CathNews New Zealand

The noble image of nuns as sweet, selfless and courageous “brides of Christ” is merely a way of generating public sympathy in the fight with the Vatican.

So says US author, researcher and expert on Religious Life, Donna Steichen.

Steichen says this view is being manufactured by sympathetic media, including the Washington Post, Huffington Post and the Independent. She says they are closely followed by the extreme Catholic left, the National Catholic Reporter and America.

Calling it a “deliberate falsehood,” Steichen urges Catholics to understand the “spin”.

Steichen told Lifesite News, the spin “is omnipresent, always interesting, and often unintentionally comic. But however maliciously intended, I think it contains an element of nostalgia. It proves the irresistible attraction of goodness. Not even the liberal mainstream media can fail to see its beauty.”

She said the Vatican’s attempt at reform is 40 years overdue, but warned it is unlikely to succeed. According to Steichen, the good news is the bad news, with the mean age of 74 “it is evident to all observers that the feminist contingent of women religious is indeed dying out.”

Steichen, who spent 10 years researching feminism in the Catholic Church, and in particular in religious life, blames feminism for the situation the nuns find themselves in.

Feminism is “detestable” because it is “so demeaning of women,” she said.

“It (feminism) denies the value of their natural role, urging them to trade it for the shabby substitutes of paid participation in the work force.”

“Religious feminism is worst of all, because it further demands that women cease to recognize God’s eternal order. …it commands women to serve ‘no Gods, no masters’. Which somehow comes to mean ‘except feminist ideology’.”

Labeling the current situation a “bit of a public relations slight of hand”, Steichen suggests those who are outraged at the Vatican examine some of the speeches made by speakers at the LCWR’s annual conferences.

Sources

• Life Site News
• Image: Jezabel

Additional reading

• LCWR board to discuss CDF assessment
• Bishops play Church queens as pawns
• Twisting tweets make hash of hashtag support for nuns
• The Church and the Sisters: What is really happening?
• Vatican's corrective to liberal Catholics
• Sister of compassion need a hand in dealing with the pope
• Former nun Mary Johnson criticises Vatican crackdown on US Sisters
• George Weigel: Vatican and the Sisters
• Marueen Dowd slams Bishops over nuns, Viki Kennedy snub

News category: World.