The Nuns did it
February 9, 2008, 10:23 am
Posted by Margaret O'Brien Steinfels
Jim Dwyer has the whole story here: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/09/nyregion/09about.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=Jim+Dwyer&st=nyt&oref=slogin
Everyone over 50 years of age will understand.
Update: I have been corrected and told that many Catholics under 50 had nuns. How many?
True enough on the comfort with women’s leadership from this gratefully nun-educated baby boomer, but the times, they are a changin.’ As many have well noted, the Catholic demographics and the youth vote may well break this pattern this time. It seems that age and style — and perhaps tiredness with some of our boomer priorities — are trumping these patterns.
The point of the article is very well taken, especially since I’ve been saying for years that Clinton is a born mother superior — she is quite religious, very much wants to do good, and she loves kids and power. She is also stubborn.
However, I wonder whether Nolan’s thesis is as strong as it looks prima facie. Could it be that Catholics of different regions will vote differently? Louisiana is a very Catholic state, yet everyone is saying that Louisiana is a shoo-in for Obama, so much so that Clinton wrote it off months ago. Yes, the black registration is very, very large, but the south Louisiana black population is very Catholic. So it will be interesting to see which way New Orleans and south Louisiana goes in the election of delegates today. I’ll try to check out the predominatly black Catholic areas in New Orleans when the results are in, if there are any such areas left. Sigh.
Ann Olivier has a good insight in the image of Hillary Clinton as “mother superior.” Yes, Catholic-schooled students of yesteryear were accustomed to strong women in leadership positions and they developed a healthy respect for bright, competent, well-balanced and kindly women in religious life. The ability to discern these ladies from their less well-balanced, less kindly-disposed sisters in community became a valuable life skill for those of us who needed to understand “more of tactics than a novice in a nunnery” in order to thrive under their care. My guess is that the present assessment of Hillary Clinton by older Catholics may suggest something of their feeling about the way she might use the power of her office if elected.
The curious contrast between the control most religious women exerted within the instutions that they have run and their relative powerlessness with regard to the clergy and hierarchy with which they worked provided their older students with good opportunity to notice current and historic injustices . The history of the religious order which ran the schools I attended was that of a very innovative lay institute working with women at risk in sixteenth-century Italy that found itself forced by male clerical pressure to adopt semi-cloistered life and to focus on educating young girls of good family. The message of this story was not lost on either the students of the 50s or the nuns themselves, who nowadays are reclaiming some of their original mission.
It would be interesting to see a breakout on the preferences of older Catholic women voters, and to see the correlation between years of Catholic education and a preference for Clinton.
I just turned 40 and was blessed to have had the Sisters of Mercy for grammar school.
I stand corrected.
Ann Olivier: what’s the Catholics and Clinton (Catholics and Obama) news from Lousianna?
A Pew poll as recent as November showed Giuliani with a huge lead among Catholics, and look what happened to his campaign. Given his showing, it appears that Catholics, the core of his support, abandoned him once they got to know him better. The harshness of his views lacked appeal on a closer look.
In the same Pew poll, Clinton started out with an even bigger lead among Catholics (and also a large lead among black Protestants). As Obama became better known, he took the black Protestant vote away from Clinton. My sense is that Obama will gradually do better among Catholics as he gets out his message, which I would summarize with the word “solidarity.” I think it will appeal to quite a few Catholics, and wouldn’t be surprised if he comes fairly close to Clinton among Catholics in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
The Pew poll:
(http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=259