Vatican

Vatican’s use of term ‘radical feminist’ says more about cardinals than nuns they rebuke

It surprises me a little that the men who run things at the Vatican did not use their most favorite recent pejorative – “feminist” — when they rapped the knuckles of Margaret Farley, a nun who has long been a professor at Yale, for having written a book about sex and love that condones masturbation (and as of Thursday morning was in …

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After Vatican’s rebuke of nuns, time to hear Mary’s voice

Imagine the fury of the men of Galilee when a young, unmarried girl showed up in their village pregnant. They must have talked about punishments. Stoning — a legitimate penalty, condoned by Deuteronomy — would have been appropriate, although the more compassionate among them might have suggested something gentler: ostracism or banishment. If the girl had been allowed to speak …

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Belgium Bucks the Vatican

The Vatican has clearly stated that when investigating cases of sex abuse, “civil law concerning the reporting of crimes to the appropriate authorities should always be followed.” History shows, however, that such cooperation is not always the norm. For more than a thousand years in Europe, church and state were rarely separate. The Vatican has clearly stated that when investigating …

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The Catholic Church Attacks Nuns

Earlier this month, in something of a surprise, a nun at a Catholic hospital in Phoenix was excommunicated for approving a first-trimester abortion last year at that hospital to save the life of a critically ill patient. “An unborn child is not a disease,” said Bishop Thomas Olmsted of the Phoenix diocese. “While medical professionals should certainly try to save …

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The Troubled Future of Catholic Celibacy

In 1998 a Roman Catholic nun named Marie McDonald wrote a brief and painful summary of her concerns to her colleagues and superiors. It was labeled “strictly confidential.” She was worried, she said, about the sexual abuse of nuns by Roman Catholic priests in Africa. The memo—titled “The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and in …

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A Women’s Place is in the Church

Here they are, the members of history’s oldest and most elite all-male club, trying to manage what began as a domestic crisis. For decades, priests in America, Europe, Ireland, Brazil (and God knows where else) abused—raped or otherwise molested—children and teenagers not in the frescoed halls of the Vatican but in their own backyards: on camping trips and in cars, …

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