ANOTHER CHAPTER IN THE CURRENT SAGA OF THE METAPHYSICAL “BIG BROTHERS” VS RADICAL FEMINIST “LITTLE SISTERS”

This contest is a really interesting existential struggle to define what the Intelligent Designer really had in mind when the decision was taken to have two different kinds of sexual organs.

Did the Decider in the Sky really want to have organic superiors, and were they always supposed to dominate the organic inferiors, or was there perhaps some static in the transmission of this message that still hasn’t yet been sorted out? How are we to know if organs get in the way of trying to decrypt this hierarchical conundrum?

What do you think about this, and how do you think this will eventually be resolved?

Who finally gets to define what the big gal/guy way up there somewhere really wants to see happen??  Who ultimately is supposed to obey whom?? Ah, yes, yet more conundri on the metaphysics of inscrutability!!

Enjoy and take care.  Andy

CATHOLIC NUNS WEIGH VATICAN ORDER

By Ben Kesling, WSJ, 6 August 2012.

Leaders of Catholic nuns and sisters in the U.S. are gathering this week for their first major meeting since the Vatican ordered the women to abandon controversial positions and closely hew to official teachings.

During the weeklong event in St. Louis, which starts Tuesday and is estimated to draw 900 participants, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious is expected to solidify its response to church authorities. Any policy changes will be announced Friday, a conference representative said.

The group represents 80% of American nuns and sisters. Nuns are cloistered, while sisters typically serve in the fields of education, health care and service to the needy.

In April, the Vatican issued its report on the group following a four-year doctrinal review by Catholic bishops. The scrutiny was prompted by concerns that the group, which comprises the senior leadership of some 56,000 nuns and sisters in the U.S., had widespread policies of dissent against church authorities, and espoused "radical feminism," according to the Vatican report.

The report cited a keynote address to the group in 2007 by Sister Laurie Brink, a New Testament professor at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago, as a catalyst for the investigation. In it, she made a claim that a dynamic religious life "involves moving beyond the Church, even beyond Jesus." The report called such comments a "cry for help."

The Vatican's findings mandate the appointment of a "delegate" from the church, Archbishop Peter Sartain of Seattle, to review the nuns' and sisters' "conformity to the teachings and discipline of the Church," subjecting many of their decisions to his approval. The archbishop's representative wasn't available to comment.

Nuns and sisters, who have taken vows but are unable to become priests because of the church's position on ordination of women, have long been identified as a bridge between laypeople and clergy. Part of the nuns' and sisters' mission, according to the Conference's website, is to join "in solidarity with people who experience any form of violence or oppression."

The leadership conference was formed in 1956 at the behest of the Vatican in order to formally connect various orders of American nuns and sisters and to provide an official link to church leadership. Another group, the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, which is considered to be more conservative, represents the remaining 20% of American nuns and sisters.

The nuns have won some support from other semiautonomous Catholic groups.

In June, the Franciscans in the U.S., a well-known and respected male religious order, issued a public statement in support of the nuns, calling the Vatican's actions "excessive." The Franciscan order cites a long-standing Catholic tradition of "appropriate disagreement regarding specific application" of Catholic teaching. Such disagreements are "not equivalent to questioning the authority of the Church's magisterium," they contend.




Leave a Reply.