When three octogenarian nuns escaped their senior center in September, their unlikely quest for freedom set off a bitter standoff with the abbot who leads their Roman Catholic order. The three rebel nuns forced their way back into the Austrian abbey where they had lived for decades, before the senior center. ...
The abbot had cited "a church rule that orders must have at least six living members." What happened to that rule? There were 3 nuns living in an abbey within a medieval castle.
Now that they've gotten so much attention and support, the abbot says they can stay, but they "must stop letting laypeople into their cloisters, and — most likely much more important — they must end their social media feed." And yet that's how they won their heart's desire, though public attention and support, acquired through social media. Without social media, perhaps they'll lose what they've gained. But what prevents them from restarting their social media, if promises are broken? A vow of obedience? That didn't stop their first rebellion.
Here's that social media feed (at Instagram).
Posts
24 comments:
My aunt is an 80-year old uncloistered nun.
She doesnt live in a medieval abbey and luckily her order has many (so far) well populated facilities. Taking care of old nuns is getting to be quite a problem though. They need some younger ones in there.
Every parochial school lad learned at an early age; be careful if you try to get something past a nun. They don't play that mess.
How do you solve a problem like…
Social media is a bad habit
Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control
It begins with your family, but soon it comes round to your soul
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned
Judy Collins
They're Human! Who knew?
Very strange phenomenon: people old enough to remember pre- Vatican 2 engage in disobedience. But of course the hallmark of pre-v2 was unquestioning obedience. Oh well, another 10 years or so and they'll be rid of these troublesome regressives. CC, JSM
PS: One of the main reasons for Henry VIII's dissolution of monasteries (which actually started under his dad H7 and Woolsey when everyone was still Catholic) was the large number of zombie foundations with singles digit memberships. - jsm
Hey, abbot...!
Okay they have my attention and I look forward to the subsequent articles informing us how the negotiations are resolved. I will likely be sorely disappointed when the drive-by Media moves on and never gets around to resolving the curiosity that they have created in this episode. But for now I can enjoy the brief frisson of anticipation and speculation that will also most likely disappoint me.
Happy Monday y’all!
"I vow to obey you as long as you order me to do what I want."
The Brides of Jesus
meet bernard mcguirk
rave up bejeesus
NBC reports that the nuns have not accepted the Church’s conditions for the reasons Althouse has noted.
The six living member rule would appear to be a double-edged sword. If the order has ceased to exist for want of enough living members, how is Markus Grasl their superior?
BBC reports:
“But the numbers of nuns dwindled. In 2022, the building was taken over by the Archdiocese of Salzburg and the Reicherberg Abbey, an Augustinian monastery.
Provost Markus Grasl from Reichersberg Abbey became the nuns' superior and the community was officially dissolved at the beginning of 2024.
The remaining nuns were granted lifelong right of residence, as long as their health and mental capacity allowed.”
So, if I interpret this correctly, the abbot will allow them to return, but only if they give up their means of communication (the social media accounts), and give up their contact with laypeople, whom I assume are supporting them in their day-to-day old age existence, and hand over their Power of Attorney to the church, which I assume will lead to a court order and their speedy forced institutionalization. I'd like to be there when Sister Bernadette thanks the abbot, blesses him, and tells him to f*ck off, f*ck straight off.
The Church doesn't want social media followers.
It wants adherents. They want people who obey. Obey whom? Why, the Church of course. And who is the church? The guy in charge, of course.
Pull down your pants, Timmy. Let's get a good look at you.
They want Timmy's who will obey. Not nuns who become more powerful than the priests.
The church very much wants this out of the light and back behind the walls. I smell something juicy, like a big real estate deal or something.
What lovely people. It's quite a shame that their actions caused such a brouhaha.
Catholics should stop taking open-ended vows of obedience. Such vows are a never-ending source of evils, and a snare for those who make them. Always leave yourself an escape hatch for when things go south in the Church.
Nuns. On the run.
Funny movie.
Inman is a hoot.
They are very old and will soon meet The Maker. Perhaps then their faithful service will be rewarded with eternal bliss. However, you can't completely discount the possibility that The Maker will decide to punish the forsaking of their vows of obedience by punishing them with eternal torment. Wouldn't that be a bitch. I'm rooting for eternal bliss, but The Maker has his own plans.
Given that Jesus is over 2,000 years old and has all the power of the universe, marrying these nuns makes him a relative pedophile, no? These abbies are spiritual Epstein Islands. All in all this is great news for the Catholic Church because it's a story about them that doesn't involve the raping of little boys. Everybody can relate to an elderly parent refusing to leave their cavernous home for an old folks home.
Sister Louis in 4th grade hit so hard we added 'Joe' to her name.
It's an old story.
The Habsburgs had to purge and consolidate monasteries and nunneries periodically, as the numbers of monks and nuns grew too large for the productive classes to support.
We toured the Danube region a few years ago, with friends whose parents were second generation immigrants from the region. We saw lots of abbeys, lots of cathedrals and lesser churches. The abbeys were remarkable for their relative luxury, it was only during this tour that I started to fully appreciate the oppressive combined weight of royalty and the church that reigned over the populace during this time. As a serf, you were expected to serve your monarch (or lesser regional nobility) 5 days a week, and the church at least one. Your crops were heavily taxed, the majority seized, and another sizeable portion tithed to the church. You had one day per week to tend to your own crops and survival. My tour-mates had no difficulty understanding why their grandparents had left this tyranny, and it's not hard to see why that generation of Americans are such red-blooded patriots.
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