Dialogue, A Day with Touring Nuns

Snippets of dialogue from a day spent with Steve's Benedictine aunts:

Did you bring your prayer book?  I brought Living with Christ.  It has lots of psalms.

I've been praying and watching the birds and sunlight.  Now it's time for me to read about the saint for today--oh, it's Saint Jerome.  (This followed by a laugh and no further remarks.)

We fly back on the feast of St. Francis.  I've already told him to keep the ducks and geese out of the airplane motor when we fly.

Why are the bishops trying to force people to vote Republican?  And why are they attacking gay marriage if they want to strengthen heterosexual marriage?  Isn't divorce the real problem?  But they're not sending out videos about this or trying to change the law to outlaw divorce.

I'll have half a glass of beer, please.  Sister K. stops in New Ulm to buy me a six pack of different kinds of beer at their brewery there.

And so it goes.  With that mix of prayer, piety, ladylike beer sipping (these are German-American sisters, after all), and political radicalism (imagine thinking for yourself when you're a nun!), is it any wonder that Rome is breathing down the neck of American nuns (and here), while ignoring bishops who have shielded and moved pedophile priests around?  Dangerous women, with their prayer, beer, and sharp minds!

These women of deep faith and prayer are under no illusions about the motives of some of their male religious betters: they've suffered for years from tyranny premised on the right of those with penises to rule those without penises, in the Catholic governance system.  And the suffering hasn't convinced them of the wisdom of building an ecclesiastical organization around the principle that penises automatically trump vaginas, regardless of the character and qualifications of the males doing the domination and the females being dominated.