Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
Maureen Dowd writing in the New York Times this past weekend about the Vatican-appointed commission to ensure doctrinal soundness among American nuns:
Even as Republicans try to wrestle women into chastity belts, the Vatican is trying to muzzle American nuns....While continuing to heal and educate, the community of sisters is aging and dying out because few younger women are willing to make such sacrifices for a church determined to bring women to heel.
Aging? Dying out? Consider the Sisters of Life, founded in 1991 with just eight women. The order, in which nuns spend four hours a day in prayer, devoting the rest of their waking hours to helping women with troubled pregnancies, has grown dramatically--as best I can tell from Googling around, they now number at least 100. And then there are the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, an order that has grown from four nuns upon its foundation in 1997 to more than 100 today--and in which the average age is just 28.
From the website of the Dominican Sisters of Mary (where I also found the photos):
At the dawn of the third millennium, Pope John Paul II called the Church to “take up her evangelizing mission with fresh enthusiasm,” to “put out into the deep” and to “open wide the doors to Christ!” This call was repeated by Pope Benedict XVI as he closed his Inaugural Homily....
The Sisters...look to expand their community’s presence geographically, since their Motherhouse, located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is now filled to capacity. In order to provide housing and adequate formation to the young women seeking to give their lives to Christ, the Sisters hope to establish priories in California and Texas.
Yes, Maureen, certain orders of American nuns are indeed dying out--but not the ones that forthrightly insist upon lives of sacrifice, sanctity, fidelity to the teachings of the Church, and devotion to the successor of Peter.
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Apr '11
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
That's why Maureen Dowd is on the opinion page not the news page.
Apr '12
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
I have yet to hear Republicans wanting chastity belts issued to women of childbearing years and with the bill picked up by tax payers. Yet, Democrats want birth control tab picked up by tax payers. Democrats have a bad habit of putting out (excuse the pun) the point that birth control is not wanted, but they do not explain the why not, e.g. Who is paying for yet another medical benefit?
Jun '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
Excellent background information on the Vatican's investigation of the LCWR:
(If the LCWR leaders were "stunned," they should've been stunned by what they were able to get away with for the last 20 or 30 years. They've been trading on the great respect that their selfless predecessors earned, but that legacy respect account finally went dry.)
Jimmy Akin talking to Ann Carey, author of Sisters in Crisis
http://www.ncregister.com/blog/jimmy-akin/sister-in-crisis-interview-the-transcript
May '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
It's happening all over the Church. Seminaries that emphasize prayer and sound doctrinal formation are bursting at the seams, while the more liberal ones are struggling to find vocations. The new, post-JP II theologians and catechists love the teachings of the Church. We find, too, a return to sacred music. Yesterday the very young (I mean, under 25) music director at our parish directed a newly formed motet choir in singing Palestrina's Sicut Cervus during the Communion meditation. It was heavenly. Here's another thing young Catholics love, embrace, and want to share with the world: the Church's vision for sexual morality.
Poor Maureen Dowd. She wanted to be avante grade and progressive, but she's actually way behind the times.
Edited on April 30, 2012 at 6:37pmMay '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
You so it the nail on the head here, Peter.
The thing that so many do not understand is that Goad made us to want structure, to want limits so we can connect to Him.
Islam is a fast growing, attractive creed that sets lots of limits. Watered down Christianity, with no limits provides very little in ways of demarcation from the secular world.
The Church must be different from the mundane world. The more profane it becomes, the less sacred. People need the sacred. While we are all fallen sinners, we should still strive for standards, and not just be the same as the world outside the Church.
In short, if we stand for nothing (or very little), we will fail in the Great Commission.
Mar '12
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
Who in their right mind listens to or reads Maureen Dowd?
Sep '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
When Cosmo readers want to feel literary and "with it" they turn to the mournful wailing of feminism's last drag on the cigarette, while the ashes spill into the trashcan of herstory.
Mar '11
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
katievs: .
Poor Maureen Dowd. She wanted to beavante grade and progressive
Her motives are nothing so whimsical. Like all the liberal women of her generation, she wanted to destroy the church and dance on its ashes. And had JPII not come along, she might well have succeeded. Now older liberals like Dowd remind me of old KGB agents in interviews from a book that I"m reading that bitterly ask "Why didn't we win? The world was going our way".
Dec '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
katievs: It's happening all over the Church.
Poor Maureen Dowd. She wanted to be avante garde and progressive, but she's actually way behind the times. · 20 minutes ago
Exactly! The Left is so utterly un-self-aware. Dowd has no idea how stale and lifeless her ideology is. The counter-culture today is found in the Church.
The un-habited pantsuited feminuns of the 60s/70s generation are dying out. But, what is there to attract anyone to their joyless, sexless (by which I mean so many are so butch it's hard to tell them from men), militantly feminist orders? God bless them, they're herstory (not a typo).
Dec '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
"Feminuns"! I love it!
The same is true of parishes, as George Weigel pointed out in his book, "Letters to a Young Catholic." I visited the parish in Greenville, SC, that Weigel described and found it bursting at the seams, despite (because of) long challenging homilies, Gregorian chant music, and several of the rote prayers in Latin. To borrow from katievs, "it was heavenly."
May '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
My sister is a biblical theologian. I remember her describing her speaking debut at a conference for Catholic biblical theologians. She said she gave what she thought (in her naiveté) was an entirely uncontroversial talk about the sources of unity in Scripture, among which were the historical narrative of the Hebrew people and "Divine Authorship". A grey-haired priest came up to her afterwards, sputtering with distress and indignation, and lambasting her and other young theologians for ruining everything his generation had worked toward by talking about the Divine Authorship of the Bible.
Poor man.
Edited on April 30, 2012 at 4:55pmMay '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
Katie, that's beautiful stuff.
When I lived in northern Virginia a couple years ago, I attended a parish in Chantilly-- St. Veronica-- that was heading in that direction as well. Their 11 AM Sunday Mass was in Latin, with chanted parts led by a young choir director, and plenty of incense. (It was always embarrassing when the five-year-old girl sitting across the aisle would chant the Gloria from memory as I struggled to keep up with the words out of the hymnal!)
Since I moved to Chicago's northwest suburbs, I have struggled to find any parish that even comes close to that. Does anyone know how to find a traditional-minded Catholic parish around here?
St. John Cantius Parish in the city is devoted to this kind of worship, and should be famous nationwide. A little too far away, though.
Sep '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
This fellow sums up the silly season of the last 50 years very diplomatically and effectively. The best part is its only a 4:00 video.
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
I think there are some similarities in Lutheranism. My congregation practices the traditional liturgies, far more traditional than any Catholic Mass I've attended, has rigorous catechesis, and sings the most challenging hymns, etc., etc. And we have pews filled with people of all ages -- to the point that we are expanding.
It doesn't fit the traditional narrative that people (usually people within the church, sadly) have about how to attract people to the church.
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
Beautifully, beautifully put--and I see the same thing in Catholics in their sixties and older all the time. They grew up thinking of themselves as revolutionaries...only to discover that the rising generation views them as reactionaries instead. Maureen Dowd, a certain number of older bishops, quite a few Jesuits of a certain age: all yesterday's people.
Apr '12
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
So, according to Dowd, women would want to be nuns if only the Church would lighten up on chastity? Hmm. What sort of nuns would *those* be?
Apr '12
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
*sigh* Remember, Catholics, despite the fact we devote an entire month every year to the Blessed Mother, despite our long history of female saints elevated and routinely celebrated, despite the fact that we celebrate the wonders of our female bodies by NOT breaking them using drugs to ward off unwanted births, despite the fact that fight to protect the lives of women from the moment they are conceived, despite all these things, we totally HATE women.
Honestly, it makes me wonder why I chose to convert. Clearly, I hate myself.
May '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
#1 - Peter...you gotta go cold turkey and give up the Times.
#2 - At a well-known righty website, we used to follow every Maureen Dowd post with a little salt in her emotional-relationship-past wounds...
May '10
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
So are we expected to pick up the cost of the Chastity Belts we're trying to wrestle the flower of American womanhood into ?
Re: Gee, Maureen, These Nuns Don't Look Dead to Me
Love this post & comments!