After two years of study, the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith published a "notification" on Farley's Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, saying it contradicts Catholic doctrine on key issues such as gay marriage, homosexuality and divorce.
Coming just days after U.S. nuns rejected the Vatican's reasoning for a wholesale makeover, and a year after U.S. bishops sanctioned another nun theologian, the condemnation of Farley is the latest example of what critics see as a top-down attempt to muzzle women's voices and an obsession on sexual ethics.
The condemnation comes just three days after Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, who has been appointed by the Vatican to oversee the reform of the largest umbrella organization of Catholic sisters in the U.S., extended what appeared to be an olive branch to the nuns.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/religion/story/2012-06-04/catholic-nun-sex-book-pope/55386004/1?csp=34news

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is having a Saturday Night Live moment. Emboldened by the Vatican's hostile takeover of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the gentlemen have shown their prowess by choosing to investigate the Girl Scouts of the USA. Which would be comical -- first the nuns, now the Girl Scouts -- if the goal were not so pernicious and the outcome so damaging, especially to the bishops.

The tactics against the girls and the women are taken from one playbook, the goal of intimidation is the same, and the pushback in both cases is distracting from more pressing problems at hand. Still, you wonder who does their public relations, as the bishops are now about as popular as a recession.

The apparent goal of this exercise of "investigating" gender female persons is to set up and enforce a male-defined model of girlhood/womanhood. A Vatican-, or in this case, USCCB-launched investigation is what Sister Sandra Schneiders, IHM, calls the equivalent of a grand jury investigation. There is the presumption that something is wrong, not something right, that there is guilt to be uncovered, not virtue to be unleashed. What is wrong seems to be women and girls thinking for themselves and acting for the common good.

What boggles the mind is why the Roman Catholic Church would be so presumptuous as to investigate what does not belong to it. Granted, some Scout troops meet at Catholic churches, but that does not make them Catholic entities any more than the Alcoholics Anonymous group that meets in the same basement. In the case of the Scouts, the supposed connections with groups that support reproductive justice are, for the most part, links to websites where girls can find further information on issues, hardly a ringing endorsement of the groups' missions. Sex education is not an integral part of scouting; that is something left to families. What is really at issue here is that women and girls involved in the Girl Scouts do not ask permission of ecclesial men to live as responsible citizens of a global world.

Girl Scouts USA belongs to the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, about ten million strong in 145 countries. In a July 2012 conference in Chicago, WAGGGS will discuss the UN Millennium Development Goals. Those include the elimination of poverty, universal primary education, gender equality, reduction of child mortality, improvement of maternal health, combating HIV/AIDS and malaria, environmental sustainability, and the development of a global partnership for development, a blueprint for just living in the 21st century. The Episcopal Church USA adopted a resolution at its 74th General Convention to support the goals. Perhaps they will be investigated next.

The hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church is hardly leaving the Girl Scouts quaking in their boots. Their reasoned and patient replies to accusations that they shouldn't have to answer demonstrate their mission: "Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place." Would that the bishops follow suit.

Several parallels with the investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious lay bare the playbook here. The LCWR "doctrinal investigation" was Rome-based, undertaken by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Girl Scout "investigation" is U.S.-based sleuthing led by the bishops' Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth chaired by Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Ft. Wayne-South Bend, Indiana. Both cases are based on long-term reporting by conservative Catholics, both lay and clerical, of the groups' supposed sins. This is a cottage industry that includes the Eternal Word Television Network and random ecclesial busybodies who apparently report to Rome and to the USCCB on a regular basis.

What mystifies me is that with all of the economic, racial, and war-related issues at hand the bishops still choose to take on these girls and women. Gone are the days when governments, businesses, and armies worried much about what the bishops had to say. Here are the days when disgraced bishops are deposed and indicted for the sexual crimes and cover-ups that have come to define contemporary Catholicism. By contrast, nuns and Girl Scouts are powerful symbols and equally powerful advocates for justice and peace. So in a sense the bishops have really taken on those who are shaping the culture.

The bishops fretted in both cases about sex and gender, especially reproductive justice. The straw that broke the camel's back for the nuns was the support some of them showed for a more inclusive health care policy. For the Scouts, it was the organization's public acceptance of a transgender child into a Colorado troop. Underneath those decisions lurks the fact that nuns, not bishops, were seen as normatively Catholic, and even though a quarter of all Girl Scouts are Catholic, they didn't consult the bishops before doing the right thing. Who would, given the men's handling of abuse cases?

In each instance, the Roman Catholic Church is backing a concrete alternative. For the LCWR, the kowtowing Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious is already canonically chartered and accepting members. For those who find the Girl Scouts too rich for their blood, there are the multi-religious American Heritage Girls and the Little Flowers Girls' Club already in place. These groups function much like the Girl Scouts and Brownies they seek to replace but with far more explicit conservative ideology.

Curiously, for a church that tends to keep pubescent people in single-sex groups, another alternative is Venturing, a youth development program sponsored by the Boy Scouts of America for girls and boys age 14-21. The Boy Scouts are an avowedly anti-gay group that demands faith in God, not in just any higher power. The Girl Scouts modified their pledge several years ago to accommodate growing religious pluralism.

The investigations are meant in large part to intimidate since they really don't have much of a direct impact. Intimidation happens in small ways -- a few nuns self-censor, the leaders of the Girl Scouts redact a few publications. But just as most nuns are going about their business undaunted, the Girl Scouts will gather 100,000+ strong for "Girl Scouts Rock the Mall" in Washington DC on the 9th of June. They hope to set a world record for the biggest sing-along in history. Their new theme song says it all: "Girl Scout ignite a dream, ignite your hope, ignite the world on fire." Now that ought to be enough to make the bishops tremble in unison. The contrast between the girls and "the big boys" will be vivid that day.

My favorite local troop just got back from a horseback-riding overnight. They have cleaned up a local park and planted trees near the Chesapeake Bay. They took in a women's basketball game and donned period costumes to guide visitors at a C and O Canal park in Washington, D.C. For the international Girl Scout Thinking Day, when troops learn about girls in other countries, this group studied Liberia where Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Liberian activist Leymah Gbowee shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2011 with Tawakul Karman of Yemen. They are preparing to be good citizens and leaders of a globalized world that the bishops can scarcely imagine.

The crowd on the Mall in Washington will be festive on this the 100th anniversary of the group's founding by Juliette Gordon Low. They have reason to celebrate. Just as women's religious congregations have empowered countless women, the Girl Scouts, founded by a woman whose estranged husband left the bulk of his estate to his mistress, have instilled "courage, confidence and character" in millions of girls. God knows they need it in the current culture where women's well being is threatened on many sides.

I expect to see some nuns, former nuns, and friends of nuns on the Mall that day when I lift my voice as a former Girl Scout. History will record that in 2012 the Girl Scouts and nuns were living values the bishops could only mouth while they searched in vain for condoms in the cookie boxes.

Mary E. Hunt, Ph.D., is a feminist theologian who is co-founder and co-director of the Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics and Ritual (WATER) in Silver Spring, Md. A Roman Catholic active in the women-church movement, she lectures and writes on theology and ethics with particular attention to liberation issues.

Not Satisfied With Attacking Nuns, Catholic Bishops Go After Girl Scouts

It surprises me a little that the men who run things at the Vatican did not use their most favorite recent pejorative – “feminist” — when they rapped the knuckles of Margaret Farley, a nun who has long been a professor at Yale, for having written a book about sex and love that condones masturbation (and as of Thursday morning was in Amazon’s top 20). In a million other ways, it doesn’t uphold their view of Christian sexual morality.

Because, unlike the other nuns the Vatican has been reprimanding recently, Sister Farley is, in fact, a feminist. An ethicist who has worked on the problem of HIV/AIDS, Farley was commended in 2005 by her Yale colleagues for her contributions to feminist theory.

Members of the Vatican hierarchy are using the word “feminist” and even “radical feminist” the way third-graders use the word “cooties.” In April, the Vatican accused the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, which represents 57,000 nuns nationwide, of allowing “radical feminist” ideas to flow unchecked in their communities. In 2008, after launching an investigation against American nuns (the results of which have not yet been released), Cardinal Franc Rode told a radio interviewer that the nuns are suspected of “certain irregularities,” a “secular mentality” and “perhaps also a certain feminist spirit.”

The authors of these rebukes never define “feminism” or “radicalism.” In their hands, these words, which can carry legitimate intellectual meanings, appear to signify something like: “Yucky women who fail to heed our instructions and, anyway, don’t meet our standards of womanhood.” In other words, the sisters aren’t behaving as girls should.

Their casual use of these terms convinces me that the cardinals, in their vast experience, have never actually met a radical feminist theologian. Such creatures do exist, although American religious orders are hardly their breeding ground. What the Vatican hierarchy sees as a “radical feminist” is a woman who dares to believe that she’s equal to a man.

“Even large sectors of the church itself have legitimate concern and want to continue to talk about the place of women in the church, and rightful equality between men and women,” Sister Pat Farrell, a member of the LCWR, told the New York Times last week. “So if that is called radical feminism, then a lot of men and women in the church, far beyond us, are guilty of that.”

read more http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/vaticans-term-radical-feminist-says-more-about-cardinals-than-nuns-they-rebuke/2012/06/07/gJQADWLJLV_print.html

Critic bishop resigns from church

A DISSIDENT Catholic bishop who criticised the church's ''authoritarian'' nature and doctrines on celibacy and female priests has resigned.

Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation of Patrick Power, an auxiliary bishop of the Canberra-Goulburn archdiocese, on Thursday, five years before he reached the church's mandatory retirement age of 75.

Bishop Power had criticised the church's response to sexual abuse scandals and called for its systemic reform.

''Bishop Power was one of the most progressive, reformist bishops that Australia has seen,'' the editor of the Catholica website, Brian Coyne, said.

Yesterday, Mr Power reiterated his concerns that the church was moving away from the modernisation inaugurated by the Vatican II reforms designed to make the church more accessible.

''It's not just the Pope,'' he said. ''In the whole life of the church, that there's been a move away from the Second Vatican Council and that's been a great disappointment.''

In a 2010 article on sexual abuse cases and the church, he wrote: ''I wondered aloud if the church would be in its present state of crisis if women had been part of the decision-making in the life of the church.''

‘The (nearly) free work of the nuns’ was published in the March edition of Women Church World – the monthly magazine on women distributed alongside the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano. The article includes accounts from several nuns, using pseudonyms, on their experiences working for free or little money in the Catholic Church.

One nun called Sister Maria, for the purpose of the article, said several nuns work long hours in the homes of bishops and cardinals, cleaning and cooking, and are not invited to share meals at the same table. “They are deeply frustrated but they are afraid to speak because behind everything there can be very complex stories,” Sister Maria explained.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/420326-catholic-church-exploitation-nuns/

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"You don't have to be dancing around in a speedo in a gay pride parade to invite God's wrath, after all — no one is immune from sin, or judgment." [says Conservative activist, Elizabeth Johnston]

Ashley Madison suffered a massive leak of emails and personal details back in 2015, with as many as 33 million accounts hacked into illegally.

Large-scale scandals involving U.S. government officials, U.K. civil servants, and European and North American corporations resulted from the leak, including the outing of Josh Duggar of the famous Christian Duggar family for looking to have an affair.

A number of suicides were also reported due to the leak, including the death of San Antonio Police Captain Michael Gorhum in August 2015.

An investigation by the Federal Trade Commission found at the time that the website had also used computer programs to impersonate women in order to pull in male subscribers.

Ashley Madison says that since then, it has commissioned accounting firm Ernst & Young to review its membership data for accuracy and legitimacy.

Read more:

https://www.christianpost.com/news/the-activist-mommy-warns-of-gods-wrat...

As a person who doesn't believe in sin, nor judgement, (nor god) — for good reasons — I can say without hesitation: "god! please leave the Speedo alone..." The only wrath people could encounter is that of their partner should he/she not indulge in the same "cheating" caper...

“People want to know how an evangelical can support a self-proclaimed pimp,” Fuentes said in an interview at his home in Pahrump, an unincorporated town of 36,000 people that is the largest community in the sprawling, rural district where Hof is favored to win in November’s general election. 

He said the reason was simple. “We have politicians, they might speak good words, not sleep with prostitutes, be a good neighbor. But by their decisions, they have evil in their heart. Dennis Hof is not like that.” 

The pastor said he felt Hof would protect religious rights, among other things. 

In Hof’s Republican-leaning district, seven evangelicals said they voted for him because they believed that he, who like Trump is a wealthy businessman and political outsider, would also clean up politics and not be beholden to special-interest groups and their money. 

“I’m kind of rich, I’m kind of famous, and I’m surrounded by hot chicks. I don’t give a damn what anybody says about me,” Hof said.

Read more:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-religion-brothels/in-age-of-trump-evangelicals-back-self-styled-top-u-s-pimp

Read from top... And read the bible. It's full of that.

The surprising revelation was included in a detailed guidance document on consecrated virginity, published by the Vatican earlier this month. It followed requests from bishops who reported an increasing number of women being called to the vocation.

A consecrated virgin is a woman who has never married, who pledges perpetual virginity and dedicates her life to God. Unlike a nun, the women do not live in a community and are expected to provide for themselves. There are an estimated 5,000 consecrated virgins in at least 42 countries, about 250 consecrated virgins live in the US.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/news/433406-consecrated-virgins-vatican-sex/

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