THE Vatican's latest target: American nuns. Yes, I thought that was weird too. Last week, the Vatican announced the conclusions of its doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents most of America's nuns. The verdict was that the LCWR is doctrinally confused, has emphasised ministerial concerns over the catechism, has failed to champion the Holy See's views on issues such as homosexuality, and that, perhaps under the influence of radical feminism, the LCWR occasionally flouts the bishops, "who are the Church's authentic teachers of faith and morals." My visceral reaction to this was something like, "Hey, old European men, this is America and our sisters can do whatever they want." Paleo-feminist, slightly jingoistic and doctrinally illiterate, perhaps. Still, I can say what I want, because I'm not a nun, right? Garry Wills, at the New York Review of Books, has a more temperate response:

The Vatican has issued a harsh statement claiming that American nuns do not follow their bishops' thinking. That statement is profoundly true. Thank God, they don't. Nuns have always had a different set of priorities from that of bishops. The bishops are interested in power. The nuns are interested in the powerless. Nuns have preserved Gospel values while bishops have been perverting them. The priests drive their own new cars, while nuns ride the bus (always in pairs). The priests specialize in arrogance, the nuns in humility.

As for the nuns themselves, some have declined to comment, because they have to be obedient. Others have had what seems like an understandable reaction. "People are stunned," Sister Pat McDermott told the Washington Post. "They're outraged, angry, frustrated, they don't know where this came from and how to hold it."

This has prompted some upset—see more reactions from the New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Star-Ledger, among others—and could lead to another round of debate over whether the Catholic church marginalises women. People have been debating that for ages, and as we've seen with the recent dispute over the church's stance on contraception, it's an open and emotive question. The complicating factor here is that the women being criticised have opted into the church's structure. I suppose you could argue that by virtue of having embraced their vocation, they have accepted some obligation to defer to the Vatican. So if they're being scolded, they have to charge it to the game. As Mr Wills suggests, Catholics themselves wrestle with the restrictions put on nuns. (See here for a touching essay by a father who struggled when two of his daughters took vows.) In any case, the question of the bishops' attitudes towards nuns is probably outside the purview of a blog on American politics.

However, in light of the stubborn tendency to see religious belief as hegemonic and homogeneous in the context of American politics—either you're religious, and therefore probably conservative, or you're not—this latest flap is worth noting because it corroborates a broader point. As I wrote last week, creationists are not a homogeneous group. My colleague concurred and reiterated the need to keep separate politics and religion, for the good of our pluralistic polity, as well as the good of faith. Elsewhere, people have taken issue with the public's implicit acceptance of religious labels as a proxy for political beliefs. Timothy Noah, for example, objects that mainstream news organisations "have allowed themselves to be bullied into accepting the Christian right's implicit suggestion that the only true Christian is a Christian conservative member of an evangelical or fundamentalist congregation." And as the Vatican's critique of the LCWR shows us, even within the category of devout Catholics, substantial variation may be observed.

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