Of Synods and Shepherds

Well, the two-year Synod on the Family closed yesterday with somewhat mixed results that should give us a hint that Pope Francis, his agenda more or less thwarted by the conservative block of bishops in the Synod, will take matters into his own hands.  I think it also gives a hint that all things being equal—and they never really are—Francis may not step down from the papacy as early as he has previously hinted. 

The final Synod document isn’t bad, it just isn’t good.  To get what he needed to justify taking the Church in some new directions, the document had to be more ambiguous than Francis and the liberal block would have liked.  For example, there could be no explicit mention of giving Holy Communion to those who had been divorced and remarried without a Church annulment.  Even with the vague ambiguities of the final document, some of the more controversial passages barely received the required two-thirds majority needed.  The two-thirds rule, while necessary for a measure of consensus, is a huge part of the problem.  A simple majority of bishops would probably have gone further along with the Holy Father’s desire to create a more open and welcoming Church. 

Francis could let the document stand as it is or he can use it as a basis for a document—perhaps an encyclical—he will write and give the more concrete norms on how the Synod statements should be interpreted.  Francis is probably going to go that route.  He also will probably delegate to the various Episcopal Conferences the task of providing the concrete guidelines for better pastoral care of those Catholics in irregular unions.  In such a case I would not expect the American bishops to be as open to changing pastoral practice as might be the Canadian or German Bishops, or even the English bishops.  The American hierarchy is still infested with John Paul and Benedict appointees who are strong on canon law but short on theology and pastoral experience.  And this is why I think Francis may hold on to the See of Peter for a few more years than the next two or three of which he has spoken.   He has made inroads in changing the College of Cardinal Electors but he still needs at least two more “classes” of his appointees to secure a succession that will continue his direction.  Even more important, he needs to fill key Sees with bishops who understand and are onboard with his agenda.  There are many archbishops and bishops who will, given normal lifespans, outlast Francis.  They days are ticking down for Myers of Newark who recently drew his line in the stand that there will be no change in policy as long as his caboose is parked on his marble throne in the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart, but Myers goes off to the Jacuzzi in his retirement home next summer and his successor is someone who at least cultivates the appearances of being in the Francis style.  Lori of Baltimore has ten more years as does Aquila of Denver and Gomez of Los Angeles.  Chaput of Philadelphia, on the other hand, has only four more years to go—Francis might be able to change that See if he holds on just a little longer than he had been thinking about.  Cordileone—a problematic prelate by any account—has sixteen more years before mandatory retirement.  Francis could move him to a desk job in Rome where he could be neutralized and he certainly would not be missed by the City on the Bay, but he will almost certainly be at Francis’ funeral and, along with his mentor Cardinal Raymond Burke, do a happy dance on Francis’ grave.  I suspect that Francis will have a “come to Jesus” talk with Dolan and DiNardo after the behavior at the Synod—behavior which frankly surprised me.  Most of the more obstinate bishops—Morlino, Slattery, Paprocki, Sheridan, Lennon, Olmstead, Dewane, O’Connell etc.—are non-entities beyond their respective Sees—or even within them—but collectively can do great damage as a sort of Episcopal Tea Party within the Conference.   Restructuring the American hierarchy in the Francis model would be an immense task and hard to do in even a ten-year period. 

I would like to look at two paragraphs from the homily at the Mass with which Pope Francis closed the Synod:

There are, however, some temptations for those who follow Jesus. Today’s Gospel shows at least two of them. None of the disciples stopped, as Jesus did. They continued to walk, going on as if nothing were happening. If Bartimaeus was blind, they were deaf: his problem was not their problem. This can be a danger for us: in the face of constant problems, it is better to move on, instead of letting ourselves be bothered. In this way, just like the disciples, we are with Jesus but we do not think like him. We are in his group, but our hearts are not open. We lose wonder, gratitude and enthusiasm, and risk becoming habitually unmoved by grace. We are able to speak about him and work for him, but we live far from his heart, which is reaching out to those who are wounded. This is the temptation: a “spirituality of illusion”: we can walk through the deserts of humanity without seeing what is really there; instead, we see what we want to see. We are capable of developing views of the world, but we do not accept what the Lord places before our eyes. A faith that does not know how to root itself in the life of people remains arid and, rather than oases, creates other deserts.

There is a second temptation, that of falling into a “scheduled faith”. We are able to walk with the People of God, but we already have our schedule for the journey, where everything is listed: we know where to go and how long it will take; everyone must respect our rhythm and every problem is a bother. We run the risk of becoming the “many” of the Gospel who lose patience and rebuke Bartimaeus. Just a short time before, they scolded the children (cf. 10:13), and now the blind beggar: whoever bothers us or is not of our stature is excluded. Jesus, on the other hand, wants to include, above all those kept on the fringes who are crying out to him. They, like Bartimaeus, have faith, because awareness of the need for salvation is the best way of encountering Jesus.

I think that Pope Francis was giving a less than subtle criticism of those bishops who are resisting a change in pastoral approach, pointing out that they are deaf to the people whom they are ordained to serve.  They live in an isolation in which the concrete pain and alienation of so many has become invisible to them.  They see the rules and laws and regulations but they do not see with compassion the realities of the lives of ordinary people who are struggling to be faithful to Jesus and his Gospel in a very complex world.  There are none so blind as those who will not see; none so deaf as those who will not hear.  To effectively change the Church and put it back on track with its mission to bring people to Christ, we need new leadership.  Let’s pray that Pope Francis will be able to give us bishops who have that Shepherd’s Heart that is on fire for going and searching out those who are lost rather than gathering as much wool as possible from the docile sheep in the pen.  

Destined for the Rise and the Fall of Many in Israel

Pope Francis meets with Sisters
from the LCWR: they came to
the Vatican, I understand, on a
Bus.  

Well Pope Francis called the dogs of war off the American nuns and that marks another watershed day in the history of the American Church as it is a clear sign that the JPII/Benedict XVI old guard is finished, at least for the length of this papacy.  There had been a mounting tension between the American Religious Women and the Holy See dating back to 1979 when Sister Teresa Kane publically addressed Pope John Paul on behalf of U.S. nuns and asked him to consider admitting women “to all the ministries of the Church.” This opened the question of ordaining women, a question John Paul was quick to put the kibosh on and which angered him and his Curia that it was even mentioned.  Pope John Paul had very definite ideas on the place of women in the Church and in particular on how religious women should conduct themselves.  While his understanding of the role of women in the Church actually marked a step—or several steps—beyond what up to then had been Church practice, it hardly fit our current cultural conviction that men and women are equal and should have equal access to responsibility in our world today.  (I choose the word “responsibility” as it is more consistent with gospel values than the word “power,” but I certainly mean power when I speak of responsibility in this context.) 

The changes in religious life, and especially the life of religious women, has been remarkable in the decades after Vatican II.  In following the Vatican II mandate to return to the charisms of their founders, many religious women have renounced the monastic practices that were imposed on them in the late 18^th and in the 19^th centuries, adopting modern dress, moving out of large convents and the quasi-monastic life required in that sort of environment, taking more personal responsibility for their finances, and revamping authority structures to be more collaborative than directive.  They live now not as semi-monastics but as consecrated lay women living according to the evangelical counsels and devoting themselves to the works of the Church.  Of course there are still monastic and contemplative communities, generally enclosed (cloistered) but that vocation is essentially different than that of Religious Sisters in Apostolic communities.  The monastic life too has, in most places, undergone some external change, but remains essentially focused on prayer and the common life.  If anything, the changes in Religious Life after Vatican II have permitted the Apostolic and the Contemplative vocations to more clearly differentiate themselves from each other and permitted women to make the appropriate choice according to the graces given to each person. 

Of course the changes in Religious Life have also empowered women to take responsibility for their own life and mission and this has been deeply troubling to those who favor the misogynist hierchical power structures for which the Catholic Church was once so famous.  The last thing burned-out or incompetent male clerics need is to have self-confident religious women around.  And let’s face it, if there is anything the experience of the Vatican troubling the American Sisters has shown us is that the rank and file Catholics still love the nuns while the good folk in the pews are more reserved in their affection and respect for the clergy.  In 1995 the Vatican Congregation for Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life (once known as the Congregation for Religious) divided out the more “traditional” religious communities of women from the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (originally known as Conference of Major Superiors of Women) and established for the more compliant nuns The Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious.  This left two distinct groupings of American Sisters.  About 80% of American Sisters belong to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. 

The LCWR’s problems began in earnest early in the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI when the Congregation of Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life announced a “visitation” of American Sisters belonging to the LCWR affiliated communities.  This was supposedly “for their own good” to see why they weren’t getting the vocations they had once garnered in the 1960 vocational heyday.  The problem obviously was that most of the good sisters weren’t properly veiled and they were living in apartments and had drivers’ licenses—oh, and minds of their own, and used them.  A moving factor behind the original investigation was that nemesis of change, our own beloved Cardinal Burke who, at the time, was a member of the Congregation of Institutes of the Consecrated Life and Societies of the Apostolic Life.  (I am getting tired of typing and retyping that title—from here on out CICLSAL.)   Mother Mary Clare Millea, a Canon Lawyer and the Superior General of the Congregation of the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus (a community belonging to the Conference of Major Superiors of Women) was put in charge of the visitation.  This—it was thought—would be like putting Ted Cruz in charge of investigating Hillary Clinton’s campaign.  But guess what—it became clear that under the microscope of Mother Mary Clare, the Sisters of the LCWR looked just fine!!!  That wouldn’t do.  So stage II kicked in and Cardinal William Levada, an American who at the time was Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (at one time known as “The Holy Roman Inquisition” and the most powerful of the Roman dicasteries) announced that the CDF was going to do a doctrinal investigation of the LCWR because they good Sisters were writing a lot of heresy and spreading false doctrines in their various ministries.  As if they had not learned with Galileo—some people just never learn.  Levada is not Torquemada and was only the front man for a cabal of the truly evil: Cardinal Burke (again!), Cardinal Law (the disgraced Archbishop of Boston whose intransience about a fictional princely immunity kicked off the sex-abuse scandal in the American Church), Archbishop Lori of Baltimore (a slimy sycophant of a prelate if there ever was one—you don’t want to know how he got where he got) and their bankrolling stooge, Carl Anderson, Grand Poobah of the Knights of Columbus whose generosity to Vatican causes with other people’s money has given him great influence in the hallowed halls of the pre-Francisco Reform Vatican Bank.  (Just mentioning these boys makes me want to take a shower.)  Well, the pyre was well on its way to being completed when Pope Benedict surprised the world with his retirement and within a month many things had begun to change.  Within a few months of his election, Pope Francis was addressing the Religious from Latin America and he said, in obvious reference to the North American nuns:

They will make mistakes, they will make a blunder [meter la pata], this will pass! Perhaps even a letter of the Congregation for the Doctrine (of the Faith) will arrive for you, telling you that you said such or such thing... But do not worry. Explain whatever you have to explain, but move forward... Open the doors, do something there where life calls for it. I would rather have a Church that makes mistakes for doing something than one that gets sick for being closed up...

Clear enough? One would think.  But just because Petrus locutus est doesn’t mean Roma locuta est, as is becoming increasingly clear in so many ways with top Cardinals publicly disagreeing with a reigning pontiff—something that hasn’t happened in a century and a half.  Ten months later, Cardinal Gerhard Müller, current Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, made it clear that the heat was still on the good Sisters.  And then this past Thursday, suddenly, the Vatican said, in tones reminiscent of Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella on SNL, “never mind.”  There, gone. Poof.  Just like that.  Oh yes, there’s a new sheriff in town—or to put it more biblically for Law, Lori, Burke, Anderson and co: there came a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. 

As if that wasn’t enough news for one day, on Friday Cardinal Francis George, Archbishop emeritus of Chicago, passed to his eternal reward.  May God be good to him.  I will do a posting on his someday soon.  He was not a bad man, he certainly was not princely (or princessly) as some other prelates chose to be, but he represented that return to hierarchal autocracy that we witnessed during the reigns of John Paul II and Benedict XVI.  It will be interesting to see that now that Chicago no longer has a living Cardinal, if the new Archbishop, Blase Cupich, will be given a red hat in the next consistory.  Of course, Archbishop of Philadelphia, Charles Chaput’s predecessor, Cardinal Rigali turns 80 next Tuesday, freeing up another possible red hat.  Cupich and Chaput are cut from very different cloth.  Chaput, despite his Capuchin/Franciscan background is more of the sort of silk popular in Benedict’s papacy; Cupich, a diocesan priest, is more of the Franciscan homespun.  Yes, it’s true: the Religious take the vow of poverty and the diocesan priests live it.  I have seen it all before.  For the best food and wines, the friars and monks will guide the way. But I digress.  The Red Hat contest is further complicated by the fact that Francis will be the guest of Chaput in September for the World Meeting of Families.  Under the two previous popes, such hospitality was usually acknowledged by a cardinal’s hat for the hosting prelate.  But Francis is quite unpredictable.  Nevertheless, it would be perceived as a snub for Cupich to get the hat and Chaput not, after Chaput had organized the September event.  In the meantime, poor Bill Lori is still sporting a green galero on his coat of arms. I am going to be surprised if that changes in this papacy.  And disappointed.  

New Sheriff, New Rules, Missing: One Red Hat

 Father Robert Nugent, SDS, died last week at the age of 76.  Father Nugent had been the founder—along with Sister Jeannine Gramick—of New Ways Ministries, one of the first and most effective ministries to Gay, Lesbian, and transgendered Catholics.  New Ways Ministries set its agenda for opening a dialogue between the LGBT community and the Church so that the hierarchy could have a better understanding of the complex issues and questions facing Catholics with same-sex attraction, but in doing so did not “lay down the law” in terms as black and white as some thought should be.  (This was, of course, before the “Who am I to judge” approach of our current Pope.)  in their open approach, Father Nugent and Sister Jeannine attracted the particular ire of the late Cardinal James Hickey, then Archbishop of Washington.  His Eminence could be, and most often was, totally irrational at the mention of either name—Father Nugent or Sister Jeannine—or at any reference to New Ways Ministries.   

As an example of his irrationality when it came to New Ways Ministries, in 1998—shortly after the homophobic murder of Matthew Shepherd—several Catholic organizations published an advertisement in The New York Times calling for an end to hate crimes against LGBT persons.  Pax Christi USA was one of these organizations.  New Ways Ministry was another.  Many priests and religious signed the advertisement.  Among them were Father Bruce Bavinger SJ—pastor of St Aloysius Gonzaga Church in Washington DC—and Father Larry Madden SJ, pastor of Holy Trinity in Georgetown.  Cardinal Hickey called their Jesuit provincial and insisted that the provincial make both priests swear an oath that they would never again support any statement sponsored by New Ways Ministry.  Now remember, New Ways Ministry was only one of several sponsors of this advertisement which only called for an end to hate crimes.  Reputable Catholic groups had co-sponsored this petition and the list of signees included many leading Catholics.  The advertisement in no way undermined the moral teaching of the Church on sexuality issues.  That did not matter to Cardinal Hickey—any association, no matter how remote, with New Ways Ministry was enough to get you on His Eminence’s fecal roster. 

In 1999 Cardinal Hickey used his influence to persuade then Cardinal Ratzinger at the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to issue a “Notification Regarding Sister Jeannine Gramick SSND and Father Robert Nugent SDS” which made it clear that New Ways Ministry was not—at least as it had been reported by Cardinal Hickey to the CDF—consistent with the Church’s moral teaching.  This began a persecution of Father Nugent and Sister Grammick.  Sister Jeannine’s Order, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, were pressured into dismissing her.  Fortunately a more stalwart group, the Sisters of Loretto, took her as a transfer.  Father Nugent was forced into abandoning any ministry whatsoever to persons with same-sex attraction.  So much for searching out the sheep that was lost.

I will not say that Cardinal Hickey was a bad man or even a bad priest.  Granted, his priests found him cold and distant but he actually was just a strong introvert with very poor interpersonal skills.  He was a “company man” who could not understand the Church’s mission of proclaiming the Gospel except in the model of maintaining the ecclesiastical institutions and their power.  To his great credit, he recognized the unique gifts of Capuchin friar Sean O’Malley and advanced O’Malley’s career.  Nevertheless, he can be considered as one of the darker blots on the roster of men chosen to shepherd the Church in the United States.  If it were only the unjust ways in which he acted against Nugent and Gramick, his autocratic ways could perhaps be attributed to a personal antipathy, but his treatment of fellow Cardinal, Joseph Bernardin of Chicago, reveals a most despicable side, a pathology of fear, that impelled the Cardinal to dogmatically fortify his opinions rather than to advance the cause of the Gospel.  When Cardinal Bernardin established the Catholic Common Ground Initiative in 1996 Cardinal Hickey and Cardinal Law—another and darker blot on the history of the Church in the United States—then Archbishop of Boston, publicly attacked Cardinal Bernardin and united their voices and power to do their best to sink his project of opening dialogue with disaffected communities within the Church to discover how the Church in the United States could avoid the polarization and culture wars that were threatening to eat away its vitality.  Hickey and Law made it absolutely clear that in their scheme of things there is no room for dialogue.  Their way or the highway.  They ignited the very firestorm Cardinal Bernardin was trying to avoid from engulfing American Catholicism.  We were privileged to watch he fate of Cardinal Law who, like Lucifer, has fallen like a star from the heavens. Cardinal Hickey went to his grave—actually his mausoleum in the rear of Saint Matthew’s Cathedral—in October 2004, just short of four years after his retirement from the See of Washington at the age of 80.     

While Sean O’Malley is a testimony to the better angels of Cardinal Hickey’s nature, there was—as I pointed out—another side to the man and to that side, another protégé.  His Eminence had a most peculiar relationship with Father William Lori.  I have written elsewhere about Lori—now Archbishop of Baltimore—but perhaps the most telling is the final paragraph of my August 18, 2012 entry on the late Monsignor Ralph Beiting, one of the most outstanding Christians I have met in my lifetime.  Father Beiting, a priest of the diocese of Covington, was for his entire life an outstanding servant of the poorest Americans in Appalachia.  Lori had begun his studies for the priesthood in that same Diocese but as a student, transferred to Washington “because there is no upward mobility in Covington.”  He found that upward mobility in the favor of Cardinal Hickey who appointed Lori as his secretary and kept him close by his side.  Lori, for his part, fawned over the Cardinal in ways that others who were present found nauseating.  It paid off.  Hickey had Lori named one of his auxiliary bishops and before his death was able to secure for him the Diocese of Bridgeport. 

Archbishop Lori, by all accounts, was expected to get a Cardinal’s hat in this upcoming consistory.  Baltimore is the oldest See in the Church of the United States In the last fifty years, each Archbishop of Baltimore but one were named Cardinals.  Moreover, Lori’s enjoys the patronage of Carl Anderson, Supreme Grand Poobah of the Knights of Columbus and generous dispenser of funds to the Vatican and to various conservative causes.  Anderson used his influence to have Lori promoted to Baltimore.  Pope Francis may pay for his decision not to give Lori his coveted hat, but he has sent a significant signal that there are new rules to the game.  I hope for Archbishop Lori’s sake, that he can learn to play by those rules and be the sort of bishop Francis is calling for.  While I have never liked Archbishop Lori, I would like to see Baltimore to have a wise and good Shepherd at its head. And, for that matter, I would like to see each bishop, including Archbishop Lori, be the sort of Bishop Pope Francis seems to want for our Church.

Why They Are Afraid of Pope Francis 16

Cardinal Burke: old school not in tune with Pope

Francis and his Church of the Poor

Well, we haven’t finished the Dissolution of the Monasteries and I am a bit frustrated.  I thought I could do it in two posts and have done three and we still have at least two to go.     But I need to go back to Pope Francis for a while.   I do notice that the hits to the website jump whenever we talk about him, but more to the point he has done a few things lately that are worth comment.  And at least one of them has a lot of the neo-trads running scared again.  He replaced Cardinal Burke on the Congregation of Bishops with Cardinal Wuerl and this is a pretty clear sign that Burke’s sun is setting.  We should not be surprised.  Burke is the old-fashioned prelate who likes the princely style that Francis has been renouncing.  His Eminence is particularly attached to the pre-Conciliar rites and a very close padrone of the Institute of Jesus Christ Sovereign Priest a peculiar institute of self-appointed quasi-prelates who work to revive the monarchial style of Catholicism prevalent before the Second Vatican Council.  Cardinal Burke was Archbishop of Saint Louis until his heavy handed abuse of power led Pope Benedict to remove him to various desk jobs in Rome.   Now he has lost what is probably the most influential of those desk jobs, his position on the committee that nominates bishops.  He remains as Prefect of the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura which is the Church’s highest court but is not equivalent to our Supreme Court in as that it cannot rule on the constitutionality of Church Law nor can it hear cases unless those cases are appealed from two lower courts that are each considered supreme within their own areas of competence—the Sacred Roman Rota which is the normal court in which cases ranging from appeals against one’s bishop to marriage annulments and the Apostolic Penitentiary which is the court that deals with internal forum issues and excommunications.  Each of these courts are supreme in their jurisdictions and only if there has been a procedural error do cases get referred to Burke’s bench at the Signatura.  In other words, unlike our supreme court, the review is based not on an interpretation of the law, but only if there has been a procedural error that needs to be rectified.  Moreover, there are 26 judges who sit on the Signatura and cases are not heard by an individual judge but dealt with administratively by panels of judges assigned to hear a case.  Thus Burke’s power is highly checked as he does not have the same position of decision making that prefects of the various congregations would have.  His appointment to the Signatura was a clever way of disposing of a man to whom experience proved power cannot be entrusted. 
Power he may lack, but until this recent fall influence has been Cardinal Burke’s in abundance.  His position on the Congregation for Bishops put him in a position to advance or check the careers of up and coming bishops.  He was a key player in the advancement of Archbishop Lori, for example, from being Bishop of Bridgeport to Archbishop of Baltimore—a see that often carries a red hat with it.  Lori and Burke—along with the infamous but influential Cardinal Bernard Law, formerly of Boston—were responsible for the allegations against the American nuns affiliated to the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.  Cardinal Burke still sits on a number of other Vatican Congregations and Commissions as do each of the Cardinals, notably those who live in Rome, but none have the influence that the Congregation for Bishops has.  His removal from that Congregation and replacement by Donald Wuerl is a clear sign of the sort of Bishop Pope Francis wants appointed for the American Church.  The notable conflict between Burke and Wuerl was over Burke’s policy of refusing Holy Communion to Catholic politicians who support legislation in conflict with Catholic moral theology whereas Wuerl has set the policy in his diocese that the Eucharist is not a weapon to be used against people—whether politicians or individuals whose lives do not conform strictly to Catholic moral theology. 
Many of the extremists among Catholic conservatives were delighted with Cardinal Burke’s outspoken defense of traditional Catholic values whereas the vast majority of more moderate Catholics agreed with Cardinal Wuerl that the issues need to be addressed at a place other than in the Mass itself.  Cardinal Burke has always interpreted canon 915 that Holy Communion is not to be distributed to those who are excommunicate, to those who are under interdict, or to those who persist in grave public sin to apply to politicians who support or do not oppose “pro-choice” legislation or who support or do not oppose same-sex marriage.   Cardinal Wuerl reminds his priests that such politicians have neither been excommunicated nor placed under interdict and disputes whether their legislative actions consist of “grave public sin.”  Of course as head of the Apostolic Signatura, the chief judicial arm of the Church, one would think that Burke is the better arbiter of the Canon Law, but Pope Francis obviously does not see things the same way.  Reading through various “pro-life” blogs and articles, one sees a growing disillusionment with Pope Francis, and even a sense of alarm.  The pope’s admonition that the Church needs not to be “obsessed” with the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage have provoked outcries from Michael Voris, Judy Brown of the American Life League, and others who see their Catholic credentials being eroded in the policies of this papacy.   Certainly with Cardinal Wuerl on the Congregation for Bishops we can expect more middle of the road prelates than we have seen in the past decade or two (or three). 

And Now I Know Why They Are Afraid of the Nuns!

Sister Nora Nash OSF and Spiritual Advisor

Recently while having lunch with some friends during a conference, we were joined at our table by a petite older nun who happened to know several of the others in our group. Sister had just the slightest trace of an Irish brogue and initially was quite deferential to the other guests at the table, but as the conversation proceeded onto the topic of Pope Francis and his teachings on economic justice in Evangelii Gaudium, she became more and more opinionated—and knowledgeable of what she was saying. 
I have to admit that while historians are supposed to be able to discuss economics intelligibly, it has never been my strength—and contemporary global economics are far too complex for my understanding and analysis.  But not Sister Nora Nash.   She had a grasp on issues from C.E.O. compensation to the complexities of Tax-free industrial zones in developing nations where children, women, and men are held in virtual slavery producing everything from the screen on my computer on which I am writing this entry to the sneakers I am wearing. 
Sister is one of the driving forces of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility. The ICCR is a coalition of 275 faith-based institutional investors that advocates for corporate responsibility and files shareholder resolutions while leveraging corporate management on a variety of issues from human rights and corporate governance to global warming and consumer protection.  While there are dozens of organizations pursuing socially responsible investing, ICCR is the one that is seen as having the most moral integrity and social credibility.  Among the faith-based organizations comprising ICCR are the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Unitarian Universalist Association, Quakers, and dozens of Religious communities of Roman Catholic Sisters.  Catholic dioceses and their bishops have been more reluctant to get on the moral bandwagon.  ICCR has taken on issues with Coca-Cola, Pfizer, the Gap, and Wal-Mart. 
Sister Nora is very much the heart and soul—and face—of ICCR.  Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric, once flew his helicopter to Nora’s convent in Aston PA to meet with her in an effort to defuse a conflict that would have embarrassed GE before its investors.  No one wants an old nun to show up at a stock-holders’ meeting with her proxy vote and moral high-ground.  Nora has taken on Nestlé over labor policies, McDonald’s over childhood obesity, several grocery chains about farm-worker exploitation,  and Wells-Fargo over lending policies.  She has exposed child labor in the chocolate industry and gone after big-oil on environmental issues. 
Sister Nora, of course, does not wear a floor length robe tied with the white Franciscan cord—nor does she wear a wimple and veil.  I have always liked nun-drag.  I had a great aunt in Sister Nora’s community and I have great memories of the Sisters in their traditional garb bringing us milk and cookies when we would visit her.  On the other hand, not only were those clothes uncomfortable, they were psychologically dis-empowering.  One of the Franciscan priest-chaplains at Sister Nora’s convent explained: “When you dress everyone the same, 18 hours a day, seven days a week, every week of the year, a person loses his or her sense of individuality—and thus both creativity and personal power.  It is different for us men (he was in his brown Franciscan robes), we put the habit on and take it off—and beneath it we wear what shirt and slacks we choose.  And we don’t have to wear it all if we so choose.  But for the women it was a means of control—whether consciously done so or not—and as long as the women were in their habits they stayed in their traditional roles of third-grade teachers or nurses or cooks or seamstresses.  Now that they dress as they choose they are lawyers, journalists, physicians, social workers, potters, artists, or Nora Nash.  They dress simply and economically—and you will notice that these sisters all wear a San-Damiano Cross around their necks or pinned to their jackets as a sign of their Consecration and their Franciscan Commitment.” 
Now I see more clearly what is really behind this persecution of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.  Too many Nora Nashes will bring down the house upon the bishops and their powerful friends.  The women need to be put  back, if not into their veils at least into their cookie-mold roles, and told to keep their eyes lowered and their mouths shut.  Of course, maybe if we took bishops out of their uniforms and let them dress like men we might get some bishops who would take on the prophetic roles and speak the Truth in this world of lies.  But then Pope Francis seems to be able to do that regardless of wearing his pope clothes so maybe at least in this situation it is not the clothes that make the man.  In the meantime most of us are looking to the nuns, not the bishops, for moral guidance.  You go girls!!!