Bad timing
The pope just named a new bishop in Austria’s diocese of Linz. Ordinarily I probably wouldn’t hear or care much about European auxiliary bishops. But this one — as reported by Inquirer.net (as well as the BBC) — is hard to ignore:
Gerhard Maria Wagner, 54, the rector of Windischgarsten parish, first gained notice in 2001 when he described J. K. Rowling’s popular Harry Potter novels — which take place in a witchcraft and wizardry school — as “satanism” and warned against the magical spells and formulas used in the novels.
After the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005, he again commented: “It’s no coincidence that in New Orleans all five abortion clinics as well as night clubs were destroyed.”
And he asked: “Is the noticeable rise in natural disasters a consequence of environmental pollution or rather of spiritual pollution?”
(h/t Whispers in the Loggia.)
It’s one thing to say that the SSPX decision has nothing to do with the outrageous views of one (or many?) of the group’s members. But this is a straightforward promotion to a position of greater influence in the Church. So does the timing of this appointment count as yet more evidence that the pope is totally unaware of the problems he’s causing? Or is he intentionally setting fires to serve some higher purpose? And does he think that this sort of backward biblical literalism makes for good bishop material… or is he just having trouble finding better candidates? (Ambitious priests, take note: A few well-placed inflammatory comments could put you in the running for the next vacancy!)
Of course, Benedict himself has reportedly advised caution when approaching Harry Potter. But while overreacting to a children’s book is embarrassing, the remarks about Katrina are far more upsetting. Perhaps it’s easier to draw simplistic morals from the devastation of a city, and the disproportionate effect on its poorest residents, when you’re watching the whole ugly mess unfold from Europe. But that’s not the kind of prophecy I’d like to see rewarded — especially not this week.
Isn’t “Harry Potter” much more than a children’s’ book? I thought it was more a multi-billion dollar cultural phenomena which stretches from adolescents through adults with over 400 million books sold in approx. 70 languages and movies grossing something like $5 billion worldwide. I don’t know about the whole “satanism” bit but there has / is very legitimate criticism of the series as a Exhibit A in the triumph of post-modernism from even secular critics. There was a great criticism in the Monitor a year or two ago by a secular critic regarding the series’s representation of the West’s acceptance of post-modernism as its governing philosophy.
“So does the timing of this appointment count as yet more evidence that the pope is totally unaware of the problems he’s causing?”
The Church is falling support among Italians. In a survey released by Eurispes, a research institute, the Church fell from an approval rating of 59 per cent in 2007 to 49 per cent in 2008 and 38% on january 2009.
If he’is unaware then he lives in an ivory tower.
I wonder if Gerhard Maria Wagner has any thoughts (?) to share on the Lisbon earthquake. The thing about Wagner and Williamson et al. that gets to us, I think, is that they appear as nightmarish monsters from what is not all that distance a past to which we are all linked culturally and ancestrally.
As for the appointment, let’s face it. The ranks of candidates are thinning by the year. And numbers apart, the requirements tend to rule out anyone who thinks for himself and says what he thinks on certain key subjects. At least Benedict ought to institute an evaluation by a qualified psychoceramicist before going ahead with an appointment.
If this continues all the good will and renewal started by Angelo Roncalli will exist outside of Rome. This is restorationist, imitating the fourth century church which began the way of orthodoxy over orthopraxy. You don’t necessarily have to be good. As long as you are orthodox. Stay within the monarchichal church and all is forgiven, even if you cut your subject’s heads off and torture them beyond mercy. It is sacrifice over mercy and hierarchy over the freedom of the children of God.
There is a reason that very few become priests and that the US is a mission country. Rome and the bishops are not admired nor imitated.
MAT: extremely profitable entertainment juggernaut, absolutely. “Exhibit A in the triumph of post-modernism” — I’m less convinced. In my own opinion, Harry Potter is overhyped by fans and foes alike, and then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s reported response to the woman who wrote him about it suggests to me that he probably never looked very closely at the books himself.
If he’is unaware then he lives in an ivory tower.
I think, technically, it’s more of a “brick-and-marble fortress.” ;-)
…even if you cut your subject’s heads off and torture them beyond mercy.
Bill, I think you may be overstating the case a bit there.
Mollie,
Thank you for starting this thread. I learned about it on a VOTF email list, and the collective groans could be heard through cyberspace. This is not only bad timing but very bad governance. What is Benedict up to? How can he not see the harm to community of elevating a person with such views? Here is where an understanding of Benedict’s psychology can be helpful. People write whole books trying to discern where he is coming from.
I wrote “…elevating a person with such views.” I did not say “nutcase,” but the frustration is such, the word came immediately to mind — not in a venomous way, but by way of comic relief. Someone can be kind, thoughtful, smart, committed to faith, a sparkling dinner companion, delightful to work with, a hard-working cleric, but still clueless. Wagner is a disastrous choice. What face of God does he preach?
I too fear more and more for the communion of the faithful. You are acceptable, only if…and the deep hurt to our gay brothers and sisters with Wagner’s accession. Their turn now after the impact on the Jews of last week’s fiasco. People need room to breathe, to be. Authoritarianism is suffocating.
Actions have meaning and consequences in people’s lives. The discouragement is palpable. My daughter left the Church when Benedict was elected. and took our only grandchild with her. Many criticize the faith of those who leave as shallow, but I see the pain of brokenness when people are driven out.
Maybe kindly Archbishop Hughes, who has a few folks arrested, can explain this appointment to the folks of New Orleans- that sin city.
So this is how we get to the “smaller, purer” Church.
I saw the future of that last night at Mass, when our JPII pastor told us that:
-Eastern religions were really only philosophies and we had real religion.
- The Jews were God’s people but now trhey are suplanted.
-The protestant faiths (especially for those who’ve drifted there) are for folks who want to be “comfotable” in their belief.
But we have the 12 and their successors and the one with the keys of the kingdom to teach us the Truth, like a real mother does for her children.
They may be flawed, like Thomas, James and John and even Peter, but they have the Spirit to always tells us the truth.
So we can have Williamson or this guy leadfing the faithful to the straight and narrow.
God help us-Carolyn’s right -we need to be (deeply) concerned about our Church.
One last footnote – on civility – I recall the time we were reaching the dregs of the civil service list to appoint new managers and no new list in sight.
No one thougjt it uncivil to describe some of the newbies as mediocrities, though they might be unhappy with athat or we might disagree about it.
There is a dark cloud over the top edges of our Church that folks can and will keep talking about without trying to put a best face on every action that’s awful.
So I guess we shouldn’t idenbtify communicatiopn with PR.
The decision of your daughter, about her own child is interesting–and significant. If you surf the conservative Catholic websites, you get a strong sense of people who want to protect their children from exposure to so-called liberals. They don’t want their kids to play with children whose parents aren’t “orthodox.” They don’t want their kids interacting with people who don’t share their values about liturgy, about gender roles–even about home schooling, it seems!
What is clear to me, although not as obvious on the webiste, is that the worry works the other way, too. Moderate and progressive Catholics don’t wan their kids exposed to what comes out of the more conservative wing of the Church –in a nutshell, they don’t like what they see as the meanness and self-righteousness.
So the division in the church runs so deep that people from both sides won’t let their kids play with kids from the other side.
Maybe it’s been thus all along–although the divisions were more cultural than political. The Irish kids and the Italian kids in Rhode Island weren’t exactly always best friends.
Cathleen,
It had nothing to do with not wanting to play with kids of conservatives. Not on the radar screen; never heard a word of that. He was two years old at the time. Someone wants to play, fine, but hurtful words are not acceptable.
Then again, one of the good friends he always plays with has two mommies, and they have been outstanding supports to my daughter through her cancer. One is a Lutheran minister. Other playmates are Black, Hispanic, Asian…one of the benefits of NYC.
So, I expect my grandson would be most suspect to conservatives.
A significant aspect of all these posts is that they closely approximate mirror images of what the flock went through in the seventies and eighties. There was a lot of anguish, and something bordering on despair. We experienced hippie priests preaching marmalade skies(to shamelessly steal from Joan Didion), nuns leaving the Church in droves, Commoweal-oriented Catholic laymen and laywomen sneering at the Church’s teaching on artificial birth control, the loss of beautiful and soaring liturgical music to clanging folk- and cowboy
I am soooo tempted to say “it’s payback time”, but that would be immature, irresponsible, and uncharitable, so will I bite my tongue and, instead, offer this olive branch to my liberal brothers and sisters:
Though Christ did not come to bring peace, but rather, a sword, neither did His Church. However, He did bring His Love, for everyone, liberal, conservative, and in between. Speaking only for myself, my only task is to accept that Love, and all that that implies. My genuine affection for the Commonweal bloggers, even when I want to reach through the internet lines and , well, ignore that…Commonweal bloggers remind me so much of a large collection of cats (and I dearly love cats); it is beyond me how the Church will accommodate you, but it somehow will.
I wonder if this bishop knows about the 911 operators who will be receiving therapy for the rest of their lives because they stayed on the line with folks trapped in their attics during Katrina and who eventually drowned, sometimes after children had already done so. Surely, there are better ways to deal with abortion clinics and night clubs (cut the power?).
David Hume destroyed the argument from design for God’s existence in his Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. If the bishop is correct about our God’s intentions regarding Katrina, then indeed Hume was also correct in suggesting that our world at best indicates the existence of a semi-powerful and rather infantile god.
At my humble non-Catholic church today, worship was led by high school youth; they led the whole service, preaching, prayers, communion, etc. 30 of them (30 does exhaust our high school youth, but it is still pretty impressive for a midsized church with only one service) will be going to Mexico this summer to help build homes. Our church has at least 3 youth related work trips a year. Today the middle schoolers made subs for the superbowl and for a cold weather shelter. The elementary kids held pots at the exit to raise money for the local food bank. An older couple joined the church today amidst the youth service (we always have an invitation). The wife was raised in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the denomination of this church, and the husband was raised Catholic (like me).
I am not sure what Christianity should look like. By most definitions, I am not even Christian. But, I was pretty impressed those folks around me today who dared to call themselves so.
This discussion is from outsiders looking at the Austrian church. Episcopal appointments have been problematic for years, as Cardinal Koenig’s dynamic direction for the Church was slighted by more conservative voices. Benedict reportedly played in an important role in getting Schonborn appointed to Vienna in place of a bishop even more retrograde than the new bishop in Linz. Schonborn, an ex-student of Ratzinger, must provide the pope with honest and insightful advice about the situation in Austria. I cannot guarantee I would agree with every view expressed there, but I find it likely that we, and not Benedict, are the ones who are completely clueless about this situation.
To Jim McK:
From Catholic Online, no redoubt of liberalism:
“Allegedly, Rome has directly taken the decision. Even the Vienna Archbishop Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn was not directly involved in the decision-making…The future bishop is so far noted mainly for controversial statements and absolute fidelity to Rome.”
http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=31902&cb300=vocations
To Bob Schwartz: (enjoyed your post)
Help, uncle, enough, enough! Payback is paid in full, with interest, honest.
“Moderate and progressive Catholics don’t want their kids exposed to what comes out of the more conservative wing of the Church –in a nutshell, they don’t like what they see as the meanness and self-righteousness”.
Does this mean that it is the “moderate and progressive Catholics” who are accusing the more conservative wing of the Church of “meanness and self-righteousness”?
There was the tale of the two young monks who decided to help each other to correct their defects by noting to each other the observed defects. The one monk was assiduous in his efforts with the other. But then he complained: “I am always pointing out your defects but you say nothing to me”.
“Oh” said the other “I am so busy trying to correct my own defects that I don’t have the time to note yours”.
It’s not just episcopal appointments.
This weekend from Rome is word of the forthcoming visitation of US Religious women, )ala the seminary visitations we’v ediscussed?)
To borrow an unfelicitous phrase, “payback” for the letter to Rome from numerous Religious women on reconsideration of woman’s ordination (how dare they question?)
It’s one thing to point out “meanness” on one side or other of an argumen; it’s another to borrowanother phrase, the “judiciousnes” of actions and their impact -especially when they are to “unify” or “purify.”
Gabriel-you seem surprised. As if you think that the only ones who care about the morals to which their children are exposed are conservatives. And you seem to think that moral judgments go only one way. They don’t. They go both ways.
But both conservatives and moderate/liberals have ideas about how to raise kids. Both sides don’t like what they see on the other side. The conservatives don’t want their kids exposed to “heterodoxy” or moral laxness. The liberals, in my view, don’t want their kids exposed to intolerance, meanness and self-righteousness. I have seen Carolyn’s story in my own family. But they don’t make a fuss about it. They don’t start blogs defending their moral point of view–their domestic church. They just quietly walk away.
All in all, it points to the divisions in the church. It isn’t just the right that’s got moral view about what kind of things their kids should be exposed to. It’s the left too–they’re just more quiet about it.
Payback time–yes, maybe. But what happens if there is payback for the payback.
From all indications, Benedict’s goal is unity without heterodoxy.
Most businesses could not survive if they lost customers over a long enough period of time.
I remember learning years ago that most dissatisfied customers don’t bother to take the time to complain to a business: They just don’t return for future transactions.
Most departing/departed Catholics are, I suspect, “just more quiet about it.” I formally notified my pastor of my departure (and reasons for it) but heard nothing in reply. But, really, what could he have told me to persuade me to stay in the fold?
I’d hate to be a Catholic priest today.
Have been looking for a response from the We are Church group – started in Austria/Germany. Austria has had its share of bishop/cardinal and seminary issues over the last 20 years.
Hello All,
This post is a tangent to the main discussion here so I suggest those who want to stick with the main thread skip it. (And thank you in advance Mollie for being patient with me.) But I found Bob S.’s post here especially valuable and I wanted to respond.
I know many Catholics, who “toe the line”, in the sense that they accept all the doctrines of the church and obey all its laws (including the “hot-button” laws like those prohibiting the use of contraception and excluding civilly married people who are not validly married in the Church from Holy Communion), and all love being Catholic. I also know many Catholics who in certain ways fail to toe the line, and all love being Catholic. And I know many Catholics who were unhappy being Catholic and stopped practicing this faith (and I was one of them). Now I’m in an unexpected position. I’m a revert to the Roman Catholic faith who toes the line. And I’m almost as unhappy being Catholic today as I was when I stopped practicing a few years ago. So far the chief consolation I’ve received from reverting is I feel more secure than ever that God loved me just as much during the time I was away from practicing this faith as God loves me now, and that God will continue to treat me in this life and the next much the same way He would have had I not reverted. (And I am within the parameters of orthodoxy in believing this.) Last night I somewhat jokingly asked a close friend if there exist support groups for Catholics like myself.
I don’t claim that Catholics who in some ways fail to toe the line tend to be liberal-Catholics. I speak only for myself. I’m as sterotypically liberal-Catholic as one can be without breaking any Church laws or denying any Church doctrines. Consequently the years since 1978 have been incressingly distressing to me. However, I’ve had much the same thought Bob S. expressed so well earlier. I’ve thought that in the years from 1962-1978 many Catholics must have been terribly dejected and angry, just like people like me are today, but in their eyes the Church had gone too “left”. Indeed, it takes little searching to find remarks by more “right” Catholics who are less generous than Bob S., and they think I and my fellow liberal-Catholics are now receiving their just come-uppance (to use language more polite than what one will find in their publications and web sites).
I’ve concluded that perhaps God is currently using me and people like me to show skeptics than one can be still liberal-Catholic, even far liberal-Catholic, and in completely good standing with the Church. That sounds pretentious, I know. But perhaps God used and continues to use more conservative-Catholics similarly. After all, don’t we aspire to be a universal church?
Carolyn says: Authoritarianism is suffocating.
Richard McCormick said: Authoritarianism is authority that has ceased to struggle to become leadership.
Tim Unsworth said: Chanceries .. and the Curia .. have only as much authority as an indivdual priest wants to give them. Add the papacy to the list and include the laity with the priests.
Erasmus said: Vigorous minds will not suffer compulsion. To exercise compulsion is typical of tyrants; to suffer it, typical of asses.”
And lest we forget Good Pope John: We are not on earth to guard a museum, but to cultivate a flowering garden of life.
At my parish’s coffee hour this morning, when this subject came up, most people simply rolled their eyes and talked about where to go for brunch. I think that anger has turned to disillusion and now torpor. It is one thing to say that this is my church and they can’t force me out. It is yet another to decide that staying simply isn’t worth the effort.
I do hope that the women religious in this country fight back against their upcoming inquisition better than the seminaries did.
A solution occurred to me after I read Bob Nunz’s post about the homily of a a JPII priest :
If priests believe they have a right to preach pre-Vatican II theology, then parishioners ought to have a right to insist they do so in the pre-Vatican II tongue: Latin. Otherwise we risk having “cafeteria traditonalists.”
Bob Schwartz:
Your paralipsis seems to have lobbed the olive branch off. Nice try.
In order to expedite the dialogue it might be incumbent upon us to realize that Vatican II was a marvelous paradigm change. There are many ways to describe that paradigm. One important way is to state that Vatican II made clear that bishops and rome can be very incorrect and when they say and do terrible thing they should not be defended because they have a certain office.
Most of us who oppose Rome and the bishops are solidly moral individuals who will not criminals rule our church anymore. As they did and are still doing in the pedophilia coverup. In the hatred of Jews. In winking at the holocaust. In ignoring poor people before the French Revolution. In living well, throughout the centuries, while the poor go hungry and are treated unjustly.
We can continue to be automotons to much immorality coming from Rome or be responsible for it continuing. This is not overstating the case. There is a clear historical line from the fourth century on where officials in the church, with exceptions, held obedience as the most important virtue over the Sermon on the Mount and help for the downtrodden and love of enemies.
Bob Nunz is right. The coming visitation of convents in the U.S. looks like an approaching storm of considerable dimensions. To get a feel for the rhetoric “from above” consider what was said recently at a conference on the consecrated life at Stonehill College reported by the indispensable Rocco.
The first blast is from Cardinal Franc Rodé, the Vatican’s top official for the religious Life:
http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2008/09/rode-at-stonehill.html
The second outlines in grim detail what Sister Sara Butler of St. Joseph’s Seminary at Dunwoodie seems to expect the Visitation to find out about “apostolic sisters“ and some of their leadership organizations. (Sister Sara is perhaps best known here in New York as Dunwoodie’s point person on why women can’t be priests.)
http://whispersintheloggia.blogspot.com/2008/09/butler-at-stonehill.html
I have no statistics to hand, but I believe that the majority of those who left the priesthood and religious life after Vatican II did so in the late 60s/early70s. But that’s not greatly important. My principal and profound problem is the statement that many women religious left the CHURCH (emphasis added) after the Council. I have had a long experience in the Church and I have known many present and former women religious. That many of those who left religious life left the Church is, I strongly submit, a gross and unfair overstatement. Whether these women married or remained in the single state, a number continued in the caring professions — teaching, nursing, social service, and often in Catholic institutions. We owe them much gratitude for their years in religious life and their service afterwards. As well, we owe immense gratitude to their sisters who chose to remain in religious life. They get little mention on this site and on popular and important clericalist sites that serve as very helpful information sources for many of us who comment here. The Sisters made the Church in this country. They deserve better.
May the Lord grant us a quiet night and a peaceful death. Amen.
Nos cum prole pia. Benedicat Virgo Maria.
As happens, Susan Gannon, whose posts I greatly admire, and I overlapped. Her post must have appeared as I was writing — a difference, it seems, of one minute. I was by no means responding to Susan Gannon’s post. I believe we are squarely on the same page.
Bad timing!
I find it likely that we, and not Benedict, are the ones who are completely clueless about this situation.
I am happy to confess that I don’t know the first thing about the situation of the Church in Austria. But I don’t think I’m claiming any privileged knowledge in observing that it’s a sad day for the Church when its most visible representatives and teachers spend time saying things like God sent Katrina to punish the sinners in New Orleans. The pope certainly knows better than I how slim the pickings are in Linz, but if this guy was really the best candidate for auxiliary bishop, then they (and we) might be better off with the bishops they already have.
I’m surprised that this thread has inspired the usual “conservative” vs. “progressive” debate. This bishop is being touted as “conservative,” yes. But does anyone, regardless of Church politics, really want this guy speaking for them?
Bill DeHaas,
Yesterday, the Austrian branch of We Are Church posted a very strong statement on its web site regarding Wagner’s appointment as an auxiliary. It sees the role of a bishop as one of bridge builder, but fails to see how Wagner can fulfill the role. They claim he will be nothing more than a lobbyist for the “crass Traditionalist minority.” They encourage Catholics not to use this as a cause to leave the Church but rather to be more engaged in protesting the appointment. Here is the link:
http://www.wir-sind-kirche.at/content/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=366&Itemid=14
Just an observation.
I find it curious to read the hue and cry about the on-going destruction of the Church and droves of people leaving her because of the actions of the Holy Father and his predecessor. Note to all – people were leaving the Church in even higher numbers when the likes of Hunthausen and Gumbleton were in full fettle in the 60′s and 70′s. So what are we to take from that?
The Second Vatican Council was difficult for people to accept in the 1960s and 70s. It continues to be difficult for some to accept today. QED. Attempting to drawing equivalencies is only avoiding the subject here. So I repeat: what should any of us do with the news that this man, given to facile moralizing about a complex humanitarian crisis, has been given a position of greater prominence as a teacher of the faith?
Sean,
Well, in a humorous turn, things could always revert to “my numbers are bigger than your numbers.” But that gets us nowhere.
Peace,
Carolyn
Mollie, if the choice is between Wagner and Williamson, I would go with Wagner. And I think that is the problem in Austria — there are some verrry bad choices who have become bishops.
The bishop in Linz was an auxiliary in Vienna until a couple of years ago. I do not know much about him, but I would be surprised if he was given an auxiliary without being consulted, or that he did not consult with Schonborn in Vienna about it. Perhaps Wagner is someone they felt they could work with to heal some of the rifts, despite his awkward comments.
While looking at this, I discovered that Linz is the home town of Franz Jaegerstatter. He was killed at Auschwitz for refusing to serve in the Nazi army, and canonized in 2007 in Linz. Perhaps we should pray to him, to bring peace to Linz, and wisdom to its bishops.
Jim — Now that is an excellent suggestion. I suppose we could all benefit from Jaegerstatter’s intercession. (I knew there was some reason I’d heard of “Linz”… that’s it!)
Sean says:
I find it curious to read the hue and cry about the on-going destruction of the Church and droves of people leaving her because of the actions of the Holy Father and his predecessor. Note to all – people were leaving the Church in even higher numbers when the likes of Hunthausen and Gumbleton were in full fettle in the 60’s and 70’s. So what are we to take from that?
That’s a fair point.
It is saddening to hear that Carolyn’s daughter decided to leave the Church, and take her family with her. I’ve never grokked the enthusiasm some seem to have for booting people out of the Church – or, more relevantly, rejoicing when they leave.
But the truth is, a lot of people have left the Church since the 1960′s, and in number far beyond anything seen since the Reformation. Bill Mazzella speaks of “all the good will and renewal started by Angelo Roncalli” vanishing and I wonder if we should be relieved at this, since the data suggest the Church may not be able to stand much more such good will: The utter collapse in diocesan vocations, the the 60% drop in women religious (including the complete disappearance of some orders), the drop in mass attendance from 70% to 25% (or more like 5% in much of Europe) and similarly steep drops in resort to the other sacraments. And most of those drops happened in the first two decades after 1965 – when as Sean observes, the progressive voices were at their most prominent.
It’s surely not all about numbers, but when the numbers are so horrific, they can’t be ignored, either.
Progressives can and have made responses to such arguments. Some of them reasonable – that the general cultural upheaval in the West would have hit the Church in some way even if there had been no Council, which is surely true in some way – and some less so – that reforms kept the collapse from being worse (with much focus and blame placed on Humanae Vitae). At some point, however, the burden of proof has to be met. Especially when denominations that implemented even more progressive reforms – I am think of the mainline Protestant churches, i.e., the Episcopalians – have suffered even steeper collapses in most cases. At some point you just run out of rules and theological bright lines to erase.
I don’t know what to make of Bishop Wagner’s appointment. One the one hand, it’s dangerous to read too much into any one appointment, esp. an auxilliary. On the other hand, it’s inarguable that Benedict’s appointments have generally been more conservatives than John Paul II’s, and that Benedict knows more about the Austrian and south German Church than he does just about anywhere else – he was, in fact, instrumental in getting Kurt Krenn dropped from consideration for Vienna (though not enough to keep Groer out instead). The Austrian talent pool is thin; but is it this thin? Maybe I need to read Wagner’s comments in context: even if I concede that that there’s as much spiritual pollution amock today as there is environmental.
Re: the very large number of nuns leaving their orders in the 60′s
Unless you are old like me, I doubt that you realize just how sequestered the nuns were prior to Vatican II For intsance, they were not allowed to drive, and though some were allowed to use public transportation they had to be home for dinner. unless they had a friend to drive them. Even then, they didn’t get out very much, especially not to social gatherings.
In the 50′s I got my master’s at Catholic U. and got to know many nuns. Then, during Vatican II I did my coursework in philosophy there and got to know many more nuns.. The lives of the nuns had been turned upside down. It was as if they had lept over the walls and liked what they found. Many, no make that most, of those I knew were incredibly naive about male-female friendnships, and ti was not unusual for them to fall in love with their new “significant others”. (The meaning ofthat term was very fluid then.) I even cautioned a nun friend about her new friendship with a fine young priest, but she assured me that their vows would prevent any such temptations. Yep, they later married. And there were others. In other words, too many of them had entered the convent much, much too young in the first place.
Another reason that many young and middle aged nuns left was because they found that their liberated Vatican II views got nowhere with their mother superiors and other old members of their orders. Some of the mother superiors were obviously tyrants, but the dear nuns, having been taught that obedience was a perfection, had not realized it before! (Bishops are not the only power-grabbers in the Church.) The transition was terribly difficult for many of those idealistic women. Many left to enter the caring professions such as social work.
http://bilgrimage.blogspot.com/2009/02/brother-that-dare-not-speak-his-name.html
Jimmy, thanks for the link. It’s a good thing to reflect on what doesn’t seem to shock or offend, or anger people when it should. I was reminded of the truly grotesque things Williamson said about women in his letters posted online. I didn’t notice anyone demanding he recant on that stuff before returning to the fold, either.
Jimmy — that’s a valuable perspective generally, but I’m not sure it’s a fair assessment of this particular thread. I presume the main reason Wagner’s focus on homosexuality hasn’t been singled out in the comments here is that it wasn’t mentioned in the article I excerpted in the post. (Mea culpa: it is mentioned in the BBC writeup.)
But more to the point — when the comments here have focused on Wagner’s remarks at all, the point hasn’t been, “How dare he say such things about prostitutes and abortionists.” The outrage is that it’s an embarrassment for a presumptive bishop to be claiming a natural disaster that caused enormous suffering, and exposed ongoing negligence toward the poorest among us, could be held up as a clear act of vengeance from God.
Ann, I’ve known quite a few nuns who left and others who stayed in the convent, and I would say that most who came out came out came out for the same good reason they went in: they thought they discerned a way their true vocation could best be fulfilled. The interesting thing is that many of the freedoms the nuns who left felt they needed have gradually been assumed by those who stayed as well. The order I know best was actually founded in the sixteenth century as a kind of secular institute, but was forced to accept a semi-cloistered rule by male clergy who were scandalized by their boldness in wanting to live in small groups among the people they were serving. Ironically, the Order today has many members doing just that, and their future many depend in good part on the assistance of lay associates.
Did all the New Orleans churches (ok, Catholic churches), hospitals (ok, Catholic hospitals), schools (ok, Catholic schools) survive Katrina?