HERE IS a sickening glimpse into the worldview of feminist Catholic nuns. It’s an interview in the Minneapolis Post with Sister Brigid McDonald of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet. This is a woman seething with resentment and bitterness toward male authority. The Vatican’s recent disciplinary action against American nuns stems from a fear of powerful women, she contends in the interview:

Because [before] we were just school teachers and we just had nice little kids in front of us, you know, and we just emptied bed pans in the nursing homes and in the hospitals. But now they are right, we are out there in the different movements. We help with the Occupy movement and the right-to-choice movements.

It is giving us more credibility in the public. Lots of times people will call and seek out our opinions about certain issues, where it never was that way when I entered the convent. After we taught school, we went home, and said our prayers and ate supper and did our lesson plans and went to bed. Now we are out there.

Notice her contemptuous view of the work of nuns of the past, whose care for the sick and the young she considers demeaning, menial labor.

Sister Brigid calls the Vatican plan to exert tighter control over the Leadership Conference of Women Religious a “misuse of power.” She states:

I think [Vatican leaders] are overstepping their jurisdiction to expect that nuns are going to think as they tell us to think. To me those issues are not spiritual issues; many of them are political issues and some, of course, are social justice issues. I think that our personal spiritual life, it is another matter and that is our private belief.

I can’t even begin to imagine what [Pope Benedict] could say or do that would change religious women’s beliefs. I don’t know how he plans to change that. That is of concern. That could be scary — what will he do to change our beliefs. You know, that scares me.

Sister Brigid is not concerned about severe reprisals. “The nuns that I talk to aren’t really afraid, because they can’t see or they can’t imagine what he would do to change us. I mean, like, excommunication? That is a thing of the past. You can’t excommunicate hundreds of nuns.”

Sure, you can.

— Comments —

Mary writes:

A sickening glimpse, indeed.

“Notice her contemptuous view of the work of nuns of the past, whose care for the sick and the young she considers demeaning, menial labor.”

Exactly. Once again it needs to be asked of feminists: if menial/domestic/uninspiring work is beneath women, who do you suggest does this work, which is fundamental to life? Will they go so far as to say that *some* women deserve to do demeaning work and must be sacrificed for the cause? Or do they plan on men ultimately doing all the demeaning work as payment for past sins? Their ideas are universally unfinished – they are never taken to their logical conclusion: if all women embraced their thinking, it would ultimately mean enslavement for a portion of the population, be it women or men, for no one would willingly do the work believed to be demeaning. And I thought the goal was liberation.

What will poor confused Sister Brigid McDonald say to the nun who comforts her in her final hours, who perhaps may wash her feet and change her bedpan? Will she say, “You, sister, are beneath me; we are both women yet I am superior to you, for my work exalted me and yours only demeans.” Or will she say, “My God, what have I done?”

Sister Brigid: “I think [Vatican leaders] are overstepping their jurisdiction to expect that nuns are going to think as they tell us to think. To me those issues are not spiritual issues; many of them are political issues and some, of course, are social justice issues. I think that our personal spiritual life, it is another matter and that is our private belief.’

So, logically, if she doesn’t want the Vatican to tell her what to think about non-spiritual issues, and then goes on to say that her personal spiritual life is her own private belief, then basically she believes the Vatican has no say in what she believes or how she conducts herself at all, in any way. Putting aside that she belongs to a religious order, all of which have a rule to follow and are based on obedience before anything else, I have to ask: who belongs even to a simple club, simply to reject the commonality of that club in toto? I’m picturing women defiantly knitting at a quilting bee and men tackling the baserunners in a baseball game. It’s so silly. I think these poor women actually believe they are pursuing something noble, they are sort of intoxicated by it, when they are actually dupes for a movement which stole their very innocence starting in the 60’s. It pains me to say it, but attrition will take care of most of them. And they very well may end up excommunicated before that happens, and justly.

Laura writes:

No one enjoys seeing an old woman who has taken a vow of poverty excommunicated, but if Sister Brigid is not excommunicated, then who would be? But then perhaps she might voluntarily remove herself from the Church she despises.

Hurricane Betsy writes:

Tell that “nun” that the Catholic church is like a private club: you don’t have to be a member, childhood baptism notwithstanding. If you don’t like the rules, just quit. And take your sister nuns with you. Go form a Lesbo Club or something and you can be Queen Bee in lieu of Pope Benedict, and spend your days protesting the ills of the world.

Carolyn writes:

Regarding Sr. Brigid’s comment on the divide between political and spiritual (or between social justice and spiritual), St. Paul said:

“Whether you eat, therefore, or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” [emphasis added]

And:

“I urge you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.” [emphasis added]

One contemporary “dynamic” translation renders the first part of this verse (not incorrectly) thus:

“Take your everyday, ordinary life–your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life–and place it before God as an offering. . . .”

Which is to say, Sr. Brigid is mistaken in her belief–so prevalent in modern culture–that there is a divide between political (or social justice, or anything else) and spiritual. When Jesus died, he rent the curtain dividing the Most Holy Place from the rest of life–not because the Most Holy Place ceased to be, but because all of life is now (or can be) holy. Christians are not priests only in church. Christians are priests wherever they are, whatever they are doing.

Paul writes:

To see and to hear from this harpy is jarring.

Sisters, when I entered Catholic school in the fifth grade in the 1960s, were pretty and nice or old and nice. I adored them, and they never were hard on me even though I was lucky to get a C in conduct at best. One of my cousins was the sister headmistress in my 7th and 8th grades, though my mother did not know it. I expect that is why my brother (a real rounder) and I were not thrown out. He was disruptive and a fighter, while I was nice and socialized in class continually no matter how many lines I was forced to write or times I was put out in the hall to await the wrath of the circulating nun. I expect my obvious adoration of my eighth-grade nun was helpful. (She had bad breath though, which I noticed because she was in my face often.)

Proph writes:

The sentiments of Sister McDonald are not just sickeningly leftist, they are also positively Satanic. Note the subtext in her remarks: that the work the sisters once undertook, of teaching children and ministering to the sick and needy, is not only demeaning but that it should not be done for precisely that reason. Get that? Religious life is not there to be a vehicle for your ambitions. It is there to help you to die for the world. Not for nothing do we often talk about “the scandal of the cross,” which was scandalous precisely because it was demeaning, humiliating, and disgraceful. Yet Christ subjected Himself to it, anyway. And there is no way to Christ but through the cross.

I wouldn’t hold out for her to be excommunicated, though. For one thing, the attitude nowadays is that excommunication is medicinal, and where it’s not likely to do good, it’s not likely to be done at all. That’s why no one gets excommunicated anymore, except when the excommunication happens automatically (e.g., in the case of the SSPX’s illicit episcopal consecrations): the people who would most benefit from it are the ones least likely ever to have to endure it. I recall a story concerning a Catholic Democrat in California running for state office in the late 80s or early 90s, whose bishop publicly forbade her communion; the row over it propelled her flagging campaign to victory against long odds. Maybe when the subjects of excommunication were Catholic kings and lords in the Middle Ages ruling over a devoutly Catholic populace; not today, when the Devil rules the world and turns all things to evil.

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