Nuns on the Bus

Posted on June 21, 2012 by lmsinca

Yesterday jnc4p mentioned a slight difference between men and women that I found provocative.

It appears that when there is a financial crisis there is a gender divide on what the appropriate resolution is.

The male outlook as represented by Robert Rubin, Hank Paulson, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan, Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke seems to favor the make a deal approach as the way to resolve it with the government assisting/backstopping private entities. If a deal goes bad, make a bigger one until confidence is restored. I believe this is part and parcel of having the regulators captured by the mindset of the Wall Street banks they are supervising.

This is contrasted with the female outlook as represented by Sheila Blair and Brooksley Born which is more in line with follow the rules and let the chips fall where they may.

He went on to say how much respect he has for women like Sheila Bair and Brooksley Born.  His comment made me think of another woman who’s doing her part right now, not in the financial world, but in the political arena nonetheless, as a response to the spending cuts in the Ryan Budget, the increase in poverty since the beginning of this recession and in defiance of the Catholic Bishops’ rebuke.  Have you heard of Sister Simone?

(CBS News) JANESVILLE, Wis. – Fourteen Roman Catholic nuns on a nine-state bus tour are in Chicago Wednesday, after several stops in Wisconsin. Officially, they’re protesting cuts in federal programs for the poor. But the “Nuns on the Bus” tour is also an act of defiance against criticism from the Vatican.

Sister Simone Campbell is a Roman Catholic nun and the executive director of Network — a liberal social justice lobby in Washington.

“Nuns on the Bus” website

She’s been under siege, but she’s not fazed.

“Into every life a little rain must come,” she said.

Sister Simone is also a bit of a provocateur.

“Catholic sisters have always been out on the edge,” she said. “And quite frankly we have a long history of kind of annoying the central authority.”

The central authority they’ve recently annoyed is the Vatican itself. In April, sister Simone’s group and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious — representing 80 percent of the nation’s nuns — were attacked by the church hierarchy for focusing too much of their work on poverty and economic justice, while being silent on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Vatican reprimands U.S. nuns over “radical feminist themes”
U.S. Catholic nuns go about work after rebuke

Simone says she pleads guilty to part of that charge: “That I spend too much time working for people in poverty. I wear that as a badge of honor.”

The Vatican has appointed a bishop to correct what the church calls “serious doctrinal problems” in the way the nuns work.

They’ve been called radical feminists.

Simone’s response: “Oh my heavens. I actually have to laugh. We are strong women. We’re educated women. We ask questions. We engage in dialogue. That’s all we do. We stay faithful to the gospel and trying to live it.

From the AP via the Washington Post:

While the nuns say they aren’t opposing any specific Republican candidate, they plan stops at the offices of several closely tied to the budget process, including House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, and Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, the architect of the House-passed budget. Their first stop Monday was Rep. Steve King’s office in Ames. The tour will end in Washington on July 2.

Social activism at its finest.

Filed under: 2012, Poverty | Tagged: , , , | 5 Comments »