To "liberal Catholics disenchanted with the church," a letter from a group of nearly 60,000 Catholic nuns supporting the Senate health reform bill's (HR 3590) abortion language "looks like a welcome feminist upswell from within one of the world's most patriarchal organizations," Slate copy editor Noreen Malone writes in an opinion piece. She adds that although some liberals and abortion-rights supporters have praised the nuns, "the full picture is also more complicated."

Malone continues, "Nuns are quite literally a dying breed," and the "women's movement has played a role in the declining appeal of the habit." Malone writes, "Nowadays, a Catholic woman can do the same work as a layperson she would do as a nun (and taking the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience doesn't grant her the privilege of celebrating mass, of course)."

Malone adds that the "nuns' health care letter might suggest that the ones who are left are increasingly left-leaning," which is "probably true of the older leadership." However, it is "not as true of the shrinking pool of women who are becoming nuns now," according to Malone. Catholic clergy who work with young nuns say that "the women who now take vows tend to be far more conservative than those who entered a generation or two ago," Malone states.

Nonetheless, "for now, the progressives are in power, and they harnessed in favor of the health care bill the mystique, a gravity and accordance of respect that taking the veil still commands," Malone writes. "If 60,000 deeply religious Catholic women had signed that same letter in favor of health reform, the act of defiance just wouldn't have resonated the same way," she continues. Facing the Vatican's ongoing "broader disapproval with how some nuns have updated their mission for modernity," the nuns who wrote the letter have "been quite careful to note that their disagreement isn't doctrinal; it's about how to interpret the political language of the bill, not a move away from a pro-life stance," according to Malone.

She writes that the letter "created a window for lawmakers ... at a key historical moment" and "came to the rescue just in time" for antiabortion-rights Catholic House members, "who reversed themselves and voted for the bill." Malone concludes, "The health care lesson the sisters taught sets a precedent even if the activists among them become a rare species" (Malone, Slate, 3/30).

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