the left/right gap between US nuns and the rest of the clergy is actually a huge thing. Pope Benedict boosted a lot of right-wing orders of sisters to attempt to counter that narrative and had a whole Vatican task force basically designed to root out nuns who were too liberal. https://twitter.com/rustbeltrebel/status/1320136965585592321

I talked to a sister here in Portland about the Vatican investigations once. Her order refused to fill out these horrifically invasive questionnaires that were pages and pages long and asked Mothers Superior to report on things like how often their nuns were masturbating.

Which, even if you approach from the mindset that that is a sin which merits penance, demanding written reports to headquarters is some Scientology shit

the rite of Confession is built around trust and privacy (which is why It’s ALSO a sin for the priest to publicly rat you out)

A lot of this ideological gap is because traditionally, women religious were workers - nurses, teachers, etc. There have historically been fewer isolated contemplative monastic orders of women than men. Women in the church do jobs that involve interacting with people.

Monks often live in remote isolation from the world and spend their full days in prayer, reading, and service to each other. Monasteries are little bubbles.

And while pastors minister to parishioners, the higher up the clergy ladder you go the less you tend to deal with plebes

So you have this gap where, for example, a nun at an AIDS clinic and a cardinal at the Vatican are going to have two totally different experiences of gay people. They might be an abstract example of Worldly Sin to him, but they’re real people with names and life stories to her.

And because getting to know people from different backgrounds and learning to see them as human beings is the best way to become more openminded, there’s this gap between how nuns engage with the world vs. how the bishops council and college of cardinals, who call the shots, do

So there really is a difference in what Catholicism means to you as a social force in the world if you’re a Biden type of Catholic (who says his faith was shaped largely by Jesuits and nuns) vs. someone like Cardinal Dolan, who is entirely a creature of the hierarchy.

anyway that’s today’s episode of “Catholicism Today With Claire Willett”

remember the 1930s when there was a whole movement of Catholic Socialism

let’s bring that shit back https://twitter.com/eleighdo/status/1320159063879999488

my hottest and most niche Catholic take is that Sister Simone Campbell - one of the leading activists who helped lobby for the passage of the ACA - is the closest we have to a 21st century Dorothy Day

stan her and Father James Martin for the best of progressive Catholicism

anyway the Right claiming the sole mantle of religiosity is bullshit for many reasons, not just because it very notably erases A) every religion that isn’t Christianity and B) every Christian that isn’t white, but it also erases the white Christian Left that has always been here

I disagree with Amy Coney Barrett on every possible thing two people can disagree on except like, that God exists

and her Catholicism isn’t any better or more real or morally superior or more deserving of political power than mine

It’s just that our society is structured politically to give conservative voices the benefit of the doubt, so she “feels” more Catholic than a Biden or a Pelosi because of how we construct cultural narratives about what Catholicism looks like and what Catholics care about

Very few of the people I’ve heard demanding that everyone go easy on Barrett as a nice Catholic mom show the same concern for the language their party lobs at nice Catholic grandma Nancy Pelosi

This is just a rant now lmao I’m just so tired of this woman and of how the media somehow just immediately granted the premise that she in any way represents the majority of Catholic women or Catholic moms

My dad was a cantor at our church for decades and every time “your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the recesses of your household” came up in the Psalm rotation you could FEEL my mother glowering from the pews, imagine telling Theresa Willett to call herself a “handmaid”