UNITED STATES
Huffington Post
Caryl Rivers
Until quite recently, I had believed that the world of my novel, “Virgins,” about Catholic girls growing up in the 1950s, was a giant step away from contemporary reality.
After all, in those days, nuns wore habits with skirts to the floor and were expected to be passive and obedient. Catholic women were never supposed to speak about contraception, even in whispers. Families were often overjoyed when a son chose the priesthood as his vocation.
Today, nuns have tossed away the habit and run their own social welfare programs. Catholic women use contraception at the same rates as other American women. And in the wake of the pedophilia scandal in the church, coupled with the Vatican’s refusal to let priests marry or to admit women, the church can barely scrape up applicants for the roman collar,
But this month, as my novel is about to be re-published online, some wisps of the world I thought had vanished seem to be seeping back into the present through the permeable walls of time.
One again, nuns are being told to be quiet and obedient. The Vatican has called the sisters “radical feminists. ” It has proclaimed that they are spending too much time helping the poor, the halt and the lame, and too little time battling the Vatican’s demons, gay marriage and family planning.
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