Not your parents' Sisters
American nuns have evolved from habit-wearing disciples into, often, street-clothes- wearing social activists. And based on two pending inquiries, the Vatican might have had enough.
By Mary Zeiss Stange
How do you know a Roman Catholic nun when you see one? It used to be easy. They wore long black habits and veils with confining headgear, traveled in pairs, were teachers or nurses, and lived quietly in convents. There was a timelessness about them: the essentials of their way of living had remained unaltered for centuries.
(Illustration by Alejandro Gonzalez, USA TODAY)
Then came the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), with its mandate to bring the church — nuns and all — into the 20th century. Shortly thereafter, the Dominican Sisters at my school, St. Mary's in Rutherford, N.J., took the plunge and modernized their garb. But otherwise, they still conformed to the traditional model, living in community and teaching primary and secondary school.
Their change of habits was but a baby step toward much broader subsequent changes for Catholic nuns. And the church's current response to these changes suggests how resolutely clueless the hierarchy remains when it comes to what these religious women are up to, and how the changes in the realities of their dedicated lives mirror changes for women in American society at large.
Those sisters who taught me might scarcely recognize their order now. The Caldwell Dominicans of New Jersey still do some teaching, and some live communally. But they wear street clothes, and they are more likely than not to have advanced or professional degrees. The order's primary energies are devoted to social justice issues such as human trafficking, corporate greed and environmental strategies for saving the planet.
These are not your parents' Sisters of St. Dominic. Yet they typify the kinds of changes that have occurred in many of the roughly 400 orders of Catholic religious women in the USA. Sisters account for less than 5% of teachers in Catholic schools today, while many nuns are engaged in a broad spectrum of occupations, often oriented toward social and economic activism.Two inquiries
In response to this new breed, the Vatican has launched two wide-ranging investigations into the lifestyles of American nuns. Both look to be moves on the part of the male hierarchy to rein in nuns who are perceived as having become distressingly independent.
The first is an unprecedented "Apostolic Visitation" being carried out by a Rome-based American, Mother Mary Clare Millea. Her charge is to "look into the quality of life" of nuns who engage in any fashion with the larger society. (Cloistered contemplative orders are not under scrutiny.) She recently told The New York Times that the inquiry is "an opportunity for us to re-evaluate ourselves, to make our reality known and also to be challenged to live authentically who we say we are."
Mother Mary has further explained that each community of sisters will be evaluated in terms of its "living in fidelity" to church norms, which include "the soundness of doctrine held and taught" by the sisters. It is reasonable to wonder, as some of the sisters themselves apparently do, about the real objective of the process.
This concern is heightened by a second investigation into the Leadership Council of Women Religious, an umbrella group that represents 95% of nuns in the USA. It's being conducted, with possible disciplinary implications, by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Vatican office headed by American Cardinal William Levada. He cites the nuns' collective failure to comply with instructions to conform to church doctrine issued them in 2001 by his predecessor, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI). Geared toward ferreting out individuals and groups who challenge church teaching on certain issues — the male-only priesthood, homosexuality, and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as a way to salvation are specifically singled out — it portends a chilling effect on possibilities for genuine dialogue.
At the same time, the Vatican has declared June 2009-June 2010 the "Year for Priests," celebrating the men's vocation. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which is not directly involved in either of the Vatican investigations, has embraced the idea. And the way the bishops' conference is approaching it is further symptomatic of a persistent blind spot the hierarchy has about women in general, and women religious in particular.
The bishops' website devoted to the Year for Priests features monthly essays "by renowned women of faith" about the important function of priests in their lives. (Articles by anti-abortion activist Vicki Thorne and San Diego Zoo CFO Paula Brock have appeared thus far.) I asked Father David Toups, who oversees the site, about the absence of essays by "renowned men of faith."
"This was intentionally done," he replied, "so as to highlight the role of renowned women and their support of the priesthood." Toups explained that "there is a special role in the support of priests by women of great faith and devotion. This has been so since the time of the early church."
Indeed it has. I asked how he would respond, then, to criticism that the church conventionally casts women in the role of "support personnel." Men and women play different but "complementary" roles, he ventured: "We are meant to complement each other in our own particular ministries."
'An ecclesiastical workforce'
There is a deep contradiction between enlisting "women of faith" to applaud a male-only priesthood, while simultaneously interrogating the spiritual soundness of religious women who have dedicated their lives to serving humanity in Christ's name.
The Vatican's investigations might well turn up some isolated instances of doctrinal abuse or excess among American nuns. And the Year for Priests might prove a positive way to focus attention on religious vocations. But both are profoundly shortsighted in terms of the shifting contours of the American social — and particularly Catholic — landscape.
There is no going back. Today's American sisters, arguably for the first time in history, are making the most of their God-given talents. They are creatively expanding the meaning of service to God, church and society in ways unimaginable to their forebears. For that they deserve celebration, not censure.
Mary Zeiss Stange is a professor of women's studies and religion at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.
Posted at 12:16 AM/ET, August 31, 2009
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