Dan Vitz blogs an article from a Los Angeles alternative newspaper (non sequitur: is it alternative if all the newspapers march in ideological lockstep?) about a particular order of nuns. In fact, it’s a wistful recollection by a particular Catholic woman recalling the heterodoxy and outright blasphemy of the nuns who ran the high school she attended in the 80s.
In a way it’s a sad illustration of what happened to the post-Vatican II generation of Catholics who particularly suffered the loss of their faith while those who should have been the guardians and teachers of that faith flew off the handle of theological lunacy. So many of us were bereft of our birthright. Thankfully some of us got what we needed at home or found our way back, but so many of my contemporaries are still lost out there, floating in a sea of misconceptions and hostility toward a faith that during their childhood was empty and kitschy by turns.
How much damage did people like those radical nuns do? We won’t be able to account the cost fully this side of heaven.
As I said on Mark’s blog:
This was so sad. I was taught be some of these sisters when I was in 2d and 3d grade at Marymount Elementary School back in the early 60’s, and believe me, they were old school nuns!
Imagine my surprise when years later I learned that they had been devastated by the worldly evils that infested the Church in the wake of VatII. I can’t picture Mother (we called them that) Margaret putting up with any of that nonsense!
If they were around here now days, the good Cardinal would be “presiding” at a Mass for them up at the Taj Mahony.
They did incalculable damage to the Church in America. But they are still around, perhaps behaving a little more cautiously. Just consider what’s happened at Loretto High School.
The motherhouse of the nuns who taught me in the 50s now has a labyrinth on the grounds.
Even more scary than the nonsense these nuns got into, though, is a recent discovery that Sr. Joan Chittister was a speaker at a John Main Seminar. John Main Seminars are one of the activities of Fr. Basil Pennington and Fr. Thomas Keating, both of whom wrote glowing recommendations for the occult book MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT. The one that von Balthasar wrote the Foreword to. These are the priests who represent Monastic Interreligious Dialogue—the priests who promote contemplation and centering prayer. They make the goofy nuns look downright harmless. We are not yet out of the woods. Not by a long shot.
I’m surprised no on e has mentioned this article yet:
“Repentant Psychologist: How I Wrecked the IHM Nuns”
It was originally in Latin Mass magazine but is excerpted here:
http://www.issuesetc.org/resource/journals/coulson.htm
I attended two of Coulson’s talks when the local chapter of Eagle Forum brought him in to speak here back in the 90s. He was very convincing about the dangers of values clarification programs and appologetic for the damage he caused to the nuns and others through his cooperation with the programs of Abraham Maslow. I have a lot of respect for Coulson.