my soul sister. I find it hilarious when people talk about the backwards neanderthal Catholics. They should go to the church in my town. The priest will tell you not to listen to the bishops and pope, that abortion is not a sin, you don’t have to confess homosexuality. There is nothing wrong with his views, it’s just that he is not really Catholic. The reason I had finally accepted Catholicism was that I had finally come to accept the hierarchy of the church (otherwise it is no different than any of the protestant churches). Well this priest just confused the hell right out of me. I figure too that if abortion is not a sin, then what the hell is, so I just gave up. Why waste my time going to church, listening to evil greedy business sermons (OWS church style), and forking over money. Might as well just live free and greedy. It is too difficult to deal with three small children at church anyways. It’s not like there are any nuns there running a nursery program, they are too busy guarding the doors to the abortion clinic.
Yes, there is.
There is everything wrong with his views, and it’s wrong to say otherwise.
Find a new church. You do have a Sunday obligation to fulfill, and you come to church first and foremost for the Eucharist, not the sermon. That said, you don’t want to be listening to poison, nor encouraging a scandalizer by showing up. Woe to the presbyters who lead their flock astray, for they have blood on their hands that will not be silenced by their smooth talk. Only repentance and confession can remove the blood from the hands of those scandalizers, those sleeping watchmen and lovers of money!
I meant that he criticizes the evil businesses (looking back at my wording it did not make sense), not that he is a money lover. I understand the effort to help the poor, but just don’t understand why they feel the need to criticize entrepeneurs. I don’t believe there is anything immoral about the profit motive. As a matter of fact it is a large contributing factor to what makes the world go round.
I wasn’t accusing him of greed; I was taking issue with him saying abortion is not a sin. Preaching like that will send souls to Hell, and if he does not repent, he will join them.
Common Sense 101 — referring to individual behavior:
1) If someone complains and complains about a situation which they can logically do nothing about, and in which they are not forced to stay, then the pay value for them lies in the complaining.
2) Oftentimes, you can’t shut someone like this up. That part of their self-image in which the complaining is rooted is a swamp of perceived victimhood. It is real as the sun rising in the east to them. And if their pay value lies in the complaining, then your complaints it merely tosses coins into the jar on their tinny little piano.
Hi Kathy. If you meant to convey a shallow primer on the presence of rad lib women saling themselves “Catholic religious,” fine, mission accomplished. Conservatism tends to be unfairly or naively claimed as Protestant ground, and the not insignificant struggle of the Catholic Church to keep catholics Catholic continues.
Unfortunately, your thin skinned need to be right causing you to go after commenters who offend your sensitive ego make you out not merely to be a small person, but a small minded blogging hack.
Obviously the nuns should be fired. Oh, wait………….
This must be why I’m not a not an expert on a religion I’m not a member of.
Actually, they CAN be.
It’s called “excommunication” and it’s waaay overdue for a lot of nuns, priests, bishops, and cardinals.
Not to mention a boatload of politicians.
Wow. I hadn’t realized that nuns had gotten so bad!
Oh, I have known for while about their Marxism and feminism. I just didn’t know it had gone so far, but the pictures tell the whole story.
They look like Methodist women! =:O
Right. There is nothing wrong with being Methodist or whatever religion a person chooses, but if you choose a specific religion of your own free will (last I checked nobody had a gun to anyone’s head forcing them to be Catholic), then you should accept the religion as it is, rather than force it to bend to your will. There is always the Episcopal Church that was built on bending the Church to one man’s will for anyone who wants a lighter version of Catholicism. Nothing new under the sun. People have been protesting the Church for a long time. Can we say Protestant together.
An RC British journalist – Damian Thompson – said something in the context of the controversy regarding gay marriage in the UK that I think is relevant to what Rush is saying here. Bishops, RC and Anglican, have spent the last 40 years bending over backwards to accomodate gay agendas, and what we are now seeing is their chickens coming back to roost.
Rush is brilliant – where’s our British Limbaugh?
I had the pleasure of working and being friends with Sr. Carol Keehan, DOC for several years. She is the one Obama picked to be on his “Advisory Board” for the Obamacare.
When it came public and I read it I questioned her about supporting such a bill that would pay for abortion. Her only answer was that the Obamacare Bill would provide for those who had no healthcare coverage (indigent poor) which the DOC primarily serve now. The DOC went from 23 hospitals nationwide to 5 hospitals in California.
Now make no mistake, this woman and the DOC are business FIRST.They make money when all others are failing.The NYT did a piece on the several years ago called The DOLLARS Of CHARITY,because of their prowess.
So, I can not believe that the DOC and the nuns that work for them are doing all this from the goodness of their hearts.
Remember, a percentage of monies made return to ROME, as monies throughout the Catholic church in America has always done.
So while slapping nuns in public, the church is still making money in private.
Kind of a good cop bad cop routine.
Next, they’ll be picketing for same-sex marriage in the convents. As for being pro-choice, I’ll buy that. They made their choice when they decided to be celibate. Now if the problem is that they haven’t been all that faithful to their vow and have had a few, um, unfortunate conceptions, then shame on them. It remains: you chose to live a religious life in the Catholic Church, and in addition to celibacy, took vows of obedience. Try living up to your vows, or be self-honest enough to admit you can’t and leave the order.
Kathy, I remember when I thought nuns to be beautiful, but then if you are to be the bride of Christ, shouldn’t you be worthy of the honour?………..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ORClYzL8b0&feature=player_embedded
Now, everybody looks like nursing home attendants which is all well and good, but attendants are hard-working and useful – something I’d hope our ‘women religious’ would aspire to be……….
What an entertaining thread!
Shaidle kicking in the nuts a 2 PhD guy who can’t spell, while not one mention of homosexuality in an article about hundreds of diesel goddess worshippers. Never had nuns (er, sisters, sorry Lenny), thank God, but they were close by, shiver. I did see one wizened bitch go to work on my older sister when I was in 3rd grade. Scariest creature on God’s earth. I did have Franciscan brothers, those 2 by 4 swinging disciplinarians, who were much closer to the sword-wielding Xavier in spirit than to the blessed Assisi. The Brothers all left to become dentists and social workers (depending on their bent) and to get married (Oddly, none were bent in the other direction).
Now, I know what happened to the nuns too.
they would also have to give up their beach front property on the NJ shore
having attended one of their “masses” at the beach i can tell you that many of them have already left the Church
Men enter at your own risk unless you are an effeminate homosexual priest who idly sits by while the sisters hold “mass”
God bless and good luck to the Catholic Church without nuns. They’ll have to hire people to do all that work when there are no more nuns working for free, thus the Church will become “job creators”. God bless.
No, Cathy, what we need are REAL Catholic nuns. The ones you describe long ago ceased being Catholic. A pro-abortion nun who is opposed to the Pope is an oxymoron.
By the way, I’m a Protestant (lousy, anachronistic term but good for shorthand.) I gladly stand shoulder to shoulder on moral values issues with REAL Catholics, and appreciate the current Pope’s conservatism, which the “nuns” you describe abhor.
Keep on speaking the truth Kathy. Love your posts.