Posted on 07/01/2009 8:49:55 PM PDT by Steelfish
Nuns in the U.S. Are Facing Scrutiny by the Vatican
James Estrin/The New York Times Mother Mary Clare Millea has been appointed by the Vatican to study the activities of some orders of nuns in the United States.
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN July 1, 2009
The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.
Sister Sandra M. Schneiders has urged fellow nuns not to participate in the study that is being conducted by the Vatican.
Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming.
But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining — to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Why are they nuns, if they don’t like the conditions? Of course, if they signed on in the last 30 years, they were probably assuming the progressive trend would continue. Perhaps a compromise is called for. For example, the order could have their habits designed by some well-known designer like Isaac Mizrahi or someone.
Wow, what a concept, Catholic nuns working in Catholic institutions.
They should start the cull with her...
Horse manure.
Is that you, Sinkspur?
Here is a different sort of monastery near my hometown.
They also breed miniature horses.
Dot #1:
But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining — to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.
Dot #2:
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
None so blind as those who will not see.
The ONLY orders that have grown in the last 15 years are those that haven't gone the feminist route, and are faithful to the teachings of Jesus and His Church.
They should start with every Catholic school where a Nun is the Principal. My sister (by birth, not a nun) teaches religion at a Catholic High School. She often has conflicts with her Principal because the nun is so obviously liberal and does not adhere to Catholic doctrine and teachings especially regarding current events and morality. It frustrates the “bejezus” out of my sister who is very spiritual and has a Master’s in Theology (with more education and more knowledge of Catholocism than the Principal). But...she had the same situation at two previous Catholic schools over the years where the Principals and other nuns lived in their unreal worlds also.
It’s probably too late to ask Sally Field to take over the convents, right?
LOL, I haven’t heard that name in awhile.
As far as I'm concerned, that's the way it should be. Why become a nun in the first place? Prayer SHOULD be a major part of their life! And it's nice to see a nun that LOOKS like a nun!
Ping!
May this Pope live a hundred (more) years!
I worked with a young man whose mom was a former nun. She left the convent because it wasn’t “progressive enough”. The life of a nun is to live in humility and be a handmaiden of the Lord, not “I am woman hear me roar”. I later found out this guy’s mom was also a looney liberal.
The “Deacon” is back?
Correct. Also notice this about 'Sister':
“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.
Paging Pope Benedict XVI. time to schedule another meeting with that schismatic order of Jesuits
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