Not that all nuns are saints. I’m just saying.

@J.D. You’re too kind. I love writing about religion. My own spiritual views are a bit in flux right now, and covering women of faith is definitely something that I find to be intellectually challenging in the best way.

As x. trapnel points out, this is part of a much longer history, stretching back as early as the first century, of church efforts to control female religious life. Many of the disciplined of course later being recognized as saints. To be fair they also discipline radical male religious, but that doesn’t erase the gendered aspect of what is happening here. Though the investigator is a woman thank goodness, the male supremacist nature of the Vatican means this practice is inherently a sexist exercise in the male gaze and baldly patriarchal control of womens spiritual life. It’s sad that the Vatican and in particular Benedict can’t see how deeply their institutional misogyny poisons and corrupts even legitimate uses of power.

Can I also just give a huge shout out to all the harpies; for a quartet of godless heathens you guys give great coverage and respect to religious women.

Maybe it shouldn’t have, since they were one of the few orders left who wore habits and a few of my teachers were vocally anti-choice, but I remember them as being very committed to calling out sexism in the media. The same nun who had us make luminaria for an anti-choice demonstration in our town square also decried the message of the movie Grease, which was experiencing a revival when I was in junior high in the late 1990s (the message being that girls should change for a boy so they can keep him by any means necessary). I don’t know. It’s a small example, but it wasn’t rare. This upsets me more than I thought it would.

And yeah, SOALG, if he’s not sorry about the whole Nazi thing, he’s not familiar with the concept.

@mischiefmanager: I confess I always liked the idea of being a cloistered nun as a child, but there was always that whole atheism thing standing in the way. Also, my Jewish mother would probably be shocked into an early grave.

As for the Pope ruing the decision, Benedict doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who has much use for regrets.

The Dominican sisters of Blauvelt

http://www.opblauvelt.org/

The were not cloistered but in fact were and continue to be remarkably involved in society. The website for the convent has sections on social justice and caring for the earth for God’s sake! I wish that American catholics would form their own denomination and tell the pope to suck it!