Appreciation can make a day, even change a life.
Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.
Margaret Cousins
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Feminism and the Decline of American Nuns
The Jo Piazza Time post The Great Nunquisition: Why the Vatican Is Cracking Down on Sisters is yet another clueless, analytically vacuous op-ed piece on Catholic topics by the secular press; there are other excellent reflections on the post (e.g., see here). Let's first of all concede that the numbers of nuns/religious sisters has indeed gone down by nearly three-quarters; I made the same observation just a few weeks ago in the blog when I suggested that Pope Francis seemed to be focused more on symbolism than substantive reform, not unlike "all hat, no cattle" Obama. Second, it is true that some radically feminist religious sister groups are getting increased scrutiny by the Vatican. But then "some magic happens" and Piazza, citing a single anecdotal case of a potential candidate, thinking the Church doesn't value her social justice agenda, backing out, suggests that the male-dominated hierarchy needs to capitulate to secular progressive ideology if she expects to attract membership.
A brief response. First, the vocation issue is across the board, including the priesthood. There has been a sharp decline since Vatican II; why it's so is open to debate. I and others have argued that Vatican II reforms as implemented went too far, and the Church has not responded or led strongly enough to a sexually obsessed, hedonistic culture. I personally loved the Latin mass and the rich tradition of rituals; I thrived on the old disciplines, relaxed in the post-Vatican era. My maternal uncle, a retired pastor, not exactly a progressive, disagrees, feeling a lot of people were going to Church under fear of damnation but were not really participating in a liturgy under a foreign tongue.
Second, the Vatican has cracked down on other groups, including traditionalists and liberation theology. There has been a propagation of faculty or invited speakers at Catholic universities openly contradicting Church dogma or moral teachings. That the Vatican might question a feminist agenda that ignores the abomination of elective abortion or a gay agenda that fails to recognize the Church's teaching of traditional marriage and an active extramarital lifestyle hardly surprises me.
One of my favorite former professors whom I deeply respect is one of the feminist sisters; a while back she wrote an autobiographical piece for a feminist volume which I found fascinating because she had never opened up like that to me personally. Among other things, I learned that she had left OLL to teach philosophy at some seminary, and apparently she had issues with an old-fashioned administrator. (She didn't go into specifics but implied his approach was sexist.) I think she might have also taught a course on liberation theology or social justice that I would probably have taken a pass on; I do not like the politicization of academia, including multicultural or feminist studies.
I also knew a small feminist group of the inner circle at UH Catholic Newman; in fact, I tried to ask out one of them, and the very next week she and others announced their intention to become Dominican sisters. (This, of course, was a blow to my male ego; a life of chastity was preferable to dating me.) I have written before where this group really ticked me off; normally, we had mixed-gender lector pairs for readings. One Sunday just before Mass, a coordinator asked me to substitute for the missing (female-undisclosed) lector. I agreed. This group pitched a temper tantrum over two male lectors at Mass; I was simply helping out and had not solicited the opportunity. I thought the kerfuffle was anti-Christian at its core.
But I want to counter the perception that ideological feminism is the key to driving vocations. I have seen notices from more traditional orders and congregations attracting some of their largest formation groups in decades (also noted in this post). I also see similar things about more conservative young priest recruits. They are attracting them in a number of ways, e.g., social services, education, retreats/gatherings, campus ministry, the Internet, etc. Me, I always remember my late paternal Aunt Grace, an educator. She left her original community but later joined a lay Franciscan order. One of the finest women I've ever known. Not an ideologue, except for her devout Catholic faith.
Follow-Up Odds and Ends
- New York Farmer Exits the Wedding Hosting Business After Fascist Ruling Forcing "Gay Weddings". Never mind the lesbians tape-recorded a conversation without the knowledge or consent, which is a violation of privacy rights in many states; never mind the fact the owners would host the reception, just not the wedding itself as contrary to their personal religious beliefs. An incontrovertible violation of economic and religious liberty.
Let You Without Sin Caste the First Stone...
It turns out that all municipalities go after kids running lemonade stands--mostly notably, after a Dunedin Floridian, Doug Wilkey, went after his next-door neighbor. But guess what? Wilkey has been operating a home business without the necessary license. Now personally, I don't like petty anti-business regulations of any type, but you think Wilkey would have thought twice about going after the kid next door and drawing attention to himself.
Proposals
Facebook Corner
(IPI). "If the Illinois Teachers Retirement Service (TRS) had to pay out all of its pensions today, it could only afford to give its members 40 cents on the dollar."
Government unions are not the problem. The politicians in Springfield are!
And what corrupt unions put them there?
Cut off the public funds for the crony unionist parasites!
That statement assumes that, every member of the system, retires on the same day, which is impossible.
Is this troll for real? The funding percentage is the worst in the country; in the 2012 Pew only 2 states had under 50 cents on the dollar. "A pension plan that is 100 percent funded at the end of a business expansion will likely lose 20 percent of its value in an average recession, so 80 percent is the bare-minimum "healthy" funding level at the bottom of a recession — and only then. " You take into account IL's bottom bond ratings, this is a serious problem.
Political Cartoon
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| Courtesy of Gary McCoy and Townhall |
Petula Clark, "A Sign of the Times"
