NPR and the Nuns

The NPR site has a piece, "Nuns And The Vatican: A Clash Decades In Making", that is informative in some ways, curious in others. One informative part is anecdotal and opens the piece:

When Harvard divinity professor Harvey Cox arranged to meet with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the Vatican in 1988, a group of nuns thought he was wasting his time.

"I was chatting and having dinner with a number of Dominican sisters who were staying there for a 30-day retreat," Cox says. "They were incredulous that I wanted to bother seeing Ratzinger. 'Why do you want to do that?' they asked. 'Who pays any attention to him?' "

Even in 1988 there were at least two good reasons to pay attention to Cardinal Ratzinger: he was the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of Faith and he was already rightly regarded by many as one of the finest Christian theologians of the second half of the twentieth century. But, then, you'd have to care about Church doctrine and theology to recognize those reasons.

One of the curious aspects of the piece is its heavy reliance on the experience and opinions of Cox, a liberal Protestant theologian and activist who is enamored with liberation theology. Not that Cox's opinions aren't interesting or even noteworthy, but it's a bit like having Brian Boitano explain the fundamentals of playing defensive tackle in the NFL—sure, he's an athlete, but it doesn't add up. Not surprisingly, Cox interprets the situation as one of nuns being forced to knuckle under to the faceless power brokers in the Vatican:

Continue reading on the CWR blog.