Nuns die, Rod laughs

What’s funnier than a truckload of dead nuns? Absolutely nothing, according to Rod Dreher, in a recent posting headlined “Why Liberal Nuns Are Dying Off,” busting a gut if not peeing in his pants over a recent confab of nuns, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, who, if you haven’t been keeping up, have been acting up in a manner guaranteed to piss off the Pope.* Don’t get your surplice in a bunch, Your Holiness, Rod says, them bitches be dying! They tell it on themselves!

According to the Leadership Conference, “The number of sisters in the majority of religious communities of women in the United States has been in fairly rapid decline over the past five years, dropping from 60,642 in 2007 to 46,451 today. … The Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate reported in 2009 that 91 percent of women religious with final vows were at least 60 years old and that a majority of those under the age of 60 were in their 50s.”

Trying to make sense of Rod’s sister-slapping diatribe takes a little work. He doesn’t tell you directly why liberal nuns are dying, although he implies it’s because they listen to New Age wack-jobs (or is it “whack-jobs”?) like Barbara Marx Hubbard, whose webpage is a hoot, if not, at least at first glance, actually lethal. But if you look at the data he presents, it isn’t liberal nuns who are dying, it’s all nuns. And it isn’t because of Barbara. It’s because they’re old.

Yes, liberal nuns are dying. And so are conservative nuns. And so is the Catholic Church—the European Catholic Church, that is.† Laugh that one off, Your Holiness!

Afterwords
Rod doesn’t care, because he isn’t Catholic, he’s Orthodox. Rod fills us in on the Orthodox Church here, which is, by his telling, just about the hippest thing around. All the cool kids are joining! At least eight of them! So liberal nuns or conservative, what’s the difference? They’re all going to Hell!