Listening to the sisters: The nuns’ bus comes to Philadelphia
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The nuns are on a roll. In fact, they rolled into Philadelphia last weekend as part of their “Nuns on the Bus” tour to express their displeasure at Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, which they say would harm the poor. As you may know from reports about such nuns as Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Sister Mary Scullion of Philadelphia, these ladies have developed a certain attachment to impoverished and marginalized people. In their cut-to-the-chase jargon, the nuns say they are “missioned” to stand with people in need.
This syntactic switch of mission from noun to verb reminds me of something Jesus said. I wasn’t there, but I read about it (Luke 10: 25-37).
It seems a big-time scholar of Jewish law asked Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life. Jesus said, Hey, you’re the lawyer; what does the law say? Love God, love your neighbor, answers the scholar. Fine, Jesus says with a shrug. Do that and you’re in. The lawyer staves off embarrassment by retorting, Well, OK, who is my neighbor?
Jesus responds by telling the Good Samaritan parable: A traveler is robbed, beaten, and left to die. While people like the scholar cross the street to avoid the victim, a wretched Samaritan stops and helps him. Jesus finishes the story by asking, in effect, Who “neighbored” that man in need?
The sisters say they are “missioned” to “neighbor” people who fall on hard times. They go on to say that our government should also do some of that neighboring, or at least not cut the amount of neighboring it does now. If you spend all your time with really poor people, I guess your mind gets a little warped like that.
The Catholic bishops have recently made news by suggesting that the sisters are guilty of radical feminism, insufficient opposition to abortion, and excessive questioning of the bishops’ teaching authority. The Vatican concurrently attacked two scholarly American sisters for their books on theology and morality: Sister Margaret A. Farley, one of the first Catholics to teach at Yale Divinity School, and Sister Elizabeth Johnson, whose vivacious writings on the “living God” have enticed Catholics to discuss the nature of God without falling asleep.
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15 Comments
I believe the gospel tells us to help the poor as individuals. It is when it comes from the Government that we get differing points of view. We should do it and not let the right hand know what the left is doing. When the traveler found the man on the side of the road he did not call an authority, he took care of it himself, without fanfare.
Excellent post — thanks, Janet.
No one has denied the sisters do good work but, and here is the big BUT, it does not mean they have free reign to theological and moral issues. Please remember the LCWR is required to be faithful to the teachings of the Church by virtue of their connection to the Vatican. If they wish to venture off into some weird areas of theology they can do that but not remaining a group connected to the Vatican.
Mary — if I was single and you were single, I’d next be asking for your private e-mail address. You are a dynamite Catholic. (Don’t worry — I am married with children for a lengthy time, and I’m not going to ask for your e-mail address.)
i wonder if we are forgetting that the role of a theologian is to do theology? A theologian questions, pulls apart, looks at things through different lenses and presents their findings and opinions. It seems to me that a theologian can be most faithful in challenging the status quo.
Tony — that’s what everybody in Boston, and what all the Jesuits no matter where they live, think. That’s why we have the Georgetown mess. I read of one priest from Notre Dame (don’t know his order) who said Eucharistic Adoration is not helpful and a regression — what an idiot. If I was his superior, I would silence that heretic. So, theologians can think and propose what they want as long as it does not contradict Church teaching.
You know Jim, there are different approaches to theology, take for example the Franciscan approach and the Dominican approach, There is the Theology of St Ambrose and the Theology of Augustine. All different ways of aproacthing theological truth. A few years ago Liberation Theology was the big thing, now with the new guy as Inquesitor I expect it to be coming back in vogue.
And Tony, you know Dr. Tiger must be good — he is a professor (or at least was) at some school in the New England area. By gosh, it could even be somewhere in Boston — good things can happen anywhere, you know.
Jim, forgive me but I don’t know Dr Tiger. And Jim I am not from Boston or anywhere from New England, although i did study in Rhode Island and Conneticut for awhile.
Well, Tony, you SOUND like you’re from Boston — you know, liberal and all.
I just Googled Lionel Tiger the decline of males, and sure enough, there are links to the book.
Well, Tony, you can listen to whoever you want; “as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” I’m not listening to any man; I am listening to the only person Who raised Himself from the dead, and that is Jesus Christ, as He speaks to us through the infallible teaching of the Catholic Church. BTW, I was watching EWTN last night, and they corrected a common misperception which you may have asserted: that Paul VI’s commission did NOT recommend hormonal contraception. There were one or two voices on that commission that were in favor of it, but the clear majority were against it. Paul VI told the commission that if they could prove the case that hormonal contraception was morally licit, that he would then approve it; but, the commission concluded they could not prove the case. And now, from what we know from anthropological research done on monkeys, hormonal contraception makes the females unattractive to the males (via pheromones), and the contracepting females gravitate to males who are not the best fathers for their children. This research, if you’re interested, was done by Lionel Tiger, Ph.D., and published in 1999 in a book called “The Decline of Males.”
Thank you for that information, I will try to research this new information. Sometimes EWTN, can be a little to the right. (wink)
When did the government take over individual’s responsibility to care for their neighbor.? Isn’t creating jobs a way of helping one’s neighbor? Isn’t educating people a way to help one’s neighbor? When did paying taxes relieve us of individual responsibility to hand it over to big government?
When did government take over an individual’s responsiblity to care for their neighbor, you ask. Answer: liberals routinely think that way. They try to help others by picking the pockets of other Americans to force them to pay taxes to fund the programs the liberals have deemed necessary. Voting for Obama again will result in the continued buildup of the biggest socialist state in the history of the USA.