New York City, N.Y., Nov 4, 2009 / 03:37 am
Responding to a pundit’s charge that Catholic nuns are “second class citizens” facing “inquisitions” for their “modernity” and “independence,” columnist Kathryn Jean Lopez has said there are many happy, young women in the convent today and that the Vatican investigations especially concern dying orders which have gone “off course.”
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd recently claimed that the Vatican apostolic visitation to American women religious institutes hopes to “herd them back into their old-fashioned habits and convents and curb any speck of modernity or independence.”
Dowd also criticized what she saw as bishops’ hypocrisy in rebuking dissenting religious sisters but apparently doing nothing in response to wayward and abusive priests.
Commenting on Dowd’s essay, Katherine Jean Lopez wrote in National Review Online that Dowd needs to meet some of the young sisters she has.