I am a 59 year old woman who was BORN an orphan on Father’s DAY 1951 in the City of New York !!!!!! When you BASH my nuns you BASH my SAINT and their FOUNDRESS !!!!! And you have the unmitigated GALL to call yourself Catholics and “ladies”, I suppose ????? When did you LAST feed and clothe an orphan AND know their name ???? When did you last spent 40 years teaching children catholic doctrine ???? I could go on but why bother…….since you missed the message of the Gospel in toto, I’m sure there is little any one could possibly say to convert you now to Catholicism. I thought we’d seen the LAST of that ‘ Irish biddy’ generation, I guess not. Meanwhile, I did NOT bash Australia !!!! I love UGGS !!!!!! ~ Penelope ~

This once Episcopalean, NY socialite and wife and mother of five, later widow, religous foundress and founder of the catholic school system in the USA is definitely “on top of this” for her following — nuns, students, mothers, orphans. I suggest all American Catholics give the Vatican all the rope for which it asks for itself!!!!!! And , by the way, pray for these guys ’cause …….’ they know not what they do’.

You and I have discussed this; it’d be great if Catholics and Protestants (and Emergence Xianity?) could embrace a truly ‘c’atholic, holarchic model of leadership and plurality – for the health, sanity, and growth of us all.

I think of the Beguines of France and Belgium in the medieval days…women dedicating their hearts and lives to social activism, spirituality, living communaly and not under the thumb of the church or marriage.
How many times, were they “closed down” in history. I think maybe 13, as I heard somewhere (was it Matthew Fox in his audio program Radical Prayer?).
Maybe this is the way things will open up for Women who are called to a spiritual life.. and not in the Church Officianale.
It’s already happening in groups of women who are going forward serving, teaching, mentoring, celebrating and following their Souls. Many many have their roots in Catholicism, and those are rich. But the plant doesn’t stop growing at the root level. The flowering, I must say, is at a good distance from the groundwork.

I went to and for a time worked for a college run by the Sisters of Mercy. Despite being raised as a Roman Catholic, it was my first close association with a religious order. It was an illuminating experience, and shaped my mind and subsequent theological thinking in important ways.

The treatment of women by the Vatican, in part, alongside my own issues with authority, lead me to conclude that I could no longer remain a practicing Catholic. Reading this breaks my heart. I’ve seen first hand the gift that so many of these women have given the world. To think of them struggling to survive in their age and infirmity, after the service they’ve given a church which basically pisses on them, is appalling. If I thought that remaining and dissenting would do any good in the current climate, I’d do it – but I see it for the lost cause that it is.

Until Rome starts to get hit in the pocketbook over these issues, they will continue to stick their heads in the sand, and lean on their dysfunctional misogynistic authority structure.

The good that is done in the world on the backs of these women, who live their lives in a state of perpetual self-sacrifice, will be economically very difficult to provide once they are gone…and with what is happening with vocations in this country, they will be gone. I’ve watched the Sisters of Mercy aged dramatically in over the past twenty years. It’s sad.