The Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns

In her typical wonderful way, Maureen Dowd has a column in today's New York Times that excoriates the Catholic Church hierarchy for its anti-women mindset and willingness to open its arms to Anglicans driven by bigotry and animus towards gays. Like many of the other anti-gay Christian denominations, the Roman Catholic Church is increasingly defined by who it dislikes and wants to make subservient as opposed to actual adherence to the Gospel message. Leading the charge is God’s Rottweiler, Pope Benedict XVI who typically looks like he has severe constipation or hemorrhoids. His latest targets for repression are American nuns, some of whom have the audacity to not see themselves as inferior beings. From my days as a Catholic, I still recall nuns that intellectually excelled priests by light years, yet they were always relegated to subordinate status even as the Church dug through the bottom of the barrel as it struggled to find more priests. Here are highlights from Maureen's column:

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In 2004, the cardinal who would become Pope Benedict XVI wrote a Vatican document urging women to be submissive partners, resisting any adversarial roles with men and cultivating “feminine values” like “listening, welcoming, humility, faithfulness, praise and waiting.” Nuns need to be even more sepia-toned for the über-conservative pope, who was christened “God’s Rottweiler” for his enforcement of orthodoxy.

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The Vatican is now conducting two inquisitions into the “quality of life” of American nuns, a dwindling group with an average age of about 70, hoping to herd them back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence. Nuns who took Vatican II as a mandate for reimagining their mission “started to look uppity to an awful lot of bishops and priests and, of course, the Vatican,” said Kenneth Briggs, the author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns.”

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The church enabled rampant pedophilia, but nuns who live in apartments and do social work with ailing gays? Sacrilegious! The pope can wear Serengeti sunglasses and expensive red loafers, but shorter hems for nuns? Disgraceful!

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As the Vatican is trying to wall off the “brides of Christ,” Cask of Amontillado style, it is welcoming extreme-right Anglicans into the Catholic Church — the ones who are disgruntled about female priests and openly gay bishops. Il Papa is even willing to bend Rome’s most doggedly held dogma, against married priests — as long as they’re clutching the Anglicans’ Book of Common Prayer. “Most of the Anglicans who want to move over to the Catholic Church under this deal are people who have scorned women as priests and have scorned gay people,” Briggs said. “The Vatican doesn’t care that these people are motivated by disdain.”

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When then-Cardinal Ratzinger was “The Enforcer” in Rome, he investigated and disciplined two American nuns. One, Jeannine Gramick, then of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, founded a ministry to reconcile gays with the church, which regards homosexual desires as “disordered.” The other, Mary Agnes Mansour of the Sisters of Mercy, headed the Michigan Department of Social Services, which, among other things, paid for abortions for poor women.

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Frankly, I wonder if the Roman Catholic Church would not be a far better institution if nuns - as opposed to pompous, patriarchal, bitter old queens in dresses - were in charge. Many nuns seem to have a better grasp on reality and the real world than most priests.

Why Churches Fear Gay Marriage

There is an interesting interview at Salon.com with author Richard Rodriguez, who is Mexican-American, gay and a practicing Catholic, in which Rodriguez discusses what he believes is the real issues behind Proposition 8 and why gay marriage terrifies some religious denominations. The answer? It's all about control, power and money. One might argue its part of the last gasp of male dominated religious groups that are trying to push back time and reassert a patriarchal system where women, minorities and gays all know their place and stay quiet and subservient. It's a lengthy piece, but is well worth the read. As a former Catholic, what he says about the anti-woman mindset in the Roman Catholic Church rings especially true. The hierarchy's message to women is: shut up, do as we say and don't you dare ask questions. The same message is there for gays. Naturally, Rodriguez's views do not cast a favorable light on the would be male chauvanist oppressors who falsely claim to be following God's plan. Here are some highlights*

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While conservative churches are busy trying to whip up another round of culture wars over same-sex marriage, Rodriguez says the real reason for their panic lies elsewhere: the breakdown of the traditional heterosexual family and the shifting role of women in society and the church itself. As the American family fractures and the majority of women choose to live without men, churches are losing their grip on power and scapegoating gays and lesbians for their failures.

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I also knew that large numbers of Californians in religious communities were voting against gay marriage and that Latinos and blacks were continuing to take part in this terribly tragedy. We persecute each other. The very communities that get discriminated against discriminate against other Americans.

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The possibility that a whole new generation of American males is being raised by women without men is very challenging for the churches. I think they want to reassert some sort of male authority over the order of things. I think the pro-Proposition 8 movement was really galvanized by an insecurity that churches are feeling now with the rise of women. Monotheistic religions feel threatened by the rise of feminism and the insistence, in many communities, that women take a bigger role in the church.

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If the Hispanic Catholic and evangelical churches really wanted to protect the family, they should address the issue of wife beating in Hispanic families and the misbehaviors of the father against the mother. But no, they go after gay marriage. It doesn't take any brilliance to notice that this is hypocrisy of such magnitude that you blame the gay couple living next door for the fact that you've just beaten your wife.

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[C]hurches are going after homosexuals as a way of insisting on their own propriety. They are insisting that they have a role to play in the general society as moral guardians, when what we have seen in the recent past is just the opposite. . . . .To my knowledge, the churches have not accepted responsibility for the Bush catastrophe. Having claimed, in some cases, that Bush was divinely inspired and his election was the will of God, they have failed to explain why the last eight years have been so catastrophic for America.

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The desert religions -- Judaism, Christianity and Islam -- are male religions. Their perception is that God is a male god and Allah is a male god. If the male is allowed to hold onto the power of God, then I think we are in terrible shape. I think what's coming out of Colorado Springs right now, with people like Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, is either the last or continuing gasp of a male hierarchy in religion. That's what's at stake.