The largest organization of Roman Catholic nuns in America has come under fire from the Vatican, which has blasted the organization for promoting what Church officials called “radical feminist themes” while putting too much of their work into social justice and not enough into opposing abortion and gay marriage.
The “Leadership Conference of Women Religious” reportedly has 1,500 members who represent 80 percent of the 57,000 nuns in America. They have on occasion dared to question things like the Catholic church’s strict refusal to ordain women, its condemnation of homosexuals, and its opposition to the use of birth control, even by married Catholics.
Those radical feminist themes will get you in trouble every time.
The Vatican’s chastisement continues a conservative retreat in the Church, and follows an investigation by its doctrinal watchdogs, the “Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith,” which Pope Benedict XVI led back when he was Joseph Ratzinger. Church officials named Achbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle to oversee changes in the Leadership Conference, presumably to straighten out those scary women who dare to not only think for themselves but talk about it.
That’s one more reason I’m glad to be a Baptist.
Professor of Old Testament at Campbell University Divinity School in Buies Creek, North Carolina, and the Contributing Editor and Curriculum Writer at Good Faith Media.
