As the Vatican's long overdue investigation of women's religious orders in the United States approaches, it is interesting to see the reactions of "new era" nuns like Sister Sandra Schneiders, an instructor at Berkeley California's Jesuit School of Theology, who sent this email to her colleagues:
...we can receive them, politely and kindly, for what they are, uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house. When people ask questions they shouldn't ask, the questions should be answered accordingly.
Of course, the secular press is also having an anti-Catholic field day with this, as they paint a picture of a "sexist, authoritarian instutition" seeking to "keep women in their place". For instance, Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin wrote on the visitation in a story entitled, "Why Is the Vatican Going After Nuns?", which includes such perceptive insights as this:
There can be good reasons for the church to conduct a study of its nuns. Their numbers are declining fast. Their communities are shrinking. And we all could, in whatever work we do, profit from studying how well we're performing.
But frankly, these investigations are really about dissent in the Catholic Church and how to stop it. You know, women's ordination, homosexuality, birth control, abortion and celibacy.
And this process is nothing more than an assertion of control. Because the conclusions of the studies will stay confidential, the sisters may never know the outcome. But just by conducting the probes, the bishops are warning the sisters to sit a little straighter in their chairs.
By applying secular standards to religious life, Marin and others like her miss the point: These women chose to take vows and serve the Church. It would not have been fair if I had married my wife and later argued that we should have an "open marriage" because society's standards have changed.
If you know anything about the state of women's religious orders in the United States, the picture is bleak. They are aging out, disappearing and growing increasingly irrelevant--yet at the same time, traditional orders that stick to their original vocations and unashamedly wear the habits that set them apart as Brides of Christ are thriving (You can click here for just one example).
The scandal of modern nuns in the United States is directly related to their choice to deviate from their vocations. Instead of imitating the Mother of God and setting the example of virtue for all people, many of these orders have chosen a different path: New Age Spirituality, Reiki, Liberation Theology, Militant Lesbianism, Homosexual Rights, Abortion Rights, Wicca, and every new thing in secular politics.
Which begs the question: If they hate the Vatican so much, why do they even want to be part of the Church?
2 comments:
The nuns have been subjected to the same perspective that has so afflicted the Church at large since Vatican II. Odd, in a way, that the Church after Vatican II has just discovered the perspective of the Renaissance. If the Middle Ages saw reality in vertical terms, the Renaissance (including the mis-named “Reformation” and all the human rationalism that followed) discarded the vertical view in favor of the horizontal. But the Church had always included the horizontal view in “the second greatest commandment”; i.e., to love one’s neighbor as oneself. The socio-political secular discovery of horizontalism was revolutionary only to the secular world, not to the Church (the anvil on which so many hammers are worn out).
But here’s the problem for all the discoverers of the horizontal: The vertical precedes the horizontal. The second is just that—second. The first is still the first: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. These late-comers to horizontalism, to the humanism of the second commandment, have mistakenly believed that their discovery renders the first commandment irrelevant. So we get their arrogant “new” Logos: There is no need for love of God. We need only love each other. I love my fellow human beings. That is enough. We get block-party liturgy, advocacy of homosexual “love,” and all the rest—including nuns who believe their vocation exists outside the authority of the Church. There is a pathos here. No love of any kind can exist for long when it is cut off from its Source. And guess what? We are not the Source. “God is love” does not mean that “love is God.” They have tried to reverse the first and second commandments. The second is not the first. We have burn-out everywhere, we have loss of authority everywhere, we have divorce, abortion, the destruction of the family—and we have priests and nuns who behave like self-congratulating social workers, at best. They are inevitably contemptuous of those they call “traditionalists.” Contempt for tradition is a fruit of their order and by their fruits, we know them. You must love God first, not each other. You must worship him in liturgy, not each other. You must recognize that your love has its source in him, not in yourself, and apart from him, you can do nothing. With that understanding, obedience to authority is a reflex, not an imposition. Love is infinite, not finite. It is immortal; it does not die. With that understanding, we have the infinitely fecund love of God descending from Heaven to the barren flatness of human life. We have the Cross. And we have the Church.
Another fast-growing traditional order is the Sisters of Mary in Michigan. The photos are wonderful. Never seen so many smiling faces! They are growing so fast they can't keep up and the average age is in the 20's. http://www.sistersofmary.org/
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