Sometimes it is difficult to see the seamless thread that
binds Congress and the Vatican,
and high ranking generals and bishops to Catholic nuns. But I assure you, it
exists…secreted just below the surface of our social consciousness in a network
of interdependent and mutually reinforcing worldviews and institutions. In short, this binding thread is our cultural
DNA.
A culture’s worldviews are unspoken, (typically) unquestioned
but deeply felt perceptions about how our world works. Worldviews establish with broad brush strokes
the boundary conditions of what is possible
and what is desirable—the goals we
pursue. A culture’s institutions, in
turn, fill in the empty space between brush strokes with acceptable norms of
behavior and the rules for engagement between individuals and between individuals
and key structures of society.
It’s this seamless thread of cultural DNA that a handful of Catholic
nuns have tripped sending waves of shock and awe across the country with their “Nuns on the Bus” tour (http://nunsonthebus.com/).
Beginning January 2013, $500 billion over the next nine years must be trimmed from
the hefty security budget ($851 billion FY2013) and an equivalent $500 billion
dollar from domestic spending ($450 billion FY2013) as part of the $1.2
trillion sequester required by last year’s failed partisan debt-ceiling debate.
House Speaker John Boehner has publically decried the “hollowing” of our military,
while his crony, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Howard McKeon,
whines about it being a “national disgrace.”
Unlike the mighty military-industrial complex flush with tax
lobby dollars and powerful Republican friends in Congress, the Sisters scraped together
enough funding to carry a message of faith, family and fairness via a bus tour across the
mid-west to the steps of Capitol Hill. Their
mission is to raise awareness about the real-life impact of further safety-net
cuts for the millions of Americans living “on the margins.” At each stop in their
nine state tour, the Sisters have highlighted “goods works” being carried out on
behalf of the poor, the sick and the disenfranchised. Yesterday, in Cleveland the nuns toured
a church in Tremont, visited a hunger center and learned of special outreach ministries
to the deaf and blind.
Along the way the sisters have, also, raised the ire of the Vatican.
The Vatican chastised the sisters for
devoting too much time to caring for members of the community and not enough
time to attacking abortion and gay marriage. The April report denounced members of the
Leadership Conference of Women Religious for promoting “radical feminist
themes incompatible with the Catholic faith,” and “challenging the bishops, who
are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” Seriously?
What teaching exactly was senior U.S. Roman Catholic Church official, William
Lynn of the Philadelphia Archdiocese, intending when he sanctioned the transfer of priests
to unsuspecting parishes to cover up child sexual abuse?
“It’s painfully obvious that the leadership of the church is
not used to having educated women form thoughtful opinions and engage in
dialogue,” suggests Sr. Simone Campbell, a lawyer and executive director of the
NETWORK, a forty year old Washington, DC lobbying group founded by sisters and focused
on poverty, immigration and healthcare.
If nothing else, the Nuns on the Bus tour, like the 99% movement before it, raises authentic questions about the boundary
conditions of what is possible and
what is desirable in our society. And they ever so gently remind us of Mother Teresa’s
truth:
If we have no peace,
it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Kay Strong, Ph.D., Southern Illinois University, M.T., University of Houston, M.A., Ohio University; Associate Professor at Baldwin-Wallace College; Areas of expertise: international economics, contemporary social-economic issues, complexity and futures-based perspectives in economics. E-mail: kstrong@bw.edu
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