My Take on the Nuns

A reader writes:

I don’t know if I missed a post on the LCWR (I think that is right).  I was a little put out to see buttons at mass a couple of weeks ago that say “I stand with the sisters”.  Not because I stand with or against them,but because I don’t believe mass is the place to make what feels like a political statement.  Anyway, I have tried to do some research on the LCWR and have read Sr. Miriam’s blog.  What do you say on this issue?  My friends outside the church have said that yet again the church is beating up on women, and our deacon gave a homily a few months ago that left me feeling that if I am a women who is content with “my place” in the Catholic Church, there must be something wrong with me.  Actually, it left me quite angry.  I guess I am supposed to feel like the poor, oppressed, little woman.

I really enjoy your blog, thanks for my morning read.  It goes well with coffee.

Tusend tak for your kind words.  As to the nuns, I think the attempt to rein them in is long overdue and totally empathize with Rome’s concerns and with my poor suffering archbishop who is tasked with the thankless job of trying to deal with the crazy goddess-worshipping rubbish still kept on life support in this particularly self-indulgent hothouse of Generation Narcissus failed religiosity.  It is spectacularly dishonest to claim that the investigation is somehow a product of hostility to “women”. In fact, as is their custom, Rome has take about 20 year too long to respond to this problem out of the very typical reluctance Rome feels to boss people around.  The hope was that the loony goddess crap, the witchery, the nutty New Age nonsense and all the rest of it would be handled locally in true subsidiary fashion.  Didn’t happen–because these nuns in fact wield an awful lot of power as they whine about “disempowerment” and their bishops cringe.  So finally Rome is responding.  What will eventually happen is simply this: These nuns will get old and die and leave no spiritual daughters to carry on their boring heretical legacy.  Meanwhile, young new orders of nuns who actually believe the gospel will grow and flourish because orthodoxy is interesting and beautiful and heresy is old and busted–and booooooring.  Give me a Sr. Miriam Heidland, a Mother Teresa, or a Nashville Dominican any day.  Smart, competent, in charge, orthodox and endlessly interesting.  Too busy serving Jesus with authority and power to blather about “feeling disempowered.”