More on how the religious police are going after nuns now.

[pnwmom]

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/us/02nuns.html?_r=1&hp

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition.

Sister Sandra M. Schneiders has urged fellow nuns not to participate in the study that is being conducted by the Vatican.
Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planting schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming. But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining — to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests.

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

SNIP

[Matilda]

1. I read about this on an Australian website earlier this week.

I have to admit that I'd never heard of "visitations" - if you'd asked me last week, I'd have said it was probably
an appearance by an angel.

Reading between the lines, it looks as if the Vatican is trying to nip social and political activism by nuns in the
bud. And I'd predict that if they try to send nuns back into the convents, there will be an exodus from religious
orders. I'd never underestimate the power of prayer, but it's only one way of serving God.

[47of74]

2. The Vatican has asked the U.S. Bishops to help pay for this thing

I read that the Vatican is now asking the U.S. Bishops to help pay for their little fishing expedition (excuse me, I meant apostolic visitation).

http://ncronline.org/news/women/vatican-asks-us-bishops-fund-11-million-sisters-study

Here's a link to the letter Cardinal Franc Rodé sent out making the request to the U.S. Bishops.

Just out of morbid curiosity, where does Cardinal Rodé think this money is going to come from?

[hedgehog]

4. It comes out to about $20 a sister to check them all out. Hey - I'll do

it for $1 per sister.

Hey Vatican: the sisters are OK!

Where do I send my bill?

[hedgehog]

3. Why American communities specifically? I had no idea the situation here was

so different from the rest of the world.