I mean it, baby! Actually, many nuns in America mean it and, as such, the Vatican is taking note:
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.
(snip)
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.
Yeah. I have something to say about this.
Now, I am all for religious freedom. Be whatever the fuck your God and/or Goddess tells you to be, or don't be anything at all, if you don't believe in the concept of a "higher power". But I've seriously got to object to the Catholic church because of their supreme lack of progress with regards to modern living, and attitudes about women and womens' roles in world society.
It is freaking 2009!, Vatican! Get a clue!
I was raised Catholic. I went to CCD (catechism, or Catholic education) from grades 1 to 12, until I was finally (!) confirmed. So now I'm married to God and shit. Every Monday after school, for 11 1/2 years, I would listen to nuns (a few nice ones, a few rude ones) tell me that my questions about God and my role in the Church were "blasphemy", and that I shouldn't be asking them to begin with, much less thinking them. I was once told that I was going to hell for not being able to get all the prayers down-pat. I was 10 at the time. My parents provided very little comfort, agreeing with Sister Whateverthefuckhernameis Idon'trememberbecauseIblockeditout.
From sophomore to senior years, I went to classmate Duane's house, and his mom taught CCD to a group of about 8 high school students. I remember a few things about Mrs. B., but I will never forget the conversation I had with her about womens' roles, in both the home and in society. Mrs. B. informed all the girls sitting at her kitchen table that they were to be, in fact, subservient to their husbands and to all males in positions of power. She quoted Bible passages. As you can imagine, I went complete apeshit on her, as did a few of my other female CCD compatriots. We considered that attitude to be old school, stupid, and insulting. We considered that attitude to be antithetical to Womens' Lib, and the prevailing equal rights platform that folks of the Suffrage movement worked so very hard to ensure for all chicks born in the great 'ole US of A.
So. I don't practice Catholicism anymore, as a direct result of those total crapola experiences.
But I have been extremely pleased, over the years since high school graduation, to read stories about present-day nuns taking notice of experiences like mine, to make sure they don't happen again. Not only have these fantastic sisters caught on, but they've also sought to make changes in terms of how the Catholic Church is perceived in the States. They even practice Reiki and stuff! How cool is that? I salute these modernized orders and I think they are doing truly awesome, community-based work. Apparently, though, the Vatican has a very different attitude.
"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. "Whereas we are religious, we’re living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet."
The more extensive of the two investigations is called an "Apostolic Visitation," and the Vatican has provided only a vague rationale for it: to "look into the quality of the life" of women’s religious institutes. The visitation is being conducted by Mother Mary Clare Millea, an apple-cheeked American with a black habit and smiling eyes, who is the superior general of her order, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and lives in Rome.
(snip)
Church historians said that the Vatican usually ordered an apostolic visitation when a particular institution had gone seriously astray.
The nun who's in charge of these pitiful investigations may be an American, but she lives in Rome. Rome! That's kind of a red flag, at least to me. Nevermind that these women do excellent work, and try very hard to understand life as it relates to God in 2009.
So let's get down to the real reasons, the real nitty-gritty, for the dumb investigations, OK? The gag-worthy reasons are as follows:
Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to "promote" the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.
(snip)
The Leadership Conference drew the Vatican’s wrath decades ago when its president welcomed Pope John Paul II to the United States with a plea for the ordination of women.
You GOT that, American nuns? Men and penis good, women and gays bad. You not get this, we hit you with brick and drag you to cave!
Grr. Argh. Commence with outrage.