As many of you may not know, my sister is entering the nunnery (I did not make that word up and if you don’t believe me, read Hamlet), so I have been keeping tabs on Catholic news. No, I am not Catholic, if that was your next quandary as it always seems to be a logical follow-up. Yes, I am supportive of my sister (the next common inquiry). I just hope that the Catholic Church will rethink their outdated teachings and contradictory ones at that.
With no known cause, 57,000 nuns have recently been ‘accused’ (I think of it as a compliment, but hey, that’s obviously just me) of supporting and promoting “radical feminist themes” in a letter from the Pope due to their lack of pro-life and anti-homosexuality teachings. This accusation has not changed their focus, which they have rebuked was unsubstantiated and “the result of a flawed process that lacked transparency.” (Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/life/nuns+push+back+against+Vatican+crackdown/6716833/story.html#ixzz1xB2Qe1KL)
Nuns will be nuns, and they’ve decided to leave the topics of abortion and gay marriage to the rest of the United States (and the Vatican’s rants) in order to feed the poor, procure access to healthcare, and help domestic violence and human trafficking victims.
Oh, and they may touch themselves, which is something no one should do unless they’re trying to get pregnant, “the deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose,” according to the Vatican. In 2006, Sister Margaret Farley, the award-winning scholar and past president of the Catholic Theological Society of America, wrote the book, “Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics,” that attempted to theologically explain masturbation, homosexual relationships, and divorce. Six years late in the scolding, eh? It has already reached a substantial amount of people with it’s feminist influences.
Contents include a praise for female masturbation for which “(women) have found great good in self-pleasuring – perhaps especially in the discovery of their own possibilities for pleasure – something many had not experienced or even known about in their ordinary sexual relations with husbands or lovers,” according to Jezebel and Raw. It also praises same-sex relationships using the same rational as heterosexual relationships.
Sister Farley claims that her book uses “present-day scientific, philosophical, theological, and biblical resources” to bring justice and fairness to human sexuality. She had no intentions for the book to be a part of Catholic teaching, yet Cardinal Levada released a statement saying it, “cannot be used as a valid expression of Catholic teaching, either in counseling and formation, or in ecumenical and interreligious dialogue.” Well, duh, not with their ancient ways of thinking.
I guess the Vatican had to take a stand against this love-based book in a time of ‘insecurity’ around the subjects of homosexuality and human sexuality. Especially since it may give the wrong impression of the Church that maybe they do touch themselves (could be true) and support homosexuality (totally not true, but definitely hypocritical), which would be unforgiving so soon after the whole molestation fiasco.
She just seems to be trying to allow everyone a chance to love everyone. Bringing some peace to the world. All the nuns do. Let’s make it harder for them, shall we?
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/05/us/sister-margaret-farley-denounced-by-vatican.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/letters/la-le-0607-thursday-vatican-20120607,0,4958822.story
http://thegloss.com/sex-and-dating/pope-to-nuns-stop-touching-yoursevles-944/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/vatican-criticizes-us-nuns-book-on-sexuality-contains-defective-understanding-of-doctrine/2012/06/04/gJQAJofEDV_story.html