Oh, Sister....

You know, I love nuns. The good ones, that is. That may seem like a contradiction in terms, but I assure you, it's not. It amazes me how many nuns don't really seem to care about what the church teaches, or engage in a gross form of cafeteria Catholicism in order to bend their vocation to fit their political agenda.

Today's latest example is from the Akron Beacon Journal , one of the more avowedly liberal papers in my state. The northern part of Ohio is endowed with many Catholics (German, Polish, Italian descent, mostly) and a lot of our state's convents. So it's not surprising to read a lot about the Church in these papers. But what saddens me are letters like the one I read today. Written by a nun, it essentially said "don't lump all Catholics in with Republicans" (that's actually a paraphrase of the headline), and then continued on to say exactly how the Republican party doesn't aline perfectly with Catholic values, and that the Church is for "peace, love and justice" (oooooh gag me with a spoon!).

Can we, again, get real for a minute? This doesn't make me sad, it makes me mad. First off, as I have discussed many, many times, you cannot be a good Catholic and vote for politicians that go directly against explicit Church doctrine . For example, no voting for Pro-Choice candidates!! Now, I admit, the Republican party is not perfect. We don't "perfectly embody" Catholic doctrine. But I tell you what--until the Left starts recognizing that abortion and assisted suicide legislation are not Catholic and aren't exactly even Christian, Catholics of good conscience will be voting for Republicans. Because abortion is a top-tier social issue. If you're Catholic, you are essentially told to be pro-life. Now I know this is America and we don't like to agree with Rome or the Catechism , or what have you. Well that's just our darn individualism (which is good in other places). But Catholics votes for G.W. in higher numbers than ever before (for a GOP candidate), so that should tell the left something. The Dems love to parade the death penalty issue around when there's a Catholic audience, but here's the difference--Catholics aren't told that there's no acceptable instance of the Death Penalty. Catholics believe in "just War" theory, so we're not all about pacifism and isolationism.

The part that's really irritating is I know that people will read her words and assume they are Gospel because she's a nun, and shouldn't a nun know what's going on? One would think. One would expect that to be the case. Alas. No so. So a common layman like me has to go and tell you where a nun, a Bride of Christ, has gone terribly wrong. "I bet Our Lord is sorry He ever married you," comments a character in The Divine Secret of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood to a particularly vindictive nun. I wonder how many others fit that description.