Leftist hysteria continues over Pope Francis & LCWR.

his one is too good to pass up. Over at the Dai­ly Screech, some­one named Bar­bie Latza Nadeau has post­ed this scrib­bled pan­ic attack with the price­less title “New Pope, but No Nicer to Nuns.” [N.B.: The post has since been removed from the Screech but is avail­able here.] The only good thing that can be said about it is that Ms. Nadeau is skilled at allit­er­a­tion. In school, Rhetoric 101 may have been more her strong suit than Log­ic 101.

Ms. Nadeau begins her arti­cle by set­ting the con­text for the out­rage to come. (As she sees it.) “Pope Fran­cis,” she tells us, “has done won­ders to renew the faith of many lost Catholics around the world and cast a pos­i­tive light on the trou­bled Church.”

Yes. You see, to left­ists, the Church is always “trou­bled.” They nev­er stop to con­sid­er that it might be them­selves who are “trou­bled,” for no oth­er rea­son than that the Church is there; but left­ists have a strange need to project their own psy­choses onto 2000-year-old insti­tu­tions.

Fran­cis’s con­cern for the poor, Ms. Nadeau con­tin­ues, “has been wel­comed by many dis­en­fran­chised Catholics who felt their church was out of touch with real­i­ty.”

Yes. If by “real­i­ty” you mean “heresy.” It’s impor­tant to be care­ful here, because left­ists nev­er pro­vide trans­la­tions of their own rhetor­i­cal fugues.

But now for the out­rage. (As Ms. Nadeau sees it.) When Pope Fran­cis decid­ed to reaf­firm the CDF’s Doc­tri­nal Assess­ment of the LCWR (aka the Wyrd Sis­ters, aka Pope Joan and the Mag­i­cal Mys­tery Tour), “it felt like it was back to busi­ness as usu­al.” Upon not­ing which, Ms. Nadeau lets loose with the the stan­dard, and tired, ref­er­ences to the DA (which she like­ly has not tak­en the time to read or under­stand) as a “clamp­down” on “nuns.”

But here’s the key sen­tence in Ms. Nadeau’s lead: “For all the renew­al that Fran­cis promis­es, the cold hard real­i­ty is still that the Catholic Church is still [sic] one of the most misog­y­nis­tic orga­ni­za­tions around.”

That’s right, Ms. Nadeau. You tel­l’m. We’re so “misog­y­nis­tic,” in fact, that we say the great­est human being to ever live was this per­son:

That sort of con­sid­er­a­tion, how­ev­er, is lost on Ms. Nadeau. She has her talk­ing points and she clings to them like Linus’s blue blan­ket, no mat­ter how insen­sate they are. “[A] pos­i­tive ges­ture towards rec­og­niz­ing wom­en’s val­ue in the uni­ver­sal [C]hurch,” she intones, “could have start­ed with soft­en­ing the strict stance on Amer­i­can nuns.”

But no, Ms. Nadeau. The CDF has not tak­en a strict stance on “nuns.” It has tak­en a strict stance on heresy. Have you read the DA? Lumen Gen­tium 43–47? Vita Con­se­cra­ta? Please, don’t wait for the crick­ets to stop chirp­ing. Here is a key pas­sage from VC:

A dis­tinc­tive aspect of eccle­sial com­mu­nion is alle­giance of mind and heart to the Mag­is­teri­um of the Bish­ops, an alle­giance which must be lived hon­est­ly and clear­ly tes­ti­fied to before the Peo­ple of God by all con­se­crat­ed per­sons, espe­cial­ly those involved in the­o­log­i­cal research, teach­ing, pub­lish­ing, cat­e­ch­esis[,] and the use of the means of social com­mu­ni­ca­tion. (§ 46)

You see, Ms. Nadeau, the pur­pose of a reli­gion is to advance claims about the Truth.

Ver­i­tas? Quid est ver­i­tas?

If you find that to be your ques­tion, that might be part of the dif­fi­cul­ty you are hav­ing. For you seem to think that the Church is a plas­tic insti­tu­tion and can be mold­ed and remold­ed to suit what­ev­er polit­i­cal hys­te­ria is grip­ping the mass­es at the moment. But you see, Ms. Nadeau, the very same Pope John Paul II who wrote those words about the impor­tance of fideli­ty to the truth as pro­claimed by the Church, also named St. Therese of Lisieux—a woman and a nun—a Doc­tor of the Church. Pope Bene­dict XVI did the same for St. Hilde­gard of Bin­gen. Before them, Pope Paul VI, author of that misog­y­nis­tic, anti-con­tra­cep­tion encycli­cal Humanae Vitae, named two women Reli­gious as Doc­tors of the Church: St. Tere­sa of Avi­la and St. Cather­ine of Siena. Does that sound like misog­y­ny to you?

Per­haps, Ms. Nadeau, you would care to explain to me how a con­cern for the poor and an appre­ci­a­tion of the role of women Reli­gious in the Church is incon­sis­tent with faith­ful­ness to Church teach­ing? Please. I have a com­box and a con­tact form. I would be inter­est­ed to know. For if it is incon­sis­tent, then how do you then explain Moth­er Tere­sa and the Church’s deep and abid­ing love for her and her mis­sion of char­i­ty?

Indeed, there can be no real con­cern for the poor, nor the small­est and weak­est among us, with­out faith­ful­ness to the Truth. Accord­ing to the LCWR, quot­ed in Ms. Nadeau arti­cle, the sanc­tions imposed by the CDF “could com­pro­mise their abil­i­ty to ful­fil their mis­sion.” But no, Ms. Nadeau, not unless their mis­sion is heresy—because heresy is not the mis­sion of the Church. Pro­claim­ing the Truth is, and bring­ing it to all men and women. And in the ser­vice of that mis­sion, the Church does not hate women. It hates heresy.

It must be under­stood, how­ev­er, that those in the left­ist media, like Ms. Nadeau, do not under­stand the Church, nei­ther do they care to. They won’t take the time to read the DA or to under­stand what it actu­al­ly says. To do so would be incon­ve­nient to their small minds and their small talk­ing points. Truth does not mat­ter, and nev­er did, to them. Quid est ver­i­tas?

Amer­i­can nuns deserve bet­ter than a gag­gle of heretics who claim to speak in their name.

•••

Update: I wish I could top Fr. Z’s “spit­tle-flecked nut­ty” expres­sion, but that hap­pens to be the per­fect descrip­tion for Katie McDo­nough’s charm­ing melt­down on Salon. Check it out and mar­vel.