The brave words of Catholic sisters are guided by reason and their consciences. Faith is unsustainable if it cannot endure such independent and sincere questions and tests.
The sisters are far more courageous and determined than women such as myself. Disgusted by child-abuse scandals of the early 1990s and the church's irrational arguments and response - blaming the media and the messenger - I abandoned the Catholic Church. If they were so irrational on one point, how could they not be wrong on so many others? I did not need such men to supervise my spirituality. No women or child does.
"Like everything else in the United States, religion must compete under the free-market system. In this country, we have the privilege of free thought and speech, and we can decide which 'moral' rules imposed by religious leaders, mere mortals, should be kept and which are meant to be broken," I wrote for the Hartford Courant, March 24, 2002, in an essay titled "The Church Must Change." Not many traces of that 2002 opinion essay remain online.
I admire the nuns and would consider attending a church run by nuns.
Image courtesy of From Eternity to Here.
