Badass Nun Says Paul Ryan is a Bad Catholic

[rhoenix]

Who's the better Catholic: Paul Ryan or Sister Simone Campbell, who recently led a rollicking group of nuns on a cross-country tour to protest Ryan's budget bill? We think Jesus would choose Sister Simone.

Her platform is simple: unlike Romney and his running mate, nuns know what real-life Americans go through because they actually work with low-income people on a regular basis and run programs that need federal funding to succeed. She told The Daily Beast that it's the economy that's hurting Americans, not a so-called "dependence" on social programs. "The problem is not enough jobs and low wages," she said. "Catholic teaching is based on solidarity. Ryan doesn't understand that all decisions need to be made with the common good in mind." Sister Simone for president in 2016, anyone?

The "Nuns on the Bus" tour, which covered nine states in two weeks, further convinced Sister Simone that Ryan must be stopped. "The more we were on the road, the more impassioned we became," she said. "We saw all these low-income communities, all the people who would be affected. By the end, we were fairly nuts about it."

Sister Simone even invited Ryan and Romney to spend a day with her and the poor; unfortunately, neither man has gotten back to her yet. She did recently hang out with another obnoxious conservative white dude, Bill O'Reilly, and managed to stay calm and hold her own even when he repeatedly suggested that she was a Communist and called her "Sister" in a passive-aggressively patronizing tone. (That's the awesome thing about nuns — even O'Reilly couldn't figure out a way to be aggressively dickish to a Sister of the Church.)

"Tell me what you want, Sister," he asked her a billion times while also talking over her answers throughout the interview. "What I want is money in the pockets of hardworking people who are living below the poverty level," she said. "The Ryan budget gives money to the top, not the bottom." Sing it, Sister!

The Vatican has criticized the sisters for prioritizing the lives of living, breathing humans over fetuses and homophobia, but more and more Catholics are joining the anti-Romney/Ryan ranks: last week, a Catholic newspaper said Obama was more pro-life than Romney, and even important Bishop representatives from the Conference of Catholic Bishops have told Congress that Ryan's budget doesn't protect the poor and is thereby not-so-Catholic.

Will Ryan and/or Romney call Sister Simone back soon? Honestly, we wouldn't if we were them — they wouldn't have a chance in hell of coming out of that showdown on top.

Honestly, I never expected any actual church-based organization of any kind, especially Catholic, who would publicly push back against the special brand of Christianity that the Republicans have somehow found.

[Dark Silver]

You'd be surprised how. . . level headed the Sisterhood can be compared to the Priesthood. More level headed and compassionate than the Priests and Bishops ever are.

In a just world, the "Brides of Christ" would run the Church or be independent from it rather than being under the purview of the Holy See.

[frigidmagi]

If nuns ran the church they would quickly become like the priests. It's the exposure to power and it's temptations that's the problem.

[Comrade Tortoise]

If nuns ran the church they would quickly become like the priests. It's the exposure to power and it's temptations that's the problem.

I figure it might be the difference between the lower echelon clergy and the higher ups, irrespective of whether or not they are male or female really. The typical parish priests and nuns? They are younger (and thus more progressive statistically), and they actually do shit like run soup kitchens, working daily with the poor. Their "management"--the old fogey bishops--are the trogolodytes.

Take our mutual friend Father Fred as an example. He was fine with gay people (even going so far as running a positive outreach program) and supported legal marriage rights, and was politically (though not religiously. It is not something good catholics should do) pro-choice for church/state separation reasons. It was the archdioces that eventually removed him from his post for those reasons. There is definitely an undercurrent of that sort of awesomeness, particularly within different orders. Dominicans and Jesuits for example tend to be awesomeness (dominicans in general got purged from ministerial positions in phoenix), while the Franciscans by and large are the assholes. Even though both of those orders have less than awesome beginnings. Both of them actually went out and did shit, thus historically they liberalized. Franciscans on the other hand... well, they were and always have been a disconnected cloistered order, divorced from the world at large and thus very doctrinaire.

[frigidmagi]

Ironic given the origins of all orders involved. Saint Francis wasn't always in good odor with the Holy See. As for the Dominicans, I was raised to see them as the Pope Theological Shock Troops (er debaters really) ah well nothing last forever. At least my parents didn't buy into the whole Jesuits as satanists theory. Some of the 30 year war propaganda has refused to die.