What is going on with the US nuns?

[rep140]

Perhaps only women should be allowed to comment on this. My wife is a faithful Catholic woman who never misses Mass, teaches religious ed, etc. She agrees with Ms. Dowd.
Ditto for my daughter. Our parish could not function without women, but could get along without men except for the priest. In every committee women far outnumber men.

What the women religious are doing pales in comparison to the priest sex scandal.
JP2 ignored claims against the Legionaires of Mary head. Cardinal Law condoned and covered up in his diocese. Yet, when it comes to those powerless religious women…

 

[Joe_5859]

Perhaps only women should be allowed to comment on this. My wife is a faithful Catholic woman who never misses Mass, teaches religious ed, etc. She agrees with Ms. Dowd.
Ditto for my daughter. Our parish could not function without women, but could get along without men except for the priest. In every committee women far outnumber men.

What the women religious are doing pales in comparison to the priest sex scandal.
JP2 ignored claims against the Legionaires of Mary head. Cardinal Law condoned and covered up in his diocese. Yet, when it comes to those powerless religious women…

And yet, you chime in anyway.

My wife would be livid if she read that article. She’s far more cynical toward the “liberal” nuns than I am.

It’s pointless to get into a “Which sex contributes more to the Church?” (or alternately “Which sex has caused the most damage to the Church?”) debate. We all have our roles. And we have all fallen short.

 

[Indyann]

Maureen Dowd is, unfortunately, just another CINO who has the power to influence unsuspecting readers. Ho Hum:yawn:

 

[turtle18]

Perhaps only women should be allowed to comment on this. My wife is a faithful Catholic woman who never misses Mass, teaches religious ed, etc. She agrees with Ms. Dowd.
Ditto for my daughter. Our parish could not function without women, but could get along without men except for the priest. In every committee women far outnumber men.

What the women religious are doing pales in comparison to the priest sex scandal.
JP2 ignored claims against the Legionaires of Mary head. Cardinal Law condoned and covered up in his diocese. Yet, when it comes to those powerless religious women…

By the way, I am a woman. That is silly–does this mean I can’t form an opinion on priestly celibacy since I am a woman?

Just because the Roman Catholic Church handled the sex abuse scandal atriciously, doesn’t mean that they can’t or shouldn’t investigate religious orders.

The MAIN reason they are doing this is because the orders are dying off. They need to know why; They have a moral obligation to investigate this. Doesn’t anyone care that we don’t have any religious women to support the Church anymore? Or are you perfectly fine with having laity run everything–no matter how “faithful” they are; they don’t understand obedience. I mean we’ve even had it removed from the marriage vows because so many people find obedience objectionable.

The religious hold a beautiful role in our Church–they have made vows of obedience, chastity and poverty to deepen their relationship with Christ. I think it is great that laity want to “run” our churches but at the end of the day, their first responsiblity is to go home and take care of their family.

And I disagree completely with your assessment that your Church could get along without men except for the priest. Our Church needs strong, masculine men to lead and live faithful Christian lives AND be involved in the Church.

 

[Layman]

Our parish could not function without women, but could get along without men except for the priest. In every committee women far outnumber men.

I think women tend to be more interested in religion and spirituality generally; I’m guessing tarot readers and psychics would go out of business in a month if they had to rely solely on their male customers.

I also think the modern Mass doesn’t help; it seems more feminised. In the TLM, men seem to come more to the fore, I think because women are deliberately excluded from the sanctuary and also because you have a greater sense of ‘serious business goin’ on’. It’s also more technical, which is interesting to men.

Also, an old Master of Ceremonies I know said that “when girls become altar servers, the boys leave”.

Want more men involved? Get a TLM going, I’d suggest.

About the nuns: A previous poster made an important point: These orders are dying out. Apart from accusations of heresy, an investigation could also find out why that is happening.

 

[JReducation]

I’d like to chime in as a religious myself. There are a few points that are not coming to the fore here and they are important.

1. American nuns are not under investigation. Not a single community of nuns is under investigation.
2. Only sisters are under investigation, no nuns.
3. The only sisters under investigation are those communities that belong to the National Conference of Women Religious (NCWR).
4. Sisters who belong to the Conference of Major Superiors of Women Religious are not under investigation.
5. The leader of the team is a sister whose Motherhouse is in Rome, not at the Vatican. No religious community is allowed to have its Generalate at the Vatican.
6. The investigation is being executed by a team of secular priests, lay theologians, religious sisters, religious brothers, religious priests and bishops.
7. The concerns on the table are several: prayer life, decrease in vocations, community life, theological orthodoxy, care of the elderly sisters, and mission.
8. Individual sisters are not being singled out, nor are specific religious congregations.
9. The sisters have been invited to participate in a self-study of their own communities. They are not silent and passive subjects under investigation.
10. The reason for this study is because the Sacred Congregation for Religious Institutes and Societies of Apostolic Life realizes that it made a horrible mistake by not leading and guiding religious communities of men in the past, which then ended up in serious trouble (sexual abuse, promiscuity, heterodoxy, liturgical abuses, decline in vocations, misdirected mission statements, infidelity to their founders and so forth).

Now, the Sacred Congregation is trying to do its job and the press is up in arms. You can never please some people.

Fraternally,

Br. JR, OSF