| Viewpoint: Church perceptions of 'radical feminism' are overblown |
By: Fr William Grimm
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Posted: Monday, May 7, 2012 11:01 pm
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Fr William Grimm
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At the end of the 19th century, Europeans in the Vatican convinced Pope Leo XIII to condemn the so-called Americanism heresy, Fr William Grimm in Tokyo writes for UCAN:
Apart from lamenting the fact that Catholicism did not enjoy a privileged legal status over other faiths in the United States because the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights mandates that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the condemnation was rather vague.
The main reason it was vague was that there was actually no such heresy to condemn. It was a figment of fevered Roman imaginations that did little more than provide ammunition to anti-Catholic bigotry in America.
The recently announced plan by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to take over the organization that represents 80 percent of Sisters in the US has given scandal to Catholics and non-Catholics around the world, including in Asia, where many Sisters engage in the same sorts of active apostolic activity that seem to be attracting the Vatican’s negative attention.
The charges as presented are vague, so it is difficult to know what real problems there are, if any, outside the imaginings of Roman hierarchs. The chief charge is “radical feminism,” a phrase that has been bandied about in the Church for several years.
To read more of Fr William's piece on UCAN see: http://www.ucanews.com/2012/05/07/a-scandalous-hunt-for-the-snark/
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