Sharon and Susan both sent me this, a recent Bill Keller’s New York Times column that included this gem of an idea for nuns who find themselves unable to stay in a church that condemns them:
There are many nuns who hold fast to the church out of genuine devotion. But there are others who stay out of fear — fear that they will grow old alone, fear of penury and homelessness, fear of losing purpose.
Thankfully, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York has offered us one possible remedy for this problem. As Laurie Goodstein documented in The Times recently, when he was archbishop of Milwaukee Dolan authorized payments of up to $20,000 to predator priests if they agreed to leave the clergy without resisting. He described this as “an act of charity.” Bill Donohue calls it “a severance package.”
I suggest that any long-serving nun who has come to find church teachings incompatible with her conscience should be offered a generous severance. We could call these acts of charity “Dolan Grants.” Surely a church that offers a lifeline to men who brought disgrace on the institution can offer a living stipend to women who brought it honor at great sacrifice.
In an affluent country that promotes serial murder while restricting access to housing, healthcare and food assistance to those in need, the RCC’s priorities are protecting pedophiles, persecuting nuns and propagating political propaganda.
This is what Timothy Dolan calls “protecting human dignity.”
That’s some seriously sick religion.
I sense a kind of deranged desperation in the RCC senior management’s approach to the nuns, to Prof.Sister Margaret Farley’s book about love and sex, and to the manufactured “outrage” over religious freedom. What the RCC has done is to get all worked up about something, and then go straight to public war about it.
Did the Vatican approach the nuns and privately discuss the topic of having the nuns divert some of their energies on behalf of the poor, the sick, the down-trodden and education to being a PR arm for Catholic doctrine about gays, abortion, etc? Apparently not. Apparently they started off with a public rebuke.
Did the Vatican privately approach Prof. Farley about her book? Apparently not. Even though she is NOT an official RCC mouthpiece, they apparently started off from the get-go treating her like some bad person because she wasn’t acting like a Vatican PR employee.
Yes, I think the Vatican is desperate. My guess is that a lot of very Christian thinking people are going to be put off by how the Vatican is asking. I just spent three days with my 4-year old grand kids, one of which has a serious attitude – and it reminds me of how the Vatican is acting, like a petulant 4-year old.