If you're someone who follows the news superficially, then you'll be agreeing with the headlines and 10 to 20 second snippets reporting on how the Vatican is beating up on Nuns... but if you want to have some intellectual integrity, you owe yourself the favor of going deeper... so here's something you could do... read what follows from Elizabeth Scalia (in the Wall Street Journal no less), who I know as The Anchoress, and who played a pivotal role in my return to The Church of my roots... the piece sheds much needed light and you my friend can move forward and perhaps even defend The Church from a perspective of knowledge and critical thought... rather than meekly accepting the agenda driven drivel being foisted on the gullible by the left and their psychophantic minions in the media:
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith's first duty is to assure that the doctrines of the church are being accurately reflected and communicated to the church body by those canonically representing the faith. Yet its criticisms could not have surprised the sisters, many of whom acknowledge that their communities are "out of step" with Rome.
On the eve of the Vatican's doctrinal investigation in 2009, Sister Sandra M. Schneiders published a letter to her Leadership Conference associates in which she sounded loaded for bear. Declaring that her community and others had "birthed a new form of religious life," she referred to the Vatican's attempt at assessment as "a hostile move" and one that would do "violence" to all that newness.
Not all sisters have been as combative. Two years earlier, in a thoughtful presentation that some believe spurred the investigation, then-Leadership Conference president Sister Laurie Brink had acknowledged that while many sisters walked unevenly with Rome, some had moved "beyond the church, even beyond Jesus." She called that a post-Christian mind-set that might ethically require those who held it to leave the church.
That assessment by Sister Brink was quoted in the Congregation's findings, but the document says nothing ill of Sister Brink. Rather, it worries that post-Christian mind-sets too often "go unchallenged" by the Leadership Conference—that it is falling down on the job of bringing Christian witness to its own members. While Sister Brink's work provides "a phenomenological snapshot of religious life today," says the document, "pastors should also see in it a cry for help."
Such a portrait of helplessness was no doubt not welcomed by all and may even seem condescending to well-educated women who have been effective and mostly autonomous in their work. But concern is not the same as condescension, and there is an unmistakably pastoral tone permeating the entire assessment. Rome clearly sees a sign of spiritual distress in the fact that some sisters (albeit a minority) have moved away from doctrine as basic as the Apostles Creed.
Read the whole thing. And do yourself, yes... yourself, a huge favor and read Ms. Scalia as often as you're able.
It'll do you you good. You'll have to trust me on that.
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