Vatican to US Nuns (and all women): STFU!

Duct tape vould be zo much cheaper...

Until now, I have left religion alone like the ticking landmine it is, because that's your reality and blah blah blah.  But I can be silent no longer.  This latest outrage screams for an equally outraged response.

The Vatican has concluded a major investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents a huge percentage of women religious in this country, with an appropriately outrageous smackdown report:  Apparently, US nuns have been spending too much time focusing on social injustice and the poor, while remaining silent on or questioning other issues they should be pushing, such as the Church's official positions on male-only priesthood, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage.

Remember when our nuns were nice and quiet?

In other words, the nuns are less than jazzed-up about the very issues you would think intelligent, thoughtful religious women with no power in the hierarchy might be tempted to soft-pedal in favor of other, more practical and productive topics.


http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/vatican-reprimands-us-nuns-group.html


These women have given their lives to support an institution which does not support them.  They are NOT pushing for female ordination of priests or even deacons (don't even get me started on deacons).*  Just by asking questions and voicing opinions, they are accused of advancing a "radical feminist" agenda.

There's a backstory here which I may go into sometime, but suffice it to say this:  I converted to Catholicism, from nothing, in 2001.  I gave it the old college try for years, eventually becoming a lay pastoral minister, but needed to step back from it for a year.  It got lonely, though, and I had just started going back six weeks ago.  I figured I would just set my phaser to Ignore for the many parts that don't work for me.  Still good to sit quietly in a consecrated space with a group of decent people, right?  And the singing is nice.  An extra hour chilling with my family.

...but then this happens and reminds me (again) that I cannot ignore the vast gulf between the Church and what a lot of reasonable people think.  I cannot overlook the messages that these kinds of actions send not only to women religious, but to all women in the church, to our daughters and our sisters.  I can't be quiet about it any more.

* Did you know there used to be female deacons?  Yup.  Deaconesses.  The Church doesn't make much noise about that.  I learned it in my Called & Gifted Lay Minister training, incidentally paid for by the Archdiocese of Chicago.  Apparently they were very handy to have around, and there were a lot of them, until somebody got the idea that menstruation made women unclean.  So, like I said, don't me started...