Posted on 08/26/2008 1:40:47 PM PDT by NYer
ROME - An Italian priest, who had planned an online "pageant" for nuns, has suspended the project, saying he was misinterpreted and had no intention of putting sisters on a beauty catwalk.
"My superiors were not happy. The local bishop was not happy, but they did not understand me either," Father Antonio Rungi told Reuters by telephone from his convent in southern Italy on Tuesday.
"It was not at all my intention to put nuns on the catwalk," said Rungi, a priest of the Passionists religious order, speaking from his convent in the town of Mondragone.
Miss Sister 2008
Rungi's idea appeared in newspapers around the world after he wrote of a contest for nuns on his blog, called by some "Sister Italy 2008." The contest would have started in September.
"It was interpreted as more of a physical thing. Now, no-one is saying that nuns can't be beautiful, but I was thinking about something more complete," he said.
Rungi said the idea was first suggested to him by nuns with whom he regularly prays and works. He hoped there would be dozens of submissions once the Web site started.
His concept for the contest, in which nuns would have a month to vote for themselves on his blog, would include attributes such as their spirituality, social awareness, charity and other qualities, Rungi said. Nuns would fill out a profile including information about their life and vocation as well as a photograph. It would be up to them to choose whether to pose with the traditional veil or with their heads uncovered.
"We are not going to parade nuns in bathing suits," Rungi said. "But being ugly is not a requirement for becoming a nun.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
That's true but there is a better way to convey this message than through an online beauty pageant.
Yes, it was a dumb idea. I’m glad someone higher up the chain stepped in.
Oy. The man is a fool.
Maybe I’m just a naive convert, but it seems to me that a competition based on appearance ... any self-promoting competition, in fact ... would be un-nunlike.
External beauty in a woman can be the near occasion of sin for a man.
Yes, women should hide it, to a certain degree.
And women agree. Look at these new “no poppers” bras they have these days. Woman go to extraordinary, uncomfortable lengths to hide the beauty of their hooters.
Beauty is an element of sexuality, and sexuality is to be confined to marriage, not paraded up and down the aisles at Walmart.
Oh, and for any moonbats who might want to blather about me wanting to keep women in burkhas...Shut up, ya moron.
Because apparently men are ruled by.....
Oh never mind.
There is NOTHING wrong with a little modesty. As my mother used to say....
If all your friends were jumping... no that’s not it....
Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free... probably not it either...
Oh yeah.... YOU NEED TO LEAVE SOMETHING TO THE IMAGINATION. Go change clothes!
I was going to say something like that, although not so convoluted. The line that external beauty shouldn’t be hidden seemed to lack perspective.
Why should it even be suggested that being ugly is a characteristic of nuns? Don’t they have joyful young Sisters like the Nashville Dominicans in Italy? (Maybe not, with their rapid-extinction birthrate ...)
*******************
Un-nunlike to the max.
It's a good *habit* to get into.
I know this much — the peace on those young ladies’ faces gives them a beauty no makeup could ever enhance or detract from.
Convoluted? I’m wounded to the heart.
There are a lot of things that happened 42 years ago that I don’t remember. One of the few things that remains fresh in my memory is that one day I was walking down the street in Oklahoma City, very down in the mouth. Adolescent angst, or some such nonsnse.
Anyway, a nun in habit walking in the opposite direction smiled at me. And what a smile. It warmed my heart. Made me feel better in an instant.
If I’d had even a scintilla of wisdom (wait for laughter to die down) I would have seen that there’s a lot of “there” there.
I remember it to this day, but to this day I couldn’t tell you if that sister was classically “beautiful” as the secular world defines it. Nor do I care.
Any bright, happy young woman is going to have a certain visual appeal, whether she’s wearing a traditional nun’s habit or blue jeans. I love seeing the Sisters at events here - the Dominicans, the Missionaries of Charity, the Sisters of Life - because their joy helps to validate all my religious experience, different as it is in many ways.
I’ve been told that I have the same kind of holy glow when I’m holding a baby :-).
Um........who's trying to? Is there a single woman in the entire western civilization in 2008 who is trying to hide her beauty? My eyes are assaulted by it everywhere I go. The man speaks as if we're living in a fundamentalist Moslem society where everyone is wearing burkhas. What a dolt!
Western society is crying out for modesty, not more ass and boobs (sorry Mr. Mod.....is that potty language?).
The Catholic Church is supposed to shine a light and set an example, not run after the dregs yelling "nuns are hot too!!".
Where’s that final scene in the “Torquemada” episode in “History of the World Part One”?
;^)
“Any bright, happy young woman is going to have a certain visual appeal, whether she’s wearing a traditional nun’s habit or blue jeans. “
Well, yes, but when dress becomes downright lewd, it is very hard (or impossible) for a man not to be tempted to lewd thoughts, and then to deeds.
“The Catholic Church is supposed to shine a light and set an example, not run after the dregs yelling “nuns are hot too!!”.
But that is the true spirit of Vatican II: The effort to attract pew-sitters with the assertion that the Church is as “hip” as the secular world. Which strategy, of course, originated with Satan.
I understand that, and I’ve been a Fundamentalist Frump for the last 15 years :-). I was simply pointing out that “beauty” is a very broad category. It includes Dominican Sisters that you don’t even really look at their specific features - you just see them shine with joy and love. It includes my daughter buying auto-mechanic’s clothes this afternoon; beat it, you guys, she’s 17, okay? If you’re Catholic, try again in five years.
I’m in full agreement that women need to show good sense in choosing their clothes (although I also understand the temptation to flaunt one’s assets, having Been There in my early 20’s). And I’m just as bored with the “you want them to wear burqas!” line as you are.
We seem to be in agreement, especially in our disagreement with the notion of nun “beauty pagents.”
You mean the scene that was so funny and so totally bereft of veracity?
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