Here’s all you need to know about why vocations are falling…
“We’re educated women,” said Sister Joan Mumaw, vice president of the order. “Most of us have master’s degrees and PhDs. So, even today, even though we have sisters in their 80s and 90s, we are still learning theology in the light of new science, in the light of new understandings. If you believe that Jesus took on human form and human life, he took on all of it — not just being in church.”
“The IHM Motherhouse makes the point throughout its 376,000 square feet.”
(…)
“The nuns still strive to retire about $37 million in construction costs on the motherhouse, home to the administrative offices of the dwindling order and more than 200 sisters, whose average age is 86.”
OK, this is little old I-didn’t-go-to-university me asking: what would Jesus think of you doing an extreme makeover times a million on a giant building, and spending your money on doctorates in dubious theology?
I’ve met a lot of these nuns-with-PhDs in my travels. None of them were smarter than I am. None. You had to explain jokes to them. They had no idea what was going on in the world outside their own tiny planet of sleeping, eating (they really like eating), and sucking up Marxist nonsense. (It should be obvious from this story alone that none of them majored in business or math…)
They just parroted the latest trendy crap about “paradigms” and “sustainability” and had never had an original thought in years, maybe in their lives. When they’re not “on sabbatical” (which seems to be every other year) they’re wasting money on yet another degree. And believe me, were they ever pissed that my column was one of the most popular in Catholic New Times history, even though I didn’t have a BA! Some of them whispered among themselves that an uneducated person like me shouldn’t have even been given a column — of course, they never had the nerve to tell me that to my face. For all their nattering about “speaking truth to power,” they were the wimpiest women around.
BTW: this giant useless motherhouse is located in a suburb of Detroit. No, really. Now I know what you’re thinking: but Kathy, wouldn’t it have been more useful, more “Christian”, to use the $56-million to fix up poor black people’s houses and/or the abandoned war-zone downtown? Fools! You don’t have a PhD in liberation theology so shut the hell up!!
UPDATE: a reader writes… “Posts like these are why I start every day with a cuppa coffee and Kathy.”
UPDATE: Heh!
Another UPDATE: Hewitt has “Greg from Dallas”, I’ve got “Joe”…
“Using the number 200 for the nuns remaining in the order, they spent $280,000 per nun on the renovation.
“This green structure allocates 1,880 feet per nun.
(…) “Now how much value did this monstrous renovation add to the property? I think this is money that was thrown down the 240 wells they dug.
“In gaining a $200,000 per year savings of natural gas how much energy did all of the vehicles and equipment use digging the wells, constructing and laying the 47 miles of pipe? Since when did orders of Nuns try to win prizes for the most correct political thinking?
“All of this stuff just keeps whirling in my brain and it hurts, it just plain hurts. Then I try to reconcile it with additional story you linked about how many abandoned buildings there are in Detroit. What a mess, I was overseas in the army when the nice black people in Detroit did their first urban renewal project by rioting, burning down houses and buildings and having the National guard show up with tanks to quiet things down.
“The problem as I see it is too many black people with no leadership and sense of direction and hope. Mix that with the largest Muslim population in the US, as I understand it, and you have a big ole mess.
“Now I think I have a solution, the church can set up electronic sensors around the huge building and then put some supershock ankle bracelets on pervert priests and house them in the structure and anytime they try to go outside of the building, they will get the hell shocked out of their legs. This could actually be a paying proposition for the church since they would be able to actually keep the perverts away from the kids and that would reduce their annual pervert expenditures by millions and millions.”
