skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

Texas Catholics Protest Vatican’s “Misuse of Power”

play audio
Play

Wednesday, May 9, 2012   

SAN JUAN, Texas - Catholic nuns in Texas and around the nation held public demonstrations Tuesday night against what they call the Vatican's "misuse of power."

Tuesday night vigils will continue each week in May. On May 29, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious - which represents most U.S. nuns - will begin deliberating its next steps after last month's decision by Rome to tighten its grip on the conference. The church says nuns have been drifting away from established doctrine.

While nuns mainly want to help the needy, says Sister Moira Kenny of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the church seems more interested in enforcing its rules and preserving its power structures.

"Bishops try to say it's more important to talk against abortion than it is to feed the hungry and educate children, but we have to respect the mandates of the Gospel: helping the poor and the people that Jesus reached out to."

While the current fallout mirrors today's political debates over health care and women's issues, Kenny - an organizer of the San Juan vigil - says there's also deep frustration among nuns that the church refuses to consider ordaining women at a time when there's a shortage of priests.

Some nuns predict the Leadership Conference of Women Religious eventually will declare independence from the Vatican. Dominican Sister Maureen Gallagher says women in the church long have been dealing with discrimination, adding that women's ministries typically receive very little financial support.

"Catholic women were walking away because they could no longer stay in a church that was oppressing them."

The Second Vatican Council in 1960 allowed nuns to focus more on social-justice issues, but the Vatican has been investigating whether faith and doctrine are being ignored. Many nuns openly supported the Obama health-reform plan, while the American bishops opposed it.

Edwina Gately, a poet and founder of Genesis House in Chicago, which helps women move out of lives of prostitution, says she doesn't plan to leave the church, but she will stand up against the Vatican's reprimand.

"For me, being Catholic is a very important dimension of all my activities, and I'm going to stand up for what real Catholocity means. It's universal, it's inclusive, and it goes back to the gospel of Jesus."

Organizers of the Tuesday protests have launched a website called "Nun Justice" which lists vigil sites around the nation and hosts an online petition against the so-called "crackdown" on nuns by the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

More information on the Sisters of Mercy is online at sistersofmercy.org..


get more stories like this via email

more stories
Iowa families can apply for up to $7,600 a year for private school costs. (Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

An ethics committee in the Republican-led Iowa House has dismissed a complaint filed by a group of community activists against a state lawmaker for hi…


play sound

Each spring, hundreds of thousands of California high school seniors have to figure out if they can afford to go to college in the fall - and two new …

Health and Wellness

play sound

A health care workforce shortage in New Hampshire is leaving Alzheimer's patients and their families with few options for treatment. Patients facing …


South Dakota ranks 49th in the country for its contribution to indigent legal defense costs, according to a 2023 report from the Indigent Legal Services Task Force. (Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

South Dakota is creating an Office of Indigent Legal Services after House Bill 1057 passed the Legislature with nearly unanimous support this month…

Environment

play sound

A Knoxville-based environmental group is voicing concerns over what it sees as an increasing financial strain imposed on taxpayers by nuclear weapons …

Environment

play sound

A bipartisan law set to take effect this summer prohibits foreign adversaries from buying Hoosier farmland. The signature of Gov. Eric Holcomb was …

Social Issues

play sound

Today, people across Arizona are voting in the Presidential Preference Election, a chance for registered Democrats and Republicans to choose their …

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021