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Vatican Makes Peace With American Nuns

Kelly Faircloth

NUNS WIN! Nuns WIN! Or at least American Nuns no longer have a Vatican investigation hanging over their heads, anyway.
Specifically, Rome was poking around the Leadership Conference of American Women Religious, a prominent American nuns’ group. Pope Francis’s predecessor originally launched the inquiry into allegations of—gasp!—CREEPING RADICAL FEMINISM. The plan was to do an overhaul. Many were worried the Vatican wanted to clean house (which would’ve been a hell of a note). The move was unpopular With many Catholics here in the States, given the decades of work by American Nuns in Catholic-run schools and charities, as well as the occasional act of totally ****l activism.

But the Vatican just announced it was wrapping up its takeover two years earlier than anticipated. The New York Times sums up the shifting dynamics at work:

Under the previous pope, Benedict XVI, the Vatican’s doctrinal office had appointed three bishops in 2024 to overhaul the nuns’ group, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, out of concerns that it had hosted speakers and published materials that strayed from Catholic doctrine on such matters as the all-male priesthood, birth control and sexuality, and the centrality of Jesus to the faith.
But Francis has shown in his two-year papacy that he is less interested in having the church police doctrinal boundaries than in demonstrating mercy and love for the poor and vulnerable — the very work that most of the women’s religious orders under investigation have long been engaged in.

Basically the Vatican came out and said “We’re all good now!” without much in the way of details, which likely means they’re backing off, as Slate explains. They’ll have a doctrinal advisory committee to look over anything they’re publishing, the Guardian reports, but that’s far, far milder than what many feared. Pope Francis even met With four women from the conference for nearly an hour, and the Vatican released a smiley we’re-all-pals-here photo of the gathering. “It’s about as close to an apology, I would think, as the Catholic Church is officially going to render,” theologian Eileen Burke-Sullivan told the Times.

This comes on the heels of the Vatican concluding back in December a broader look into the conditions of American nuns, With an acknowledgement that they’re holding it down despite their dwindling ranks. All together now: NUNS! NUNS! NUNS! NUNS!
Image via AP.

Catholic Nuns Come Out in Support of Obamacare Contraception Access

Catholic Nuns Come Out in Support of Obamacare Contraception Access

As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legality of private corporations denying women reproductive autonomy (because it says in the Bible that every pro-life human has a God-given right to trample upon the basic liberties of others), the National Coalition of American Nuns (NCAN) have announced that they Support the Affordable Care Act’s Contraception coverage. Yes!

This comes in stark contrast to another group of nuns, The Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged in Colorado, who filed an emergency petition before the Supreme Court in the end of 2024. The Little Sisters of the Poor claimed that Obama’s birth control compromise — which mandates that non-profits opposed to Contraception on religious grounds can have a third party administrator cover it instead — still violated their religious freedom.

In a statement, the NCAN wrote:

NCAN is dismayed that the Little Sisters of the Poor, the University of Notre Dame and other Catholic organizations are challenging the Affordable Care Act. Spurred on by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops these organizations are attempting to hold hostage all women by refusing insurance to them for contraceptives.

"It isn’t ‘faith and freedom’ when reproductive autonomy isn’t extended by the Catholic Church to women," Sister Donna Quinn, head of NCAN, told Religion Dispatches. "It isn’t freedom when a woman can be held hostage by the owner of a business."

The Nuns have also started an online petition, which has almost reached its goal of 4,000 signatures. "We want to make clear that the sin is not a person using birth control. The sin is denying women the right and the means to plan their families," the petition declares. "Indeed, it is precisely because life is sacred that we Support the intentional and moral use of contraception."

It goes on, "We know that religious freedom means that each person has the right to exercise their own religious beliefs; religious freedom cannot mean that an individual or a corporation gets to impose their religious beliefs on their employees." Yes, exactly. There is no such thing as a "religious freedom" to force someone else to abide by your oppressive and antiquated logic. Bravo, NCAN.