Okay, so I was thinking about all the virtual ink that’s been spilled, tears that have been shed and skin that’s been worn off hands because of all that wringing over the LCWR/Sr. Farley business, and I figures at some point soon, the columnists and bloggers are going to run out of material, and they just might need another example of a Religious Sister, Kept Down By The Men.
(Not a fake issue, historically speaking, by the way! Not kidding!)
So, I thought of one!
Here you go: the American religious sister who’s had more conflicts with more bishops than any other over the past few decades. Who’s gone head-to-head with a bishop or two, whose work has been supported by lay people, but who’s had bishops has her primary opponents, both overtly and covertly, who, up until various shifts and changes of the past 5-7 years, has had probably 80% of the American bishops strongly in opposition to her ministry.
Nun v. Male Bishops! For your next column, blog post, Colbert bit or #hashtag campaign! Ready?
What?
Good point!
But she is a different kind of nun — the kind only a fool would not take seriously.
Don’t put Mother Angelica in the same article as the LCWR group of leaders. Yes Mother Angelica had legitimate issues with some Bishops and what did she do in the end? She went to ROME, to the Vatican and was supported by them. Mother Angelica does not defy Church teachings, does not promote abortion, gay sex, contraception, women’s ordination; she does not refuse to have the Mass celebrated because the celebrant is male; she does not stand with Obama when he promotes agendas that would take away the freedom of religion…no comparison to the LCWR group of leaders.
Witness to Life…dude turn your sense of humor switch back on. Amy was clearly tweaking the sad sacks who are weeping over The Sisters but who couldn’t give a rat’s ass at the very least or more probably totally supported the bishops’ Mother Angelica hate.
Excellent!
Mother A. did once tell people in Los Angeles to disobey their archbishop, for which she later apologized, so she’s not all sweetness and light. http://articles.latimes.com/1997/dec/06/local/me-61273
I saw Mother Angelica call out Cardinal Mahony of the Taj Mahony for heretical teaching on the Eucharist. This fine Nun is a pip. If the USCCB hadn’t attacked her and tied her hands on the TLM, today the NO Mass would be history. I hope to have a cold one with her when I make it to heaven. She also said that we didn’t get the full third secret because it is scary, and Fr. Fox nearly had apoplexy, that old fox.
So true! I love the photo of Mother Angelica and am thankful for EWTN. So many times I have been able to see events that nobody else would televise, but EWTN did.
Jim:
Exactly my point.
@Jim,
Who ever mistook her for “all sweetness and light”? Mother Angelica was always the first person to talk about her temper and loose lips…
I find it ironic that todays so-called modern nun is always complaining about male dominance, when infact two of the most influencal people in the church in the last 30 yrs have been woman, namely mother theresa and mother a. their moral and spiritual power made weaker men just shut up. if the bishops had their courage to speak the truth of the gospels we would not be in the mess we r in!!! the first shall be last!!!amen
Read that article posted by Jim about Mother Angelica v. Cardinal Mahoney and all I can say is CHEERS to Mother Angelica. It happened in 1997; just wondering if any native LA people can tell us if his crazy plans actually panned out.
Oh God. Is she still alive? She’s worse than the bishops!
Why is people think that saints are or should be sweetness and light? To be a leader, you can not be a wimp. Christ was not sweet. He was tough! Mother is a Saint! How else could she have built EWTN? It would have never lasted as long as it did without her following God’s will. The bishops tried three times, and failed to build a TV network, and they had how many of us in pews each Sunday to foot the bill, and still they couldn’t do it.
Awesome! It’s true: if only so many American bishops were the staunch, public defenders of tradition that feminists in the press accuse them of being!
Remember when some of the bishops were going to attempt a coup and take over her network? Remember her response?
“I’ll blow the damn thing up first!”
What a woman!!
Sorry to hijack the thread, but fair warning to our ‘Diva of the da Vinci Code’ :
the British Olympic opening ceremony (riffing off Shakespeare’s Tempest as ‘The Isles of Wonder’) promises to be a paeon to midsummer Glastonbury geomancy a la Dan Brown…
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/olympicsvideo/9326706/London-2012-Olympics-Opening-Ceremony-details-revealed.html
Or not if we Christians can weave the “1080″ reference — gematria for the Holy Spirit esoterically-speaking apparently, see http://www.isleofavalon.co.uk/history/pennick.html — back around to immaculate Mary as sedes sapientia ?
http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/balthasa/coredemp.html )
The BBC featured the famed Arthurian site on a special airing this evening
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jxrb9
n.b. the bell closes out both video segments, uncanny coordinated timing or serendipitous happenstance? Divine inspiration, hopefully!
Like all great lies, this all may have traces of truth. I don’t think she would call her work damn. But there are fundamental things about Sister Angelica that are obvious to those that have seen her over the years that are sharply contrasting from the LCWR. In her youth she may have had a rebel streak in her. Who does not? But she is loyal to the R C Church to the death. She wears her habit not proudly but with a humility that radiates to us and tells us that she is truly devoted to her vocation. She understands the authority of the priest and his role at the altar. She does not use the altar to tell us about how far women have come since the early church. She believes that the altar is simply where Mass takes place and not where we feed our egos, or show others how much more we love the Church, intelligent, or that women should be represented, or show off trendy clothing, ear rings, hair style, or our oral prowess, but instead is what Our Lord Jesus intended for us since the first Mass, 2000 years ago. She understands that only the priest, a humble, imperfect, but Holy man can represent the Son of Man during Mass.
Maybe you can shed some light on this for me: A 1994 National Catholic Reporter cover story claimed EWTN employed 124 people and received annual donations totaling approximately $25 million, of which approximately $8.5 million goes toward operating expenses. Just wondering about the remaining $16.5 million. Is there a hospital, orphanage, rest home, school…. anything? Or (gasp!) is this the sort of money that finds its way to Rome, like the alleged money trail to Rome via Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado (who was also venerated during much of his lifetime)?
Cardinal Mahoney was also the one who, in an interview in the late 1980s, claimed that there was no crisis in the Church LOL
Hi Sister Mary Margaret:
I have no idea. You could probably look EWTN & their 990′s up on Guidestar for more up to date information.
Love the denseness on display in the comments!
I guess the point was..Fr. Jim Martin revved up the crowds with his #supportoursisters campaign, which was totally disingenuous and self-serving anyway, when it has never once occurred to Fr. Martin to #supportoursisters who happen to be traditional and are dissed by bishops or who are the objects of scorn and exclusion by their fellow LCWR-type sisters. (Doesn’t anyone remember the LCWR nuns who got miffed at the praise heaped on the Missionaries of Charity years ago? Don’t remember exactly what they said, but it was not in the spirit of #supportoursisters.) The libs at Commonweal(isn’t that your magazine, Ms. Welborn?) and America who are so quick to nail the traditional orders for all kinds of sins are falling over themselves about the LCWR. They love it when the LCWR nuns stand up and speak truth to hierarchical power, but they didn’t love it when Mother Angelica did it. Yeah, she was obedient, but she was outspoken in her criticism of certain bishops. #supportoursisters is only for a certain kind of sister who makes liberal Catholics happy.
(And Catholic Teacher – I’d love to know what the orders who have sold all their property over the past fifty years have done with *that* money! Wouldn’t you?)
I don’t know anything about Mother Angelica’s disagreement with Cardinal Mahoney, but looking at the latest 990 form at Guidestar I’m guessing that the Most Rev Jose Gomez listed as a member of the board of governors of EWTN is the archbishop of Los Angeles….
First and most glaring difference between Mother Angelica and the LCWR sisters: She’s wearing a habit. That speaks worlds about her attitude and where she’s coming from.
So very true… I used the Mother Angelica card in 2003 with the Voice of the (not entirely) Faithful and the preternaturally shrill indignation of their replies still echo in cyberspace.
LCWR Sisters could have asked the CDF to introduce them to those saved in invincible ignorance and the baptism of desire
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has explained that the purpose of the doctrinal assessment had been to “assist the LCWR in this important mission by promoting a vision of ecclesial communion founded on faith in Jesus Christ” and also on “the teachings of the Church as faithfully taught through the ages under the guidance of the Magisterium.”
The assessment had found serious theological and doctrinal errors in presentations at the Leadership of Catholic Women Religious(LCWR)’ annual assemblies in recent years, with many showing “scant regard for the role of the Magisterium.”
The rebellious American sisters who have still not been excommunicated, probably because of their leftist sources of power, and are privileged, unlike the SSPX bishops, cannot tell Cardinal Levada, “You first affirm the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus and set an example for us”.
At their last meeting on Wednesday the sisters could have asked Cardinal William Levada Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) “Why don’t you affirm the literal interpretation of the centuries old dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus, ‘as was faithfully taught through the ages’ ”
Or, why don’t you issue a Doctrinal Notification to Cardinal Kurt Koch a member of the Vatican Curia and Prefect of the Pontifical Council for Christian Unity, who on May 16 said Jews do not have to convert into the Catholic Church in the present times, contradicting the Bible and the Creed.
They cannot tell the CDF to endorse the dogma since the Sisters reject the dogma and this is a cause of their rebellion, heresy and free thinking.
It is because the Sisters have rejected the dogma extra ecclesiam nulla salus that they have gone into New Age etc.
Otherwise when the Sisters were at the CDF office they could have asked the Secretary of the CDF, Cardinal Luiz Ladaria S.J: “How can you claim that there are known cases of non Catholics saved with the baptism of desire ? Who are these cases, exceptions to the literal interpretation of the dogma? “
“How can we know a person saved in invincible ignorance and a good conscience (LG 16) who is in Heaven? How can we telephone them or meet them on earth?”. The CDF Secretary says we can meet them. He makes this claim in two papers of the International Theological Commission (ITC).It is because he believes that we can meet these people on earth, he assumes that they are defacto exceptions to the literal interpretation of the dogma.
Also he writes on the ITC website that the Letter of the Holy Office 1949 during the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, corrected Fr.Leonard Feeney for rejecting the baptism of desire etc. If this is true then the cardinal is saying that the Letter made an objective mistake. Since the baptism of desire etc are not exceptions to the literal interpretation of the dogma. They are in a sense irrelevant to the dogma and its centuries old literal interpretation.
The Sisters could have asked the CDF to introduce them to those saved in invincible ignorance and the baptism of desire
The Sisters have been rightly criticized for reported distortions of faith in Jesus and the structure of sacramental life, as well as undermining the doctrines of “the Holy Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the inspiration of Sacred Scripture.”.-Lionel Andrades
I loved it when she said she’d blow up the network rather than let it get in to the hands of the bishops.
BTW – you read me! You really read me! Thanks!
You’re one of my favorites, Terry!