"Progressive" Nun speaks on how to resist patriarchial approaches to church leadership.

Is Burlingame Mercy Sister Eloise Rosenblatt teaching the faithful to be disobedient? Obviously Sister is not happy with her position in religious life and desires to rally other free thinking religious and laity against the Church instituted by Christ. She plans to speak on “Countering and Challenging Patriarchy in the Church” on Oct. 27 at Our Lady of the Rosary Church Hall in Palo Alto.

The California Catholic Daily reports: The event, sponsored by the Thomas Merton Center in Palo Alto, was advertised in the Oct. 16 Valley Catholic, the newspaper of the San Jose diocese. According to the Oct. 14 Thomas Merton Center bulletin, Sister Eloise will address the question: “How do progressive Catholics, who wish to stay members of the Roman church, change the entrenched patriarchal church systems that disempower the laity in general, and women in particular?”

Sister “will take a broad analytical approach and recognize how subordination works culturally and doctrinally,” said the bulletin. “She proposes long-term strategies for resisting and reforming patriarchal approaches to church leadership, by invoking the church’s own teaching.” (Sounds to me like she is re-interpreting the church's teaching according to her agenda instead of invoking it)

Sister Eloise, both a feminist theologian and a doctor of law, directs ELOROS Inc. (Education, Law, and Religious Organizations), which, says the bulletin, is “a non-profit organization that provides parish inservice education about employment issues and California’s mandatory antidiscrimination training.” In the past, Sister Eloise has addressed other “progressive” gatherings. She offered workshops at the 1998 and 2005 Call to Action West Coast Conferences on the topics, “Keeping your church job,” church law, and clergy sexual exploitation of adult women.

Call to Action is a group that promotes public dissent against Church teaching on women’s ordination, homosexuality, birth control, and other matters.

Need I say any more. If you follow the link above, you will note the number of negative comments Sister received.

Something to think about: Just think what our world and the Catholic Church would be like had Frances Cabrini, Elizabeth Seton, Catherine Sienna, Mother Teresa, Teresa of Avila, Dorothy Day and Mother Angelica (just to name a few) chose to focus their energies on rallying the faithful against the hierarchy.

Francis of Assisi challenged the hierarchy in a positive way, for the benefit of the poor, the marginalized and outcasts.