MinnPost,
Beth Hawkins writing a couple of days ago.
Last month, Benedict announced that a four-year Vatican investigation had found the Leadership Conference of Women Religious has challenged church teaching on homosexuality, the ordination of women and the 2010 health-care reform popularly dubbed Obamacare. Nuns, the investigation also concluded, spend too much energy on poverty and economic injustice and not enough on abortion and same-sex marriage.
With that as background, Sister Brigid, barely short of being an octogenarian and having seen it all, accordingly, gave an interview:
MinnPost: What are you hearing in your community about the decision?
Sister Brigid McDonald: Well, some are shocked that he would go that far, you know, to start using his power. To me, it is a misuse of power, a misuse of authority where he can step into religious communities and dictate how they should speak about these issues.
MP: When you say “he,” you are talking about Benedict?
SBM: Yes. I still call him Ratzinger. That fits him better. But that is just a personal bias.
I think they are overstepping their jurisdiction to expect that nuns are going to think as they tell us to think. To me those issues are not spiritual issues; many of them are political issues and some, of course, are social justice issues. I think that our personal spiritual life, it is another matter and that is our private belief.
I can't even begin to imagine what he could say or do that would change religious women's beliefs. I don't know how he plans to change that. That is of concern. That could be scary — what will he do to change our beliefs. You know, that scares me.
MP: Can you speak a little bit more about that, the difference between changing your belief and silencing you, and where that line gets murky?
SBM: You are right, those are two different issues. If he wants us just to shut up about how we believe and don't put it out in public, that is one issue. Or if he is really trying to get us to make statements that are opposite of our beliefs, I don't know what his motivation is for this. Other than control, I don't know what his motivation is. [...] You can't excommunicate hundreds of nuns.
Wouldn't that be kind of funny? Excommunicate the whole order! It is irrational. I don't know what other consequences there would be. [...] Why is he picking old nuns? More than half of us are over 75. [...] He should start with getting his priests together and try to help them through some of their problems. He should get after them for molestation.
MP: Somebody suggested to me that nuns in the past had enjoyed some latitude because you were thought to be powerless, and that in a strange way, this might be recognition that your ministry is powerful.
SBM: That is good insight. Because [before] we were just school teachers and we just had nice little kids in front of us, you know, and we just emptied bed pans in the nursing homes and in the hospitals. But now they are right, we are out there in the different movements. We help with the Occupy movement and the right-to-choice movements.
It is giving us more credibility in the public. Lots of times people will call and seek out our opinions about certain issues, where it never was that way when I entered the convent. [...]
[...] Nuns [traditionally] haven't been educated in theology. There are more theologians now. We go to workshops and we are at schools and we are taking classes and people are going on for further degrees in theology and stuff like that. So, maybe that is a threat that we are getting educated, especially in theology.
I see the bishops and priests don't get updated in theology. They are still back, for an expression, with Noah's ark.
[...] I am suspicious of the motivation. I don't think it is for the common good. They are trying to get us back, bring us back, as it was in the beginning and now as it will ever be, amen, or something like that. They want us back in the habits and being obedient. You don't belong out here with social workers. [...] I can't imagine it working. I think we are too wrapped up in the issues of the time. You can't just forget the common good and the people who are suffering right now. The more you are with those in pain, the more radical you become to overcome that pain. I don't think it is possible to go backwards.
Two closing links,
here and
here. While none have suggested Vatican involvement, some have felt there was insufficient grief. But aside from excommunication and death squad involvement against old nuns, is
that order or the
LCWR independently funded or reliant upon Rome for fiscal as well as spiritual guidance?