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Breaking Habit: Feminist nuns Go Up Against the Vatican

August 10, 2012 @ 4:36 pm (Updated: 5:10 pm - 8/10/12 )

By Rachel Belle

nuns puic 2

Listen to Breaking Habit: Feminist Nuns Fight Against the Vatican

Having had no personal experience with nuns, when I think of the sisters, I think of what I've seen in movies: An older woman in full habit; perhaps a strict teacher at a Catholic school with very traditional values. But today's nuns are far more modern. Most have flung the impractical habit aside and not all of them work in a church.

"They are doctors, lawyers, hospital administrators, they are college presidents. Yes, they still teach, they still do nursing, prison ministry, they are journalists," says Gretchen Gundrum with the Seattle grassroots movement I Stand With The Sisters. "But their main mission is to provide justice for the marginalized. That's their calling."

As I learned today, nuns are basically feminists. Right now, 900 nuns from American Women Religious are gathered in St Louis, working on a response to a Vatican mandate that accuses of them of taking on radical feminist themes, wants to control who speaks at their events and...

"The Vatican says: We want you to speak out more against abortion. We want you to speak out more against contraception. We don't want you to be so outspoken in terms of supporting gays and lesbians. We don't like the idea that you think women should be ordained."

I Stand With The Sisters has planned a Seattle march, this Sunday, to stand in solidarity with American nuns.

"It felt like a heavy hand of censorship and it felt like it was treating adult woman disrespectfully. Not regarding their own intelligence and how they got to where they are. It feels particularly unfair to single out Women Religious who have been nothing but faithful and helpful. In fact, they're the people who have the best credibility in the church today."

Gundrum says the average age of a nun in America is 74 years old, so a lot of these woman have dedicated more than 50 years of service to the church and the people.

"To be told, at the end of your life, that you're bad and you're doing something wrong has had an enormously negative impact on morale, has caused a lot of self questioning. I think the best way to say it is that the sisters feel wounded by this."

As far as wanting the nuns to speak out against abortion and birth control.

"What they've said to the bishops is, we leave doctrinal teaching to you. We are providing service, we're doing outreach. You have the official teaching. It doesn't mean that they don't believe or they don't support the official teaching, that's just not how they're operating."

Today was the last day of the four day conference, and the sisters may or may not come up with a solution to present to a Seattle Archbishop, appointed by the Vatican to oversee this matter.

"On one extreme they could say, 'Yes, Your Excellence, we'll do whatever you say and submit to all these changes that you want us to do.' Or, the other extreme, they can say, 'We won't revise our statutes. We won't be canonical, we won't be under Rome anymore. We'll still be sisters, but we'll be separate.' More likely something in between will happen where they'll try to dialogue and maybe come to an understanding on both sides. I think there's a wide divide right now between how the hierarchy sees religious women and how they see themselves."

The Vatican's conservative view could be why there are so few women joining the sisterhood these days.

"There are many more options for service these days than there were. Frankly, the church is not a place of equal opportunity for women. If a woman is really talented and she had the gift, say, to be a priest or a bishop, there's no place for her to do that. So she might choose to work in the world and try and be authentic to those values."

If you want to stand with the sisters, and join them on their march this Sunday, click here to get details.

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Comments (14)


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  • boomshakalaka wrote...
    ....
    August 10, 2012 4:48 pm
    so, uhhh... if you don't like the teachings and vatican leadership, don't be a nun? maybe find another religion? geesh people.
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  • soo purletiv wrote...
    Can I get an AMEN?
    August 10, 2012 6:28 pm
    Oh, wait that is a different religion....

    I just about fell out of my chair laughing when I read this quote: "What they've said to the bishops is, we leave doctrinal teaching to you. We are providing service, we're doing outreach. You have the official teaching. It doesn't mean that they don't believe or they don't support the official teaching , that's just not how they're operating." (Bold mine)

    The equivalent of telling their supposed leader, Jesus: We love you. We love what you say. We support you wholly. We uphold your teachings and live by them daily. However, we refuse to abide by anything that you teach, and we have our own agenda. We will do what ever we want, while still calling ourselves your "followers"! And BTW: You will like it!

    Why would any organization, be it religious, political, financial or whatever, tolerate this stupidity by any of its members?

    Nuns are not forced to be such, nor is the church forced to accept such!

    They once had a teaching which allowed the church to excommunicate. Does this not rise to the level?

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  • longwayhome wrote...
    The nuns have it together
    August 10, 2012 8:30 pm
    Sensible group of people, sounds to me like they are tired of the neanderthal ways of the old school Catholics. Maybe the republican party could take a hint from these gals. Go nuns!
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  • Derrol_o wrote...
    Easy solution
    August 10, 2012 8:56 pm
    Go ahead and do your outreach and choose not to live by the church's "outdated" values that are in conflict with your progressive values. But like it or not, God's word is uncompromising and never changes. That's exactly why it's generally rejected by progressives, is politically incorrect and causes a lot of resentment and anger. If the nuns want to follow their own ideals and their own views on feminism, abortion, gay rights, etc., that's fine and that's their right. But what's the point of doing it as a nun and as part of a sisterhood that's governed by the Vatican? That makes no sense to me. The article mentions that the Vatican's conservative view could be why there are so few women joining the sisterhood these days. I think those women who choose not to join have the right idea. And the ones that do still choose to be nuns are pledging their life to a creed that is in conflict with their ideals. They can't have it both ways.
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  • kata wrote...
    why not just ditch the Habit
    August 10, 2012 10:43 pm
    It's like joining a bowling team and demanding you play softball. I simply just don't get people like this.
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  • Citizen of Krazy Town wrote...
    More power to them...
    August 11, 2012 4:16 pm
    The Catholic Church has evolved in the past and it can evolve again. The sisters have a long row to hoe, as the majority of non-US Catholic communities are far more conservative, globally.
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  • SeattleNative wrote...
    They can always...
    August 11, 2012 4:23 pm
    ...become Unitarians.

    Seriously, if you don't believe that abortion is murder and that marriage is a religious sacrament commanded by God to be between one man and one woman, then LEAVE the Catholic church. Please.

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  • Citizen of Krazy Town wrote...
    @SeattleNative: you could do a LITTLE research before spouting off
    August 11, 2012 6:45 pm
    The church is not accusing the sisters of promoting abortion and gay marriage (they don't BTW).

    They are primarily upset because the sisters have been having annual conferences for decades, on their own, without asking for complete control of the agenda from the Bishops, AND for allowing some speakers at those conferences to make statements that didn't exactly follow church doctrine.

    Also, they are upset because the sisters never publicly and fiercely repudiated those occasional speakers, one of which promoted the idea of female priests...IN 1977.

    Finally, they are upset because the sisters aren't having specific and formal teachings during those conferences against homosexuality and contraception and abortion. Ironically, I am hard pressed to recall the last time my priest had a specific teaching about those things in mass in my 40 years of attendance. I won't even go into the relaxed attitude of the Jesuits back in high school, which incidentally did more to draw me closer to the church than anything else.

    At the end of the day, this is more about the Holy See getting its nose bent out of shape because those lowly nuns had the gall to go and try to do someone on their own, than anything else.

    People like you, who hijack this issue to push your pro-life/anti-gay agenda as well as those on the pro-abortion and pro-LGBTQXYZBBQ side, are only serving to create more unrest and hatred which is antithetical to the goals of the Womens Religious in the first place.

    Educate yourself:

    http://www.usccb.org/loader.cfm?csModule=security/getfile&pageid=55544

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  • cigarfan wrote...
    @SeattleNative
    August 13, 2012 5:34 am
    What percentage of Catholic women use birth control that is not approved by the men in Rome?
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  • Hayduke wrote...
    Wow shark75 that is some stunning insight of yours.
    August 11, 2012 9:27 pm
    "Look, the church didn't have a pedophile problem, they had a faggot priest problem."

    OK, let's play along with your "logic." So when priests prey on underage boys, they're "faggot priests." But underage girls were also victimized. So the priests in these cases then are just "pedophiles?" Let me clue you in on both the law and moral values: When an adult preys on a child of EITHER sex, they are a PEDOPHILE. You got that? A sick, perverted child molester.

    Second the problem with the Church wasn't really about your so-called "faggot priests." It's about the fact that the Church is a criminal organization, found guilty worldwide of conspiring to enable and cover up these crimes to protect itself.

    If the Church actually gave as much of a damm about these kids as they claim to have for fetuses, they would have hung those scum out to dry and let the law deal with them. But no. The Church, until recently, has enjoyed, how should I put it? "special rights," that put them above the law. So these horrors went on for generations.

    But silly me. Apparently it's just some vast left-wing conspiracy to plant pedophiles in the Church to destroy it from within.

    Where do you come up with this crap?

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  • Rangerhawk wrote...
    Another great oxymoron for our times.
    August 12, 2012 8:00 am
    "Liberal Nuns." If you can't see the illogical argument here, you probably have a sticker with an "O" on your bumper too.
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  • Citizen of Krazy Town wrote...
    @rangerhawk: reading comprehension is hard
    August 12, 2012 3:51 pm
    Show me where you read that these nuns are being called, or call themselves, liberal.
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