Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article

To: nanetteclaret
An old joke from my childhood in the early 60's, when good Catholic girls were going from working-class families into nice middle-class convents: the girl's dad looks around the place and says, "Jeeee-zus, Mary, and Joseph! If dis is poverty, I'd like ta see da chastity!"

I used to be a lay associate of the Order of St. Benedict, and I got a close-up view of this about 35 years ago. The OSB's and other "progressive" orders, in a rather evasive way, "kept" their vows but re-interpreted them. (This is comparable to "honoring" the Constitution as "a living document," ergo killing your baby is elevated from a criminal offense to a Constitutional right, etc.)

"Poverty" was transformed into "solidarity with the poor," often in an explicitly politicized way. It meant "the interesting poor." Poor blacks and Mexicans were interesting. Poor Cambodians and Vietnamese, refugees from Communist terror, were not interesting. Miskito Indians were interesting until Daniel Ortega decided they were counterrevolutionary, and then they were not interesting.

"Chastity" meant... hmm. As I recall, it meant being unmarried and having your primary "bondedness" to other women.

"Obedience" was primarily horizontal: solidarity with other progressive nuns; loyalty to your Prioress or Superior, especially if she was in conflict with Rome; scrupulous compliance with the new norms you just wrote last week, together with stern reprimands toward refractory traditionalists who didn't seem to be getting with the program. This punctilious form of "obedience" was salient during the Great Pronoun Reformation: "Mary Margaret, our new rubrics do not allow the use of masculine pronouns for the Divine! Holy Obedience!"

The only cheerful and encouraging thing you can say about this, is that it is suicidal.

49 posted on 10/28/2006 10:16:46 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 47 | View Replies ]


To: Mrs. Don-o

LOL! I could have guessed ...


51 posted on 10/28/2006 3:06:20 PM PDT by nanetteclaret (Our Lady's Hat Society)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 49 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Religion
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson