UNITED STATES
Philadelphia Magazine
Sandy Hingston
As if the Catholic Church didn’t have enough on its plate, it just announced that it’s appointing an archbishop to whip its wayward American religious sisters into line. That’s right! Instead of worrying about, say, which of its clergy are repeat pedophiliac abusers, or its latest money-laundering scandal, or the “Vatileaks” corruption kerfuffle, the Holy See sees fit to drill down on those rowdy, rambunctious women in black and white.
Actually, they don’t wear black and white much anymore, which is part of the problem, apparently. A few years back, the New York Times ran a piece on the Vatican’s multi-year investigation, known as an “Apostolic Visitation,” into whether American nuns were going astray. That article stated that 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.” How you gonna keep ’em down on the farm once they’ve seen American social injustice, right?
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