They’re after the nuns in Seattle:
Seattle’s Catholic archbishop, J. Peter Sartain, who was already leading an effort to overturn the state’s gay marriage law, is now also leading a national crusade on behalf of the Vatican to investigate American nuns and force them to change their habits—as it were—in the next five years. All because, as the New York Times puts it, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious has been “focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping ‘silent’ on abortion and same-sex marriage.”
The Jesuits at Georgetown, who invited Catholic Jean Sebelius as a commencement speaker, are getting framing advice (via):
On Tuesday, the archdiocese of Washington, led by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, criticized Georgetown President John J. DeGioia for remarks he issued a day earlier — apparently to address the controversy — saying DeGioia had mischaracterized the issue as being about birth control. As the region’s top Catholic official, Wuerl is responsible for making sure Catholic institutions, including Georgetown, follow church teachings.
DeGioia “does not address the real issue for concern — the selection of a featured speaker whose actions as a public official present the most direct challenge to religious liberty in recent history,” reads the statement from the archdiocese, which covers the District and suburban Maryland.
I await the latest E.J. Dionne apologia explaining why liberal Catholics need to submit to the leadership of these assholes.
SenyroDave
If Jesus were alive today, the bishops would be criticizing him for focusing too much on the poor, and not enough on making sure that interpretations of scripture are not strictly enforced.
Assholes!
SenyroDave
If Jesus were alive today, the bishops would be criticizing him for focusing too much on the poor, and not enough on making sure that interpretations of scripture are not strictly enforced.
Assholes!
J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford
I think it’s spelled “Bishopricks”.
Sly
The Inquisition! Let’s begin….
The Inquisition! Look out sin…
salvage
I don’t want to be a troll here but on this topic I can’t help it. Fuck the Vatican and fuck anyone who think it anything more than a hive of scum and villainy.
Southern Beale
Thing is, when I saw the Sartain story last month I believe it said that he was appointed to this investigate-the-nuns post by the Vatican. So it’s not some personal jones he has, this is the institution picking a known enforcer.
Seattle is a problem diocese for the church. Several churches openly defied Sartain’s gay marriage thing, refusing to hold petition drives overturning gay marriage.
The church is marching on a road to irrelevance when it devotes its time and energy to such things.
ornery_curmudgeon
Yet the law prohibits religious groups from being involved in the political process, or they are to lose tax-exempt status.
Maybe we should do something about that.
Nicole
There. Fixed that for them.
Mary
I suspect that for most of the sisters the alternative to keeping silent on same sex marriage and abortion would be even less palatable to the bishops.
c u n d gulag
And forcing poor women to have babies eliminates poverty how…?
jibeaux
@salvage: I’m sure there are blogs on which that would be trolling, but this is not one of them.
Kirbster
I apparently need some sort of external manifestation of my apostasy to go with with internal one before I can request official excommunication. I’ve already donated to marriage equality in Massachusetts, so maybe a membership in NARAL, Planned Parenthood, or the Freedom From Religion Foundation (or all three) will convince the Bishop Coleman of my serious intent to renounce the RCC.
curiousleo
Seattle PI quoted a smart 15yr old who gets it in one: “They staff hospitals and schools and orphanages. They’ve done a lot more of the church’s real work than other people who are investigating them.”
Is it possible that, oddly, it will be this investigation of nuns and not the massive cover up of abuse that shines a brighter light on the way Rome & its bishops exercise their power?
curiousleo
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford: I laughed.
salvage
@jibeaux: Maybe but when I post here I like to bring more depth of thought than obscenities and hackneyed Star Wars references.
I dislike theism in general but don’t begrudge believers the comfort it brings except for Catholicism, I just don’t have much tolerance left for it. I want to calmly shriek at every Catholic in the world “What more do need them to do before you think that maybe they’re not the good guys?”.
Helping rapists attack children? How is that not the line?
jibeaux
Why, don’t you like us?
Face
Im sure those sistahs will have nun of this, and will continue with their bad habits.
cathyx
So I guess we’ll start seeing nuns at veteran’s funerals holding signs that say ‘God hates Fags’.
Schlemizel
@salvage:
Well, thats ignoring all the good they do! They made the trains run on time after all!
Schlemizel
@Schlemizel:
Oh wait, I just realized you were referring to the RCC and not the Italian Fascists of the 1930s – my bad.
4tehlulz
The nuns refusing to leave en masses shows that they are objectively pro-kid-fucker.
Ash Can
@jibeaux: Especially since more and more Catholics themselves feel the same way salvage does. At this rate, in 20 years, the (official) RC Church will consist of the college of cardinals, Bill Donohue, and a few thinly veiled voodoo sects in Africa.
Punchy
Habit-tat for Humanity
cathyx
Since what I wrote probably will not make it out of moderation, I will rewrite it.
So I guess we’ll start seeing nuns at veteran’s funerals holding signs that say ‘God hates F*gs’.
salvage
@Schlemizel:
You think you’re joking but I’ve been told that by apologists. Apparently an orphanage in Calcutta allows you an orgy like Caligula.
MattF
This is what you call a ‘facing’ problem. The Catholic institutions and parishioners face the public world on one hand, and face the Catholic hierarchy on the other. The archbishops face the Vatican on one hand and face the institutions and parishioners on the other. Not going to get fixed any time soon, so I don’t see the point of scolding.
In any event, even the liberal WaPo editorialists get this one:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/georgetown-gets-it-right-on-invitation-to-kathleen-sebelius/2012/05/16/gIQAZjGVUU_story.html
salvage
@4tehlulz:
I don’t know what it shows exactly but it certainly suggests a tolerance.
They covered up and aided in the rape of children, the current Pope had a direct hand in that.
Would you work for such a creature?
curiousleo
@4tehlulz: For nuns, especially older nuns, they really don’t have many options if they leave. Outside the RCC, they have no savings, no pension, no way to earn a living, no one to care for them as they age & die.
Ash Can
@4tehlulz: In all seriousness, I think there’s a decent chance of this happening if the sisters are forced to choose between their mission and Church politics. I know several ex-nuns, including relatives of mine, who didn’t hesitate to blow off their orders when push came to shove, and their situations weren’t even this severe. Pope Ratz wants a smaller, more
batshitideologically pure Church, and at this rate he’ll certainly get his wish.ExurbanMom
@salvage: That was my line. Myself and my child will never see the inside of a Catholic church again, unless it’s to marry or bury someone. I have 12 years of Catholic schooling and a strict Catholic family background, and I am never going back.
Pen
But don’t you know mistermix how this works mistermix? The RCC may be a corrupted INSTITUTION full of child rapists, petty despot wannabes, and corruption but the PEOPLE are different. Why, where else would they get their weekly shame on than the completely undemocratic organization where they have zero say in policy regardless pf what they think. Who else could they possibly gove their charity money to?
John PM
@Kirbster:
Yet a donation to NAMBLA would probably not get you excommunicated.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
The more things change…
Will this investigation be an Inquisition?
scav
I’ve now documented lines of telling the Catholic church to enjoy itself on both sides of my family to the 1700s — one side of which may pre-date the protestants eventually (I especially like that thread, the ethnicity throws people out of windows when upset. Any group contributing to not one but two historical Defenestrations is to be enjoyed). So, evidently, I’ve got priors and blood-experience of the Church backing authoritarian regimes. I may forgive the Hapsburgs. Not the bloody Church.
middlewest
Yet another reason I could never be an agnostic. Any being of sufficient intelligence, power, and goodness to be worshiped as a god would have inflicted these assholes with boils and locusts long ago.
gelfling545
@cathyx: I first read that as “God Hates Figs” and wondered what the biblical position on figs was & then recalled that Jesus DID tell a parable about the destroying of an unfruitful fig tree and suddenly realized that all this stuff was just a misprint and the morbidly religious can relax about gay folks & concentrate on trees.
Joey Maloney
@John PM:
Well, sure. What happens if you work for Sears and they find out you do all your shopping at JCPenneys?
CVS
So, at what point do we stop treating them like a religious institution and start treating them like a political institution that has to, you know, pay taxes?
Chuck
Did your auto-correct change the name of the HSS Secretary to the Finnish composer?
El Cid
A lot of Salvadoran and Guatemalan henchmen are still out of work; pay them well and tell them these are the same liberation theologists the Church happily watched get slaughtered throughout the 1980s, and the problem will get taken care of.
scav
@CVS: How how ’bout preventing them from ever building anything too near a school à la ground zero mosque (brings in protect the chillin too)? I’ve a fondness for multi-tasking. Besides, a proportion of the other lot equates freedom strictly with freedom from paying taxes.
k l m
Perhaps you mean Kathleen Sibelius? Jean was a composer whose been dead for over 50 years.
handsmile
Way back in 1879, in the chapter “The Grand Inquisitor” from The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky illuminated how Christ would be greeted by Church leaders should he return. Not to be a spoiler here, but the response won’t surprise you.
Far be it from me to suggest that people leave their gaming consoles to read classic literature, but the chapter itself can be read separable from the novel and is only about 20 pages long.
Even shorter and indeed more pertinent to the current Vatican assault on American nuns is this NYRB essay by Jesuit-trained historian and still practicing Catholic Garry Wills, “Bullying the Nuns”:
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/apr/24/bullying-nuns/
Here’s the first paragraph:
TG Chicago
@gelfling545: Indeed that protest movement has already begun. :)
magurakurin
@Southern Beale:
The Church does seem determined to be on the wrong side of history on gay marriage and gay rights.
Not that being on the wrong side of history is anything new for the RCC.
rikyrah
My money’s still on the nuns.
all the nuns that I have known have been kick ass, even the quiet ones that you don’t hear from.
Chris
It takes some balls for an American Catholic official to whine about that, considering that the bishops and most of the hierarchy have been doing the exact same thing in reverse (focusing on abortion and same-sex marriage while keeping COMPLETELY silent on poverty and economic injustice even as those things plummet).
Hey, so the nuns do the same thing as you, just, you know, the opposite. They complete you! What’s the matter, you don’t want ANYONE in your church focusing on poverty and economic injustice? Oh. That’s right, you really don’t…
Villago Delenda Est
@salvage:
Like us you do not?
redshirt
Is it accurate to say the Roman Catholic Church was a continuation of the Roman Empire? Or is that a stretch?
Villago Delenda Est
The situation in Seattle is interesting, because in the 80’s, the Vatican focused its Eye of Mordor on Raymond Hunthausen who was making some liberation theology noises about the Reagan Administration’s obsession with nuclear weapons, and JPII dispatched his enforcer, one Cardinal Ratzinger, to solve the problem.
gaz
This thread is not complete. Burnspesq has not come in to dismiss this, or apologize for the church yet. My guess is he’s probably too busy helping some rich prick dodge his tax responsibilities.
Ken
@rikyrah: Another reason to bet on the nuns: I’ve been at a couple of Catholic services recently (what Exurban Mom above calls “marry and bury”), and they always ask the parishioners to pray for the local bishop, cardinal, and the pope. Which I’m sure gets done, but I know the parishioners are praying for the nuns, without anyone telling them to do it.
Villago Delenda Est
@gaz:
Now, that’s not really fair to Burnsie. He does say, repeatedly, that he has no love for the beanies, and that they’re bad.
However, like E.J. Dionne, he refuses to follow through when confronted with such entrenched evil. Which is to hammer some theses on the door of his local parish church and then leave for the nearest Episcopalian shelter.
RSA
Where was the Catholic establishment in the past, when various Catholic universities invited George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condi Rice to be commencement speakers? Our individual tax dollars went to pay for torture, capital punishment, and the invasion of Iraq, but I don’t remember hearing a peep. I guess freedom is slavery in only some situations.
lol
Remember how conservatives rallied around Hunthausen in the name of religious freedom because he had a moral objection to paying taxes that fund nuclear weapons?
Oh wait, they garnished his wages instead and got him sacked.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@J.A.F. Rusty Shackleford:
Yup, I was going to tell him that he was missing a K in the title.
Clime Acts
So the nuns need to leave, en masse, and form independent orders of their own.
It would be difficult. So what?
Sleeping at night as a member of the RCC should be difficult enough already.
This Stockholm Syndrome based whining is boring.
Another Halocene Human
They’re a scum of hive and villainy.
Like polluted pond scum. But nastier. And a hive of hornets. The ugliest and nastiest and deadliest you can imagine.
Another Halocene Human
@redshirt: That’s what the RCC would like you believe, when actually Rome was jilted by Constantine in favor of Byzantium, now Istanbul.
Sucks to be Rome, I guess.
Villago Delenda Est
@salvage:
Ahem.
Wretched hive of scum and villainy.
/star wars geek pedant
May the Force be with you!
Another Halocene Human
@magurakurin:
Ha, what about treating women like human beings, or not sucking up to every horrible oppressive dictator who is looking to kiss the bishop’s ring while suppressing anyone who challenges them to hear the cries of the poor?
Like, that Church?
curiousleo
The other part of this censure of the nuns is the “control of finances” part. I wonder how much money, initially given to the various groups of sisters for their work, will be taken from the sisters and used to pay for the various legal costs and settlements (and lobbying for shortening the statute of limitations :vomit:) stemming from the sex abuse scandals.
Another Halocene Human
@Villago Delenda Est: The wretched is most apt in this case.
Clime Acts
@4tehlulz:
hmmm…don’t know about that, but definitely objectively codependent.
Another Halocene Human
@curiousleo: And no surprise most nuns are very elderly. Few want into that shitshow.
Mnemosyne
Psst. Kathleen Sebelius. I had to check the Georgetown website to see if maybe it was a different person with the same last name.
Also, too, I’m very jealous that the Georgetown grads get to have David Simon as their commencement speaker.
Another Halocene Human
@4tehlulz:
But they DID leave en masse in the 1960’s and 1970’s. There are very few nuns left in the US, even fewer under the age of 60.
Also, too, until recently some of the orders that served the poor kind of ran under the radar because they weren’t involved in the pope-kissing parish/bishop hierarchy politics. That has just changed. Franciscans, for example, used to minister to EVERYONE, including those not welcome in parish churches and even those who weren’t Catholic, and a lot of lay people and religious were involved in charitable organizations which received massive state grants. Thanks to Ratzi, that is all changing. Some have been forced to break with the Church and others have drastically shrunk their mission.
There are many cases of nuns keeping kiddy diddling priests AWAY FROM THE VULNERABLE TEENS THEY SERVED despite the fact that nuns basically have no rights in the RCC hierarchy and are supposed to take orders from priests. I mean, thankfully we had a women’s movement here and, one believed at least, the rule of secular law.
I find it rather rude to dismiss that in service of a glib point.
Very, very few American women in the last decade have become nuns. What remains is already the rump.
Another Halocene Human
@Kirbster: I got gay-married. I wonder if I would get an excommunication if I asked.
Has no legal bearing in the US, though, so there’s no impetus like in Ireland to bother.
Another Halocene Human
@c u n d gulag: Who said the Church was about ending poverty?
Another Halocene Human
@Sly:
What a day what a day
For an auto-da-fé
geg6
@Kirbster:
Don’t count on it. I actually went as far as sending a letter to the aforementioned Wuerl, when he was the bishop here in Pittsburgh, renouncing my Catholicism. I got a reply that said that only the church decides if and when you leave the church. They consider you a member for life (and count you as one of them when throwing around the numbers of their parishioners) unless and until they say so.
I told them to go get fucked. By someone of legal age.
gaz
@geg6:
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
My guess is they knew you were a woman, little lady, and so you do not get to make your own decisions.
Fuck them with a hot poker. Mere words cannot describe how much a loathe this satanic institution.
gaz
@geg6:
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
My guess is they knew you were a woman, little lady, and so you do not get to make your own decisions.
Fuck them with a hot p0k3r. Mere words cannot describe how much a loathe this satanic institution.
PS: FUCK BJ’s DUMB ASSED WORD BANS!!! ARGGG
Villago Delenda Est
@gaz:
It’s WordPress. They’re concerned that gambling is going on in this establishment. Hence that terrible word, p0k3r. It’s as bad as pen1s. Also, now that I mull over it for a moment, they’re related in another way…
MattF
@gaz: I suppose geg6’s baptism wasn’t voluntary.
gaz
@Villago Delenda Est: Hehehe.
I know it’s wordpress. It’s php, and can be eliminated so long as BJ doesn’t use a shared, hosted codebase. (I don’t think they do, considering that they’ve revamped the site more than once). It’s a matter of motivation on BJ’s part. I’ve offered to destroy the ban-list for free, so it’s really a matter of BJ priorities. It certainly gets in the way of discussions, and undercuts the spirit of JC’s “people can say what they need to say” mantra.
Lojasmo
@Villago Delenda Est:
As with people who vote for republicans, and are “very sad” about what the policies will do to their gay friends, and women. Assholes.
gaz
@MattF: I’d be SO angry were I in her shoes. I’d probably fill a super soaker full of urine and well, let’s just say I’d be spending a night in jail over what I did to the holy water, and the dude at the pulpit.
gaz
@Another Halocene Human: I remain conflicted about the nuns. On the one hand, I agree that remaining a part of that institution makes one objectively pro-kid-fucker. OTOH so many are not silent about their dissent, and go out of their way to work against the hierarchy. In the end, I think I’m leaning towards them leaving the church. They’re the best chance the church has at salvation, but in the end I don’t think the Catholics deserve them. (Although I suppose helping people that “don’t deserve it” is part of being a nun)… meh.
ETA: I suppose if I were being completely fair that I’d agree with Clime Acts, maybe not pro-kid-fucker, but definitely codependent.
cmorenc
@mistermix:
Query to what extent E.J. Dionne’s lingering apologia is due to his own hangups about his own guilty reluctance to openly break from his lifelong religious, social, and cultural attachments with Catholicism, versus his anxiety that a substantial part of his regular readership is comprised of socially liberal or moderate Catholics with the same guilty hangups over making any open break with the church, who might succumb to their guilt and quit reading him if he did openly, cleanly rebelled against the church and broke away. The dynamic involved is similar to why abused wives often have a hard time breaking away from the men who’ve repeatedly abused them; there’s a dependency/familiarity/guilt attachment that’s often surprisingly difficult to break away from, even when the objective evidence is abundant that it’s long past time to do so.
gaz
@cmorenc: It’s not quite the Stockholm Syndrome you make it out to be because the guilty hanger-ons are not the ones being abused. They’re not battered spouses, they are enablers. It’s closer to the mark to say they are the mom that sticks around even though the husband is raping her daughter.
mary
Don’t overlook the money. The Catholic Health Initiative controls many, many hospitals in the US. They are owned by nuns. Do you have a ___ Mercy Hospital in your area? That hospital is majority owned by the Sisters of Mercy. There are a lot of lawsuits to settle. If religious orders are disbanded by the Church, does the Church get their property? Also, many Catholics love and respect the nuns who do all the social outreach in the Catholic community. The priests and bishops…not so much.
geg6
@MattF:
No born Catholic has a voluntary baptism. Only converts get baptized voluntarily.
@gaz:
Nope, has nothing to do with gender. That is how it is in “the one holy and apostolic church.” SOP. In the past, you were supposed to be able to write a letter renouncing your membership in the church and, if they want to do it, they will acknowledge your letter, maybe have a meeting with you about it, and that would be the end of it. I thought that’s how it would go, which is why I took the step of formally doing it. Boy, was I wrong. Wuerl, a crazed ideologue if there ever was one, wasn’t having any of it. The guy I spoke to, Father Lengwin (I think that was his name), said that the bishop had determined that he would not be granting any of these requests except if the person would be converting to another religion. Since I am an atheist, that wasn’t going to happen.
cmorenc
@gaz: Actually, I think you have a good point that the better analogy to D.J. Dionne than being among the abused himself is that of the mom who hangs on with the marriage even though she knows dad is repeatedly raping the daughter, thereby making the mom an enabler.
gaz
@geg6: yeah i was being snarky =)
Ed Drone
@Villago Delenda Est:
That reminds me of a joke learned at my mother’s knee:
Q. What are the three most important parts of an old-fashioned wood-burning stove?
A. Lifter, leg, and pok3r.
(I spelled that last word in L33tish to avoid the dread time-out machine).
Ed
gaz
@geg6: should be easy enough to get excommunicated? =) hehehe – in the most public and offensive way possible. Oh, the possibilities are endless. Such fun.
Then again, who has the time? I can understand that ignoring the dumb pricks is probably easier and just as effective, if not as fun.
gaz
@cmorenc:
Lol, now I need 2 turntables and a pope’s hat
shortstop
@curiousleo: This is exactly right. And don’t think the Vatican doesn’t realize the nuns’ financial predicament as it lays the hammer on them for the crime of openly caring about the poor.
eemom
@geg6:
Thought you — and others — would be interested in this very informative account of the ongoing trial in Philadelphia, the horrifying revelations it has brought forth, and the big brass stones of the DJ and her team that have ripped the robes off those rotting scumbags.
johnny orogeny
In other words, the nuns must stop doing what Jesus did.
Felinious Wench
Episcopalians have nuns too. We’ll take ’em. :)
And I don’t have violent enough words to express the disgust I feel for the statement that “the Leadership Conference of Women Religious has been “focusing its work too much on poverty and economic injustice, while keeping ‘silent’ on abortion and same-sex marriage.”
If I believed in hell, I’d gladly give the bishops a handbasket.
gelfling545
@Clime Acts: That is easier said than done. There are few young nuns these days and those still able to work have to consider the care of their very aged sisters. There is no social security, no pension fund for an elderly nun. They also have to consider the people they serve. One does not shut down an npo & reopen it as something else in a day. Large institutions like the colleges, hospitals, etc. could disassociate from Rome & most likely continue on their own with little interruption but the ministries nuns often serve in are small but badly needed operations whose clientele would have nowhere else to turn and which only exist because things like umbrella insurance policies, tax exemptions, etc. are channeled through the Diocese.
gelfling545
@Felinious Wench: ELCA has still Deaconess communities, I think. The sisters would probably feel more at home among the Lutherans or Episcopalians that in the rcc as it is today.
lorimakesquilts
@Kirbster:
Wait a second. You have to *prove* you don’t believe in the religion of the RCC? lol Wow, that’s really mind-boggling, I mean, all you really have to do is say you want in, but you can’t do that to get out? (No doubt there are classes or some such, but that’s still just saying it.)
Darkrose
@Another Halocene Human:
You know, really that’s nobody’s business but the Turks’.
Darkrose
@Felinious Wench:
Ironically, one of the Episcopal nuns I knew when I was a kid in Chicago left for the Romans because she was upset about female priests.
shortstop
@Darkrose: Did you go to Ascension? I don’t know any other place in Chicago that has Episcopal nuns, at least nowadays.
Jebediah
@Darkrose:
Love that song!