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Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

Nuns Gone Wild

Well, it’s about time somebody put those nutty nuns in their places.

According to the Washington Post, the Vatican recently “launched a crackdown on the umbrella group that represents most of America’s 55,000 Catholic nuns,” the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, for “not speaking out strongly enough against gay marriage, abortion and women’s ordination.”

Those silly Sisters of ours — always getting into trouble. Next thing you know they’ll be throwing ragers in the convents or trying to ditch their beautiful, black-and-white habits for miniskirts and tube tops.

The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has appointed Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain to oversee the process of revamping the LCWR, yet as a casual observer, it is difficult to see exactly what needs to be changed.

Ostensibly, the LCWR has not made any statements contrary to the beliefs of the Catholic Church, yet it is being admonished for what it hasn’t said.

This would appear to be true, as an announcement released by the Vatican stated, “While there has been a great deal of work on the part of LCWR promoting issues of social justice in harmony with the church’s social doctrine, it is silent on the right to life from the conception to natural death.”

This seems like a strange point of contention for Rome to pick on our nuns for. Come on, aren’t there much worse things they could be doing? What if they were caught breaking their celibacy or slapping kids with their “nunchucks”? (Pretty good, right?) At least they haven’t behaved as badly as a few Catholic priests have in the past.

One group specifically targeted in the Vatican’s criticism is Network, which is a “social justice lobby created by Catholic sisters” in 1971. Sartain will be charged with reviewing LCWR’s relationship with Network and other groups the Church might question.

Sister Simone Campbell, Network’s executive director, said she was concerned that “political differences in a democratic country would result in such censure and investigation.”

Preach on, Sister, preach on!

Though it might be the right of the Vatican to form its own beliefs and uphold those beliefs, we believe the Church should focus on tackling other issues within the organization rather than reforming groups that have only helped support religious women in the United States.

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