Double Crossed - The Catholic Church and American Nuns (Review)

By Colman McCrthy

In the 40 years since the Second Vatican Council, when the Roman Catholic Church sought to renew itself, nearly 100,000 American nuns left their religious orders. Today only a trickle of women are joining. What’s gone wrong?

Kenneth Briggs, a former religion editor and writer for The New York Times, argues in “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns” that “many bishops were mad as hell” that sisters “had moved far beyond the system of traditional control” long imposed by the hierarchy.

With Cardinal James McIntyre of Los Angeles on the West Coast and Cardinal John O’Connor of New York on the East, and progressive women’s congregations in between, keeping tabs on the nuns was child’s play. Briggs writes that for O’Connor, “the cardinal and his cohorts had been so marinated in the culture of the bishop as king of his diocese—the culture that upheld the claim of divinely instituted prerogatives and unilateral authority—that they had trouble understanding how a subgroup beneath them could aspire to decide things for themselves.”

Briggs, a seasoned reporter, is familiar with Catholic theology and structures--as well as the complexities of church politics. His prose is journalistic and stolid. He devoted more than three years interviewing scores of sisters, plus more years of research.

Briggs may be on the side of angels but his claim that nuns have been betrayed and double-crossed doesn’t hold water, holy or otherwise. The facts aren’t there. When they took the veil and pledged obedience, what did nuns expect from an undemocratic, hierarchical, male-run authoritarian organization? I imagine that for many women in pre-Vatican II days, little of that mattered. It was God’s will that Holy Mother Church was ruled by a Holy Father.

If it took a while for some nuns to get clued in, the hierarchy was ready to defend its privileged ways. No nun was allowed to speak during the three years--1962-65--of Vatican II. When Pope Benedict XVI was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he said that “a feminist mentality” infected women’s religious orders, plus the mischief of “professionalism.” Bishop Philip Hannan of Washington derided a group of reformist nuns as “troublemakers” and “contentious people.” One pesky nun who wouldn’t desist was a “crazy woman.”

Kenneth Briggs might have a case that the bishops were double-crossers had they cut a deal during Vatican II to share power. Fuzzy notions of “collegiality” and “consulting” did indeed waft to the incensed heights of St. Peter’s during the council. It was only pious talk. Whether it was naivete or a prayerful hopes that progressive policies would prevail, America’s nuns were still creatures of obedience. They vowed it. When drives toward self-determination replaced self-abnegation, they were seen, as Briggs writes, “mavericks trying to topple the established order. For pastoral reasons, as the bishops understood them, the nuns had to be put in their place for the good of Church order.” Hordes left, for the good of their souls.

I admire those who departed, but equally so those who stayed. Who was it—Karl Rahner?—who said that you don’t have a vocation, you are a vocation.

It’s the enduring shame of the hierarchy that the nuns who ran the schools, hospitals and other sites of social work were little more than cheap labor. If only they had joined the AFL-CIO and prayed as much to Joe Hill as St. Joseph.

--Colman McCarthy