[Vision2020] Bishops Play Church Queens as Pawns

[Art Deco]

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April 28, 2012
Bishops Play Church Queens as Pawns By MAUREEN
DOWD<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/maureendowd/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

WASHINGTON

IT is an astonishing thing that historians will look back and puzzle over,
that in the 21st century, American women were such hunted creatures.

Even as Republicans try to wrestle women into chastity belts, the Vatican
is trying to muzzle American nuns.

Who thinks it’s cool to bully 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.

Yet the nuns must be yanked into line by the crepuscular, medieval men who
run the Catholic Church.

“It’s not terribly unlike the days of yore when they singled out people in
the rough days of the Inquisition,” said Kenneth Briggs, the author of
“Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American
Nuns.”

How can the church hierarchy be more offended by the nuns’ impassioned
advocacy for the poor than by priests’ sordid pedophilia?

How do you take spiritual direction from a church that seems to be losing
its soul?

It has become a habit for the church to go after women. A Worcester, Mass.,
bishop successfully fought to get a commencement speech invitation taken
away from Vicki Kennedy, widow of Teddy Kennedy, because of her positions
on some social issues. And an Indiana woman named Emily Herx has filed a
lawsuit saying she was fired from her job teaching in a Catholic school and
denounced as a “grave, immoral sinner” by the parish pastor after she used
fertility treatments to try to get pregnant with her husband.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York recently told The Wall Street Journal
that only “a tiny minority” of priests were tainted by the sex abuse
scandal. But it’s a global shame spiral. The church leadership never
recoiled in horror from pedophilia, yet it recoils in horror from outspoken
nuns.

In Philadelphia, Msgr. William Lynn, 61, is the first church supervisor to
go on trial for child endangerment. He is fighting charges that he may have
covered up for 20 priests accused of sexual abuse and left in the ministry,
often transferred to unwitting parishes.

Somehow the Philadelphia church leaders decided that the Rev. Thomas Smith
was not sexually motivated when he made boys strip and be whipped playing
Christ in a Passion play. Somehow they decided an altar boy who said he was
raped by two priests and his fifth-grade teacher was not the one in need of
protection.

Instead of looking deep into its own heart and soul, the church is going
after the women who are the heart and soul of parishes, schools and
hospitals.

The stunned sisters are debating how to respond after the Vatican’s
scorching reprimand to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the
main association of American Catholic nuns. The bishops were obviously
peeved that some nuns had the temerity to speak out in support of President
Obama’s health care plan, including his compromise on contraception for
religious hospitals.

The Vatican accused the nuns of pushing “radical feminist themes,” and said
they were not vocal enough in parroting church policy against the
ordination of women as priests and against abortion, contraception and
homosexual relationships.

In a blatant “Shut up and sit down, sisters” moment, the Vatican’s
doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, noted,
“Occasional public statements by the L.C.W.R. that disagree with or
challenge positions taken by the bishops, who are the church’s authentic
teachers of faith and morals, are not compatible with its purpose.”

Pope Benedict, who became known as “God’s Rottweiler” when he was the
cardinal conducting the office’s loyalty tests, assigned Archbishop J.
Peter Sartain of Seattle to crack down on the climate of “corporate
dissent” among the poor nuns.

When the nuns push for social justice, they’re put into stocks. Yet
Archbishop Sartain has led a campaign in Washington to reverse the state’s
newly enacted law allowing same-sex marriage, and he’s a church hero.

Sister Simone Campbell, executive director of Network, a Catholic lobbying
group slapped in the Vatican report, said it scares the church hierarchy to
have “educated women form thoughtful opinions and engage in dialogue.”

She told NPR that it was ironic that church leaders were mad at sisters
over contraception when the nuns had committed to a celibate life with no
families or babies. Given the damage done by the pedophilia scandals, she
said, “the church’s obsession, at times, with the sexual relationships is a
serious problem.”

Asked by The Journal if the church had a hard time convincing the flock to
follow its strict teachings on sexuality, Cardinal Dolan laughed: “Do we
ever!”

Church leaders behave like adolescent boys, blinded by sex. That’s the
problem with inquisitors and censors: They become fascinated by what they
deplore.

The pope needs what the rest of us got from nuns: a good rap across the
knuckles.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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