Sister Mary Ann Cunningham remembers what it was like when Catholic nuns wore habits and kept their mouths shut.
“We were totally deferential,” she said. “We may have grumbled about it among ourselves, but there was a kind of unwillingness to air our laundry before others.”
That was then. This is now.
Cunningham and a lot of other religious women like her ditched their habits and found their voices long ago.
Their activism was born in the 1960s with the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Vatican II. It grew as the women served in Latin America, Asia, Africa and the inner cities of the U.S. It matured as they earned advanced degrees, developed anti-poverty and human-rights programs, ran schools and universities, and still were told that no matter what they did, they would never measure up. They could never be ordained priests.
So now it should come as no surprise that the National Coalition of American Nuns is challenging some American bishops on what it means to “act Catholic” in the voting booth.
To put it simply, they don’t think it boils down to opposing abortion rights and gay marriage.
“Some say these are the core issues of being a Catholic,” said Cunningham, a member of the Sisters of Loretto and a board member of the coalition. “Well, pardon me.”
In an “Open Letter to Catholic Voters,” the nuns question the morality of pre-emptive war, the proliferation of firearms, the hostility toward immigrants and the blind eye given for years to sexual predators in schools, churches and government offices.
They encourage Catholic voters to respect “the moral adulthood of women” and to choose leaders who “recognize the right of women to make reproductive decisions and receive medical treatment according to the rights of privacy and conscience.” And whether it is through marriage or civil unions, the nuns endorse equal rights for all “citizens in committed relationships.”
They’re suggesting that the way to “act Catholic” is to vote according to conscience, not blind obedience.
“We don’t want to oversimplify what constitutes being a Catholic anymore,” Cunningham said.
Like the bishops, the nuns know the Catholic vote packs a punch. Winning it was considered the key to the elections of Eisenhower, Reagan and, of course, John F. Kennedy. In Colorado and many other states, Catholic candidates are all over the ballots this fall.
But the Catholic vote is famously changeable.
A Pew Research Center poll taken last month found that in recent years Catholic voters have changed parties in dramatic numbers. The percentage of Catholics who identified as Republicans has dropped from 46 in 2002 to 37. Those who said they were Democrats rose from 41 percent to 48 percent.
Despite urging from bishops once again to “act Catholic” and apply the abortion/gay rights litmus test to every vote, other, more compelling issues have emerged.
In 2006, the war in Iraq dominates the concerns of most voters – including Catholics.
Maybe if the U.S. had been dropping condoms instead of bombs, the bishops would have noticed it, Cunningham said.
She is quick to say she respects the bishops. “After all, most of us nuns taught them in school.
“But there’s room in the church for diversity of opinion among people with an educated conscience,” she said.
She wants to make sure Catholics who share her views feel welcome in the church, especially at a time when bishops have been trying to exert so much power over their votes.
“If you can hold the power of the sacraments or heaven and hell over people, well, that’s a pretty strong persuader.”
Still, it’s nothing compared with conscience, she said.
For people of all faiths – and people of no faith – that’s the real test for a moral values voter.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com.
