GetReligion
Sunday, April 06, 2025

nuns

San Francisco Chronicle needed more info on nuns who walked out on pro-gay leafletting

The theological tug-of-war between the Archdiocese of San Francisco and gay advocates shows no sign of ending soon, which means there will continue to be news coverage to dig into, naturally.

The latest soldiers in this battle are a group of nuns who staged a walkout when students passed out gay-rights materials at their school. But the nuns engaged in this battle are not old fogeys. They’re savvy 20- and 30-somethings who know what to do with an iPhone and who understand the cultural wars that are unfolding on their turf. Did this crucial information make it into the story?

Listen to how the San Francisco Chronicle described what happened a week ago:

The divisions within the Bay Area’s Catholic community over gay rights hit Marin Catholic High School full force the other day, when a group of nuns walked out of their classes to protest the sponsors of a program intended to protect gay and lesbian teens from bullying.
The five members of the Dominican Sisters of Mary order exited their classrooms Friday as students began handing out flyers at the Kentfield school promoting a nationwide Day of Silence.
Their walkout came one day after 100 prominent local Catholics attracted national attention by taking out a full-page ad in The Chronicle calling on the pope to oust Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, in part for trying to get teachers at Catholic schools to sign off on a morality clause that characterizes homosexual relations as “gravely evil.”

Let's keep reading, because it takes a while to get to these nuns.


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What is this? Concerning that Time anti-news essay on modern nuns

At least once every month or two I get a junk-mail letter – with spam emails coming more frequently – from the business office of Time magazine, a publication for which I happily paid good money for several decades.

Perhaps you get these as well, the messages that say, "We want you back!" urging me to renew the subscription that I cancelled a year or two ago. Apparently these people do not pay attention to return messages or even the people who do their telephone research with former subscribers.

Does Time want me back? If so, why do the magazine's editors keep dedicating oceans of ink – real and cyber – to opinion essays about religious, moral and cultural topics that deserve serious journalistic attention? Is this just the spirit of the MSNBC-Fox age spreading over into the old prestige media? I assume so.

Take, for example, the new essay that ran under the headline, "The Great Nunquisition: Why the Vatican Is Cracking Down on Sisters." This piece is the complete anti-news package.


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Nuns, strippers and the never-boring Godbeat

Sister Mary Clarence could totally fix this: Nuns file suit over noisy strip club next door: http://t.co/9JTlzgJO3i pic.twitter.com/kyLz0ISk0F Two words: nuns, strippers. AP colleague on this irresistible story also touching on zoning law, strip club rights: http://t.co/n0ZhByigSh

Suburban nuns step up fight against neighboring strip club: http://t.co/AafNZVN0G5 @nbcphilrogers pic.twitter.com/JlEB9BjqUN

— NBC5 Investigates (@NBC5Investigate) June 10, 2014


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Will Pope Francis embrace all the 'progressive' nuns?

Journalists are rarely true prophets, but they often try to look into the future and see what they want to see — often with the help of long-time sources on one side of an issue who are also anxious to see what they want to see. The sources for these wish-fulfillment stories are real. The quotes are real and almost always valid. The issue addressed in a trial-balloon story of this kind may be timely. However, it is crucial to note that these reports rarely feature quotations from people on the other side of whatever hot-button issue is being, allegedly, covered.

That appears to be the case with the recent Los Angeles Times story that ran under the headline, “Vatican observers look for thaw between Pope Francis, U.S. nuns.”

When the Vatican censured an organization representing thousands of American nuns, it did so in part because the group had not spoken out enough against gay marriage and abortion.


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Nice art (but few facts) about Baltimore Carmel nuns

Every now and then, the editors who run major newspapers get this urge to run a story that simply jumps out at readers and proclaims, “This Is A Religion Story!”


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Media MIA: Mother Dolores Hart's love for Jesus

It’s the question that echoes between the lines of mainstream news features about the life and work of Mother Dolores Hart, the cloistered nun (yes, she gave Elvis his first on-screen kiss) who walked away from her promising future in Hollywood.


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