The Vatican is Looking to See if 59,000 Nuns Support Homosexuality

by Michael Jones · 2009-08-18 12:22:00 UTC
Topics:

U.S. Nuns

The Vatican is currently leading an investigation of U.S. Catholic nuns to see whether or not women religious in the United States are straying too far from the official Church's positions on certain social issues, including homosexuality.  While the Vatican says this is just a part of auditing official church behavior, many women religious are saying that this amounts to an inquisition and a questioning of whether U.S. nuns conform to church teaching.  And many are taking offense.

The study will cover 341 congregations of women religious, or roughly 59,000 nuns.  According to Catholic News Service, among the items that the Vatican plans on studying are each order's life and operation, identity, governance, vocation promotion, admission requirements and formation policies, spiritual life and common life, mission and ministry, and finances.  Of course, one question seems to have people thinking that this might be the beginning of a witchhunt.  Here it is:

What's the process for responding to sisters who dissent publicly or privately from the authoritative teaching of the Church?

Could that question be reworded to say, "What's the process for responding to sisters who believe that LGBT people deserve the same basic civil rights as heterosexuals?"  For some, it seems like that's what the Vatican is really trying to ask.  Mary Hunt over at Religion Dispataches notes that it seems the Vatican's motivation in launching the study is the assumption "that American nuns are accepting of same-sex love, supportive of feminist ministry (including ordination of women), and embracing of persons of many and no faiths."

Adding fuel to the fire is that the Vatican intends to keep all of the information they collect secret, a fact that angered many women religious this week.  Is the Vatican secretly trying to undermine the work of U.S. women religious, simply because they're afraid that some nuns are treating the gospel too liberally?

We'll see.  The "study" is scheduled to take up to three years.  But given the overtones of the current Pope and his Papal administration, red flags are certainly prevalent that this might just be an effort to stamp out religious folk who think that Jesus was a human rights activist instead of a partisan fundamentalist.

Michael Jones is a Change.org Editor. He has worked in the field of human rights communications for a decade, most recently for Harvard Law School.
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