UNITED STATES
KPCC
[with audio]
By Kitty Felde | May 29, 2012
The group that represents most of America’s Roman Catholic nuns meets today in Maryland to discuss what to do next after a Vatican report accused the nuns of promoting “radical feminist themes.” The battle is similar to one half-a-century ago between a group of nuns and a Los Angeles cardinal.
They’re here every Tuesday – singing, praying and waving signs outside the D.C. headquarters of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. The two dozen women and men say they came to support the nuns. Jack McCarthy says they have been “at the forefront of the church’s efforts in poverty and justice. I can’t say that for the entire body of bishops.”
They’re reacting to a Vatican report that says nuns don’t spend enough time defending the church’s stand against contraception and same-sex marriage. It accuses the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — which represents most American nuns — of promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” The clash reminds protester Mary Frances Moriarty of a long-ago fight between L.A.’s Cardinal McIntyre and the Immaculate Heart nuns. “He leaned on them, didn’t he? And they said ‘no’.”
That fight had its roots in the Second Vatican Council, the effort to bring the Catholic Church into the modern world. Sister Karen Kennelly is a church historian and past president of L.A.’s Mount St. Mary’s College. She says Vatican Two told religious congregations to renew themselves. “They were given a kind of a general guideline,” she says, “which was to look back to their original spirit and to their original purposes and to take a good hard look at the signs of the times.”
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