FEAR THEM. And then kick them. Via navelless @ Flickr.
I’m not Catholic, I’m an atheist. But it doesn’t really matter what faith you hold or don’t hold if you’re a woman. The smarmy Damien Thompson would like to remind you–and more importantly, everyone else–that women who speak up for themselves are deserving of a good kick.
In his blog for the Telegraph, Thompson, who is also the Editor in Chief of the Herald newspaper, a Catholic publication, doesn’t have much of value to say about the actual issue at hand, which is: a group of liberal-leaning nuns who seem to focus somewhat on social justice causes* in the US (Sisters, Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary hereafter IHM) are putting up some sort of resistance to a visit, which they see as hostilely motivated, from Vatican representatives.
Thompson provides few links, neither does he limn the concerns that Sr. Sandra M. Schneiders actually outlines in a now published email , which is basically that she considers the Vatican visit a threat to their work, because the IHM Sisters are “no longer ‘Congregations dedicated to works of the apostolate’ – that is, monastic communities whose members ‘go out’ to do institutionalized works basically assigned by the hierarchy as an extension of their agendas, e.g., in Catholic schools and hospitals, etc. We are ministerial Religious. Ministry is integral to our identity and vocation.”
Sr. Schneiders (who is also Professor Schneiders) is claiming the authority of ministry, not just service to the Church, for herself and her sister nuns. And it seems the Vatican, under Papa Ratzi, is none too happy about it.
Now, while this is fascinating whatever side of the debate you’re on, I am unqualified to dissect the theological nuances of her position or the changing face of the Catholic Church (I can only say that helping your community seems more valuable than being blindly obedient to one of the most powerful manifestations of Patriarchy on the planet, but again: atheist). And it seems like Mr. Thompson is as well, despite being himself a Catholic and obviously interested in that institution’s continuance.
No, rather than engaging thoughtfully with the issues, Mr. Thompson instead takes the opportunity to engage in a jolly bit of woman-bashing. From the first sentence, Thompson makes clear that nuns are formidable and terrifying (which of course women have no right to be). You’d think he’d have got over his elementary education experience, but he goes on to pull out a shopworn array of flaccid insults about women living without direct male supervison and lumps them together in an absolute clusterfuck of sexist/classist/nationalist assumptions: these American nuns wear Birkenstocks (dykes!); they drink fair-trade coffee (elitists!); they discuss carbon footprints (fuckin’ hippies!); and the kicker: they’re fat (fatties!). Ho ho ho, Mr. Thompson, you’ve got their number! “Activist butt!” Zing!
I completely understand that Mr. Thompson doesn’t like what these sisters stand for, and he has every right to address what I would guess he views as their heretical perversions of the One True Church’s teachings. But he’s not doing that. He’s bagging on nuns for their looks.
And, unsurprisingly–misogynists looooooove to do this–he borrows the words of a woman, Elizabeth Scalia, to bash them further, painting them as snooty society dames turning up their noses at the rabble. Except that again 1) neither Scalia nor Thompson offers any actual critique of what the IHM sisters are doing, and 2) these are nuns, who have commited their lives to service of others. Really? This is what he considers “the enemy”?
But why bother to inspect a woman’s actions or beliefs when it’s so much easier build a straw-nun and then bash that? Good show, Mr. Thompson. I’m sure you’ve made Catholics everywhere proud.
* I don’t have any details; please share info in comments if you do about these sisters’ work.
What are you harpies baiting me today with your cop-bashing and nun-defending? Yeah, I’m sure these motherfuckers calling nuns fat and ugly are sooooo much more pure and Catholic and orthodox than the sisters who have fucking devoted their lives, focused all their power and money and sexuality and their relationships and family and education and time, in service to others in the name of Jesus Christ and the Catholic Church, which honestly doesn’t deserve their devotion. It’s also stupid, ignorant and ridiculous that both these critics are acting like it’s newfangled that the sisters’ community doesn’t want interference from the Vatican. That’s an age old struggle both in male and female religious catholic communities and sisters have been agitating in resistance to patriarchal bullshit interventions from the men in Rome since day one (some of them. others, obvs, love patriarchal bullshit from rome.). ugh it just gives me the fucking willies that these women have chosen voluntary abstention from sex and sexiness in order to have a kind of power that is free from those forms of constraints and these LAY people, who have no idea what that kind of sacrifice means, are suggesting that they should be sexier (and thus more OBEDIENT, somehow). It’s so gross and in my opinion totally uncatholic. But I guess if you are conservative and patriarchal, that stands in for orthodoxy and adherence to religious teachings. Ugh. I’m grossed out for the day. You’ll notice the writer in a later post raves respectfully about another order of nuns http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/damian_thompson/blog/2009/03/05/wonderful_contemplative_nuns_bring_traditional_latin_worship_back_to_cornwall
who he calls “dynamic” and “charismatic.” Fine, you’re into traditionalist orders. But don’t try and sluttify orders who disagree with you on theological matters. It just shows so clearly the lines between patriarchal control of women and sexuality — even a NUN is not immune. Jesus Christ. Ok I better stop typing now.
I can just picture them clenching their fists and pursing their lips with rage, sputtering, “Well you’re ugly!”
…the worst possible thing a woman can be. :eye roll:
a NUN. if a nun can’t be ugly, i just don’t know what to do anymore.
May I just say I love the moniker Papa Ratzi.
THEY ARE NUNS. Julie Andrews was not a real nun. They will not all look like her! I am done with this shit. Oy.
Because it’s not enough for the Church to treat you like a slave while their priests go merrily molesting with total impunity. The laity’s going to tell you that your ass is too big.
And people wonder why so few women become nuns these days…
Well, why there are so few nuns (and priests, and friars) is a good question, Becky, and one that I think is worth investigating from a feminist viewpoint. But that might generate discussion, which we simply can’t have, and besides, we know the answer: uppity women = fewer nuns. The obvious solution is to breed more women who will happily place their necks under the Pope’s boot. So, Catholics: gets ta fuckin’ (within the bonds of holy, Pope-sanctioned wedlock only, please)!
Pssht, they gotta look GOOD to be virginal and do the work of their God. No comfortable shoes for them!
Sheesh. Even in Unresolved Catholic School Issue Land, it has never been expected that a nun should look good. Apparently with this guy, if they’re going to not wear standard issue 1950s nun shoes, they’d better be wearing stilettos and not perfectly comfortable and durable sandals with good arch support that happen not to be wildly hot. You can only break from the standard to make yourself hotter, right?
“No fat chicks.” -God
omg sarah that is hilarious.
i’m very interested in why there are not as many women religious (not as many men either, at least in amurrrrica, land of the free). it seems very clear to me that consecrated life was really attractive when your only other option was marriage. it’s like being a lesbian separatist, only with less fucking…maybe. now you can theoretically choose to live with or without a man, with or without other women, can choose to be educated and work or to stay indoors or to have a family or not. you can live like a nun with no vatican in your way, even!
it’s funny (and only very tangentially related), whenever my mom meets a sort of butch-ish lesbian she goes, “oh that is the kind of woman who would have become a nun in my day.” I’m like, um, a lesbian mom? And she gets mad and tells me not every lady with short hair, no makeup and birkenstocks is a lesbian. And she is right about that. But also her gaydar is totally suppressed.
@PhDork: More than a few books have been written on the collapse of women’s religious communitis in the late 20th Century, some from a feminist perspective, some not. The answer is short and unsurprising: the feminist movement. When the religious life was no longer the easiest–or in some cases, the only–path to a university education, a career and a respectable unmarried life, women stopped joining sisterhoods and many of the ones who had headed for the exits.
An excellent first-person account of this is FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN by my friend Sr. Karol Jackowski. It’s about becoming a nun just before the reforms of Vatican II and the feminist revolution. Of the 70-odd women who joined the sisterhood in her class, only 3 are still nuns. She is one of them.
Hey! My Aunt is an IHM nun, and practicing psychotherapist (and the champion women’s amateur golfer for her age group in California) — they are a fabulous order — they’re totally liberal, taught me that G-d is Love and so much bigger than we even know. Now that I think about it, everything they taught me is why I’ve, um, left the Church. Lay off my girls, you old dried up irrelevant, nazi-defending Pope.
This has nothing to do with nuns, but everything to do with patriarchy.
As a born (but not raised) Catholic, in my estimation I doubt that Jesus would be very proud of this (or any other) religion. I just read a story about a 9-year-old girl in Brazil who was raped by her stepfather and pregnant with twins. The Catholic church is up in arms because she had an abortion (which is illegal there, but still: health of the mother, who is a tiny child herself, twins… hello?!).
Charlotte, thanks for the insight, and big ups to your Aunt. You, too, Becks. That book sounds really fascinating.
I have no doubt that feminism is largely responsible for the end of female religious orders. Looking through history, you find that if you allow people an education, they’re going to want to use it, and they might not use it the way that you want them to. I always thought that if I were born into a much earlier era, I might well have ended up a nun.
Questions about “are these nuns still truly Catholic?” and “is Catholicism worth ‘reforming’?” are troublesome and arguable, wether you’re a member of the faith or not, but these are questions that Thompson (who clearly has never gotten over Vatican II) would never bother to ask.
Okay, nuns are formidable and terrifying (especially when the catch on to the fact that you’re not buying their Catholicism line), but at least these nuns are doing something good for their communities. Good for them. They have earned their activist butts!
@PhDork: psst…a copy can be made available to you should you be interested…
Have you ladies READ the comments on that blog???? OMG.. it is scary and infuriating AS HELL to realize there are even MORE people out there that are equally sexist. And as a pagan/Goddessian the jabs at Wicca and Neopaganism are also extremely insulting. sigh.
I did, Lisa, and thought about warning readers away from them, as they are even yet still more noxious than the stuff spewed by Thompson. But then sometimes those warnings prompt people to read them, and I wouldn’t want anyone to subject herself to that.
haha. sigh. which is exactly what I did.
JD–My mom totally has no data on this besides being a 55-year-old Catholic woman with a nun aunt, but she’s convinced that the reason that there are fewer nuns and priests (and why there is a high rate of pedophilia in priests) is the fact that they can’t get married and have kids. Again, no data, but I don’t think other religions are hurting as much because they require less sacrifice than Catholicism. A friend is in divinity school to become an Episcopalian priest… and she can! Despite having two X chromosomes! She says that there are a lot of gay men and women at her school too because they are members of other branches of Christianity that are accepting of homosexuality.
But yeah, now that you can be single and have a job and whatnot, Catholic religious orders are not so attractive. It will be interesting to see if this changes–there is already an extreme shortage of nuns, and I’m sure the priesthood will suffer increasingly as well because of aging out. Will the rules have to change so that there will still be enough people to hold mass?
I think Benedict would have to die first.
@DangerMouse: There’s already a crisis in Church over the lack of new priests. Seminary enrollment is waaaay down over where it was at its height some 60 years ago, and as the old priests retire or die, there are a lot of parishes that don’t have a full-time priest. It’s not as acute as the drop-off in women’s vocations, but it’s a serious problem for the church in the US.
Contrast that with the mainline Protestant denominations, whose seminaries are full, and full of women. Over 50% of students at Episcopalian, Methodist and Presbyterian seminaries are women (and many of them women who are turning to the ministry as a second career). The only exception are the Southern Baptists, b/c their ignorant-ass leadership actively discourages women from seeking pulpits (although there are still women who do so).
I completely agree with you that celibacy is a huge part of why so many men these days don’t want to be priests. When you combine that with the fact that the Church denies the priesthood to half the population, they’re obviously not going to increase their ranks anytime soon.
I still think there is a small but important percentage of the population who would choose to live in celibacy. There are compelling reasons to choose not to have children and/or sex. I would like to see all different models or orders of religious life, some of which might allow sex and families and others not. Somebody wrote an article inspired by “Doubt” that suggests that the loss of nuns helped facilitate sexual abuse as they would often act as watchdogs over the priests. I don’t know if that narrative is based on anything real but it’s interesting to consider the unexpected consequences of women’s diminished role in religious life.
Also orphanages, education and childcare are important historical projects of religious women. So in a way you do get family life, it’s just a different form.
@JDRegent: True–women could definitely have a semblance of family life and true emotional intimacy in a religious life. And I would argue that in the bad old days–by which I mean 200 or 500 or 700 years ago, a celibate lifestyle, even if it was cloistered, might have seemed infinitely preferable to early marriage, constant pregnancy and death in childbirth (particularly for lesbians).
@PhDork: do you mind if I email you a response to this? I have SO much to say, but I don’t want to write a novel here.
Sure, you can email (link is in the right hand column), but I don’t mind novels.
Yes Becky, but I think even these days it would be nice for a lot of people to have chosen celibacy as a community-supported lifestyle.
I went to college with a girl who became a nun. She wasn’t raised Catholic, but said she felt called to a simpler life with more direction and purpose. I also know people who join the military because having someone telling you what to do with your life appeals to them. I think there will always be some people who are more comfortable in a hierarchical structure, with a clear chain of command. But not many people.
Are there more (young) nuns in poorer countries? What about in countries where Catholicism is more revered, like Italy or South American countries? Here, it seems like a weird choice to everyone around you – nobody understands why a twenty-year old biochem major is going to cloister herself. But in more religious countries is it less questioned?
Hi, there. I’m a nun. A sister really, as the technical def. of nun is a cloistered contemplative and, like Sr Sandra Schneiders, I belong to an apostolic, or ministerial, congregation. I appreciate the great dialogue – questioning – discussion going on here (as opposed to Thompson’s diatribe)… Just wanted to say “hey” and mention that if you compare numbers of religious in the US to the mid 20th century, then yes, it does come up dramatically shy of the numbers… but if you look at the bigger, more ancient, picture, you’ll see that religous life has always gone through cycles of larger and smaller periods. Some are still called to live in community, with vows, for others. . . some are called elsewhere… yet I do believe that all are called somewhere.
And yes, there are very numerous young sisters and nuns in Latin American and Developing nations. It is still a way God calls some to education, formation, and inspiration – whether they remain forever or for a time in this one form of religious life.
Peace and All Good, Sr. Christine (aka sister christer). Oh, and I LOVE your blog title!
Sister, I cannot adequately describe how tickled I am to read your comment. Thank you for your comment and first-hand knowledge about the ebb and flow of religious life. I’m not sure how you found us, but I am very glad that you did.