. . . but can you be a religious sister?
This disturbing story of Sr. Donna Quinn, O.P., highlights for me one small insight of a book I read this week. Catholic Matters by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus (a favorite of mine) notes the discord and confusion that plagues our modern age. This confusion reaches even to Dominican sisters apparently.
People like Sr. Quinn have, Neuhaus says, bought into this idea:
Morality has become almost totally a matter of feelings and preferences. You have yours and I have mine. If I say that something is “wrong,” I am expressing no more than my personal preference. “I am not comfortable with that.” “I feel that is not right.” “I would prefer you not do that.” In short, the making of arguments is replaced by the expression of emotions.
And Sr. Quinn’s whole “ministry” seems to be based on emotions. As her superior said, Sister sees her role as
accompanying women who are verbally abused by protestors. Her stance is that if the protestors were not abusive, she would not be there.
Whatever her reason for doing what she is doing, she will answer at some point for her actions. But perhaps things aren’t so bad. Perhaps Sister is just on the fringe. As the article notes,
In a 2002 address to the Women’s Studies in Religion Program at Harvard Divinity School, Sr. Quinn described how she came to view the teachings of her Church as “immoral”: “I used to say: ‘This is my Church, and I will work to change it, because I love it,’” she said. “Then later I said, ‘This church is immoral, and if I am to identify with it I’d better work to change it.’ More recently, I am saying, ‘All organized religions are immoral in their gender discriminations.’”
As a former member of this illustrious religious order, I’m saddened today that nothing is done to reprimand Sr. Quinn and maintain the Dominican tradition of preaching the Truth. Please pray for Sr. Quinn and the many souls she escorts each day.
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I know some of the people who sidewalk counsel and pray at the abortion facility where Sr. Quinn is a deathscort. Salt of the earth folk, they are.
(The LifeSite article linked to also includes some comments from my boss, Joe Scheidler, who notes that Sr. Quinn picketed the office of our organization, the Pro-Life Action League, on the anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision in 1982.)