Three
years ago, almost to the day, I posted…
..about
“Jane Austen, Jimmy Carter, feminist nuns & Jesus” in the aftermath of the
Vatican crackdown on American Catholic nuns who had the temerity to want to
live Jesus’s true message of altruism, nonjudgment, and care for the poor and
helpless, and in particular for oppressed women, and to expect the Catholic
Church not to expel them.
I
suggested that Jane Austen would have been 1000% on the side of these heroic
nuns, who stood their ground in the face of an attack by perhaps the most
ancient powerful patriarchal institution in the world.
By
chance today, as I was browsing through blog posts of mine from when I first
started blogging actively nearly 5 years ago, I came across the above linked
2012 post, and so imagine my surprise and delight that when I went to Tweet a
link to it, I came across Tweets from the last two weeks that linked to
articles, such as this one in The Guardian…
…which
heralded some really really good news. Pope Francis apparently has done it
again, “it” being doing something to really shake up his mammoth bureaucratic
apparatus, and to get back to its roots in the selfless, loving message of
Jesus that ought to have been the message all along, but got lost a long time
ago in many ways.
And I
was reminded once again of the quotation in Northanger
Abbey, Henry Tilney’s rant at Catherine Morland, that for me is the
epicenter of Jane Austen’s true Christian message, i.e., that when the Church
(whether it be Anglican, Catholic, or any other) loses sight of its moral
center, it is up to ordinary “heroines” on the street to step up and demand a
return to goodness and charity.
So
somewhere Jane Austen is cheering these brave and resourceful nuns on, as they
do their good works. In
particular, women must keep pressing hard to force the Churches to be Christian
in the best sense of that word.
Cheers,
ARNIE
@JaneAustenCode
on Twitter
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