Why did I want to add a few extra words to that title? Like "Radical Feminist Vampire Biker Nuns"?
There has to be something going on here that I don't understand. For the second day in a row the Washington Post has run, on page 2 below the fold, a story about the "Vatican crackdown on what it calls 'radical feminism' among" American nuns. According to the story, the Vatican regards these women as radical feminists because of "their purported failure to sufficiently condemn such issues as abortion and same-sex marriage."
Seriously? Radical feminists? Because of a "failure to sufficiently condemn"?? Holy Tea Party!
In yesterday's paper, the story said that the nuns were being reprimanded "for spending too much time on poverty and social-justice concerns and not enough on condemning abortion and gay marriage".
Wow. The Sisters of Mercy and the Little Sisters of the Poor are spending too much time on poverty and social justice?
If this is really what the Vatican said, they need to do some deeper research into the meaning of all of those words, because a failure to sufficiently condemn anything, even abortion or same-sex marriage, is neither radical nor particularly feminist. Nothing in the story claimed that the nuns in question were pro-choice, or advocated same sex marriage, or anything of that sort. I assume they support the positions of their church on those issues. Their transgression was that they were too distracted by the altruistic work they had joined their orders to do, and which they thought their faith required them to do, to be adequately livid in their condemnation of those whose lives or opinions are different from theirs.
It's not my religion, and not my personal power struggle. I have no real stake in this. But I don't really understand the Vatican's complaint here, and I certainly don't understand their choice of words. And I think it may be a little rash on the Vatican's part to pick a fight with a group of nuns.
Particularly radical feminist vampire biker nuns.
