I'm with the nuns

I didn’t care so much for certain nuns who taught me in grade school and high school. I got yelled at in sixth grade for not knowing fractions and other math concepts that I had not actually learned the year before at my old school. I went to freshman English in dread fear every day of the nastiest teacher I’ve ever met. Then there was the ancient nun of the O’Hara library, who refused to let any students actually use the library and was just generally miserable and hateful. (When she died, no student spoke at her school memorial service. Not to be hard-hearted but I guess you reap what you sow when you’re so nasty to the kids.) So for awhile in my youth, my gut reaction was an immature “Nuns: Eww!”

After reading about the pope chastising a group of sisters, though, I have to say I’m with the nuns. The Vatican told the Leadership Conference of Women Religious that they were taking “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” Apparently the Vatican told the nuns they were focusing too much on poverty and economic justice and not speaking out enough on abortion or gay marriage.

Allow me not to speak like a good Catholic boy for a moment and say ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING MEEEEEEE?!?!

The pope’s people actually think nuns care too much about the poor?! Sure, because that’s what Christ did, right? He told the poor to go to hell. Remember that woman who could only donate a pittance of her income at the temple? Jesus publicly embarrassed that woman. Then he kicked her in the shins. And isn’t one of the Beatitudes “Blessed are the billionaires for they shall see God”?

Nuns can care too much about poverty? I just … I don’t even … what?

Concern for the poor has been part of the bedrock of Christianity for thousands of years. It even predates Jesus. It’s not even exclusive to religion but is just a belief of anybody without a heart of stone.

Compassion for the poor is a pervasive theme throughout the Bible. Jesus said this in Luke: “When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed.” And that’s just one example. To me, that sounds like an endorsement of caring for the poor. Can we have too much of that? Can the religious do too much of that?

I realize the Vatican wasn’t telling sisters not to care about the poor at all but it seems very wrong to tell a group of people to “dial it back” because their time is better spent elsewhere. I don’t think we see enough emphasis on caring for others in religion in general. I was watching some documentary on an evangelical Bible camp and what struck me is how navel-gazing all the religious exercises seemed. It was more like glorified self-help than directed at helping the less fortunate. I remember thinking, “When do any kids at this camp ever hear ‘love thy neighbor’?”

At a time when so many of us, regardless of our faith or lack thereof, are so self-involved, the last thing we need is for the leadership of the world’s largest denomination to de-emphasize caring for the less fortunate.

I suppose instead of running Project HOME, Sister Mary Scullion’s time is better spent protesting my big gay engagement. The fact that Steve and I are uniting harms exactly nobody in any practical sense. We’ve been through this. We’ve gone to court and nobody could provide substantial credible evidence that two grooms walking down an aisle will harm society. In contrast, poverty will hurt, and has hurt, society. These nuns should be commended for continuing to be grounded in the real world and trying to solve a real world problem.