Silent Servants...

Silent Servants...

... of the Used, Abused, and Utterly Screwed Up.

A Secular Franciscan looks at the world...
with a more jaundiced eye than ever...
and lots of ellipses for you to fill in the missing text...
(with thanks to Thomas S. Klise for the title)



Showing posts with label Nuns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nuns. Show all posts

Friday, February 17, 2012

A nice light snack


Buying the Body of Christ

This is a very interesting article. You can see how it has been many things that have contributed to the declining vocations issue and the loss of work within the convents. Mind you, in our current culture it would be demeaning to think that it would have to be the women religious who make the hosts. An issue of human rights!

On another note, when my father and I were helping to remove discarded items from an old convent that was being torn down, we found a host mold and a bunch of host cutters. The mold was two engraved flat plates that were welded to the ends of two rods and put together like a clamp. The dough was placed between the plates and baked in an open oven, then taken out to cool while the process was repeated over and over. They were cut, with the round cutters, at some point. The 'new nuns', the 'nuns of the '60's and early '70's' were just throwing out these items of historical importance. We salvaged them, Dad had a case made for them and we donated them to a local museum that focuses on the early years of the province. A great save!


Saturday, January 21, 2012

At least someone is thinking of them




Nuns Denounce Human Trafficking Ahead Of Super Bowl XLVI

All everyone else will be thinking about is money, sports and entertainment. Oh, and themselves. But that goes without question.

Some time ago someone was asking me who I thought would be in, and win, the Super Bowl. I thought, Ultimately? I guess God wins. Because these things are just small, small things in the grand scheme, and we are just tiny creatures full of our own self-importance and wanting everything for ourselves...





Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Despite what people seem to think today


there appears to be great joy in the work and lives of many of the 'old school' nuns who now look back on their lives.

100-year-old nuns: Serving God made for a ‘beautiful life'

I had the wonderful experience of being taught, and nursed, by nuns like this. I'm glad of it and wouldn't change the experience for anything...





Monday, July 04, 2011

A different Trinity


The Trinity Sisters

"Many of America’s most powerful women went to a college you’ve never heard of."


Friday, June 03, 2011

Nuns in History

Catholic Sisters and the American Civil War

"On the battlefields and in the hospitals, soldiers on both sides of the Civil War owed their consolation, and sometimes their limbs or their very lives, to the Catholic Nun."





Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Oh, no!


Nuns dance to get recruits in Baguio City

I think it has been pretty well disproven that if you try to be trendy you'll get vocations. The religious orders that seem to be doing well are those, mostly new orders, that have gone back to their original charisms and moved away from the 'do your own thing' 'liturgical dance' type behaviours.

On another note - touched on in the article - we watched 'Sister Act' just the other night...



Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Radical-ness


For These Young Nuns, Habits Are The New Radical

In searching for meaning and a way to love God and serve God, I think the radical nature of the more traditional religious orders have come back into vogue. The traditional habits and cloister require someone to make a radical commitment. I think that's why these orders of men and women are finding more success in vocations than the orders that have 'changed with the times'. And I think this is a very good thing...




Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Do I believe in all this?


The important question is do you believe in it?

The Sister and the Saint?

She doesn't seem to have gone out of her way to achieve notoriety, she has the signs that are common with saints and she is only becoming more visible now that she's dead. I don't know much about her, but if her gifts were used to bring glory and honour to God and not for her own aggrandizement, then yes, I believe in her. Unbelief is easy. Belief is what takes faith. And ultimately, it doesn't matter. What matters is God and myself, and that applies to each of us...


Thursday, May 27, 2010

It seems as though


the type of nun I was taught by while I was growing up are still around. Fewer perhaps, but they're out there...

Nun on the run: sister chases, catches wallet thief

That'll teach him to mess around when there's a nun around...




Thursday, April 15, 2010

It's been a long wait...

...for justice.

Activists, officials laud verdict in nun's death

I am not so hopeful about a change in the political and legal climate in Brazil. As long as the rich continue to worship the god of the world, such acts will continue, and a small number will ever receive justice...





Wednesday, February 17, 2010

I've always been

more than a little nervous about Reiki...

Reiki and the Catholic Church

I'm not surprised that some nuns have taken it up as a 'ministry'. Since Vatican II many nuns have been looking for their place in a changing Church. They've been independent and, for the most part, able to choose what they want to follow, and that has led some down some pretty unusual paths. I'm also not surprised that the Vatican wants to study the state of religious orders in the U.S..

Some of the more, say, fringe, practitioners of Reiki claim to be able to do Reiki over the telephone. I'm from Missouri, so to speak...


Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Well...

...no Scientologist, no matter how powerful their intention beam stares, is any match for a nun. Anyone growing up in a parochial school system (Hi, Sr. Juliana!) would know that...

Daughters of St. Paul unfazed by threats from Church of Scientology

For more information on Scientology, visit:
The Secrets of Scientology
and www.xenu.net


Thursday, December 10, 2009

Mercy!

Priest and nun killed in ‘act of barbarism’ in Congo

Have mercy on them Lord, and may they rest in peace.

Will peace ever exist to stop these acts of violence and evil?






Saturday, December 05, 2009

Perhaps they're questioning

whether or not a nun who isn't doing the Church's work should work representing the Church. It's a fair question.

Study of Catholic sisters focuses on religious role of women

I know some apostolic nuns who do wonderful work, and are a blessing and a credit to the Church. They may not always agree with the Church, but that's their personal belief. They still follow the Church. I know some apostolic nuns who are following their own beliefs rather than the Church's. Perhaps they should ask themselves who they are representing as religious...

Just saying...


Thursday, November 19, 2009

Plots everywhere

Nun-Physician Who Attacked Vaccine Has Controversial Past But Raises Questions

"Not everything is a plot."
Ain't that the truth?

But why does this article seem to lean in the direction of the belief in plots?

Hmmmmmmm?


Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Good article


Dowd's nun column is proven wrong by flourishing religious orders, commentator says

I know of orders of religious that have waiting lists for entrants. I know of others that are drying up and dying. I think that if an Order loses its focus on the charism of the Order and its founder it no longer is what it was created to do. It has outlived it's service. If we, as Franciscans, lost our focus on St. Francis' charism to rebuild the Church and to serve the most lost of our society with our own spiritual wealth as well as temporal goods, then we are no longer Franciscans. The charism at the founding of the order must be our charism today if we are to be faithful to our founder and our professed promises and vows, no matter what we actually do while being faithful to them...


Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Everyone has their opinion


Convicted priest says he didn't murder nun

Everyone is innocent in prison I know, but I also know that a group that specializes in investigating cases of what they feel to be wrongful conviction has taken on his case. Having said that, I don't have an opinion on it other than I'm getting sick of hearing all the indignant comments by friends, relatives, co-workers, third cousins twice-removed, etc., of people convicted of crimes, saying that they're 'disgusted, hurt, wounded, injured or abused' by what they consider an unfair, and not harsh enough, penalty.


Thursday, October 08, 2009

The only thing

I can really say is that this really is beginning to look like a witch hunt...

Six decades later, 2 men accuse nuns of sex abuse

How can they ever prove these things other than simply by accepting the statements of the gentlemen as the truth without any corroborating evidence? Even the timing seems a bit odd. I guess that anywhere there's money to be made anything can happen, because this is what this is all about. All the people who are so looking for closure want that closure in the form of large sums of money. How convenient.

I guess I was lucky. I had nuns as teacher for most of my pre-university years, and exclusively for my kindergarten and early school years. I managed to escape without being sexually abused. People seem to want to make it look like I was an exception, judging from the media.


Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Sunday, August 30, 2009

You see?

It's a new religious order responding to the desire for a more traditional Catholic response to vocations to the religious life.

Ann Arbor sisters can't build fast enough to house new members

They've grown from 4 members to 99 in just over 12 years, while other orders are dying out. No matter what one's feelings about the whole conservative/liberal issue in the Catholic Church is, no one can deny that there is a work of the Holy Spirit here...