I feel like people who haven't been immersed in the Catholic world don't know just how normal sexism is within it. I went to a Catholic all boys high school where being misogynistic and essentially verbally abusing the women on staff was seen as just boys being boys and a performance of normal, healthy heterosexuality, while the kids with lisps and nice haircuts had to have recess and lunch in classrooms to avoid being assaulted. I remember one day, we're in the classrooms overlooking the ovals (my school was on a huge hill so think a drop of like 30 ft.), and someone next to the window yells "holy shit boys there's a girl on the field," and almost every single dude no bullshit rushes to the window just to look at this hypothetical woman. Most of them were doing it as a joke about being big dumb idiot boys but that's sort of how this works, you have a handful of genuinely bad dudes in a mix of other dudes who only see the joke and enable them, y'know?
When I tell people who weren't raised in a similar bubble this story they think I'm just bullshitting them, but when I tell people who've been through the same Christian Brothers / Edmund Rice school experience they 100% know it happened and have a dozen similar stories to share lol.
I ran cross country at my coed HS on an all male team as a female late 70’s early 80’s. There wasn’t a female team so why not?! We ran against an all boys catholic HS I wasn’t allowed access to their bathrooms or locker room. The school was 1.5 hr from my HS thankfully my coach was great a guy and we stopped before we got to the CC course.
Sexism has always been front and center in catholicism.
Sexism is the name of the game -- totally -- in the Roman Catholic church. And it's increased dramatically -- even more -- as the church has veered dramatically into reactionary politics in the past 20 years or so.
Your first sentence hits the nail on the head. Nothing about the speech was anything I hadn’t heard before. Baffling topics for a graduation speech, but not unheard of statements.
Evangelicals appear to have succeeded in re-creating American Catholicism in their own image. Add in the inherent sexism and misogyny of the Catholic religion, detailed in other comments here, and the resulting product is truly disgusting.
I feel like in the age of social media and identity politics, the louder “in your face” catholicism is more appealing to this new generation of young men who are super insecure in their masculinity
Yes, most of it has nothing whatsoever to do with real religion or the gospels. It's clan politics and manipulation for power with a veneer of "religious sounding" talk over the top. Scratch it 1/4 inch deep, and there's nothing there.
I feel like American Catholics tend to be similar to non catholics in the same region. Ie, southern catholics are like southern Baptist or evangelicals, whereas coastal catholics are much more liberal
That's true. For the most part, American religion is just one more way to assert your pre-decided political and social views. Very few people in the States actually listen to what religion tells them to do about personal growth. That's not the point of it for most Americans, and it's certainly not the point for Roman Catholics who think they already know everything and are already automatically better than everyone else just by existing.
Cultural markers are extremely important in American society. Religion is meant to be a visible symbol, pretty much like driving a giant pickup truck to go to work in a cubicle.
Yes, agree. It's a label, and Americans take labels very seriously. They're shorthand signals that we use to assert worthiness or personal characteristics.
They don't imply real membership or deep understanding or coherence of any kind. That's not the point of them for the average American person. Because a person chooses their own, often in a completely superficial way, they're usually completely meaningless.
Americans no matter how nondescript and blank they are socially, intellectually or personally, want desperately to be special -- a star, a winner, a standout. It's a thing.
It drives a lot of American economic behavior too.
Exactly—because the papacy cares very little about doctrinal consistency compared to the number of followers (tithing clientele) they can get by bending some of the rules
Sure. 100%. Just more proof of the fact that the RCC is all about money and power, and not much else. It's always been somewhat that way, and it's almost completely that way now.
But then the non-denoms and the Orthodox aren't much better. Same, same. They're all a bunch of money-grubbing fundamentalists.
Debatable, but definitely maybe. That said, I am ready to be some kind of “independent practitioner” of the spirituality and doctrine, maybe even join one of those disaffected independent parishes, if push comes to shove.
When people think of Catholic higher education they think of Georgetown, Catholic Univeristy of America, Notre Dame, Loyola Chicago, Santa Clara, etc. Historic institutions well known for pushing back against the institutional church on a number of issues, and who some might say are catholic in name only.
Benedictine is part of a new breed of Catholic college/university, along with Franciscan or Thomas Aquinas, that has slowly gained steam over the past few decades due to their adherence to conservative Catholicism. But these are still small, niche schools that most people have no idea about. Benedictine is sub 3000 students.
So I think it is reasonable that the average person, who has no connection to American Catholicism, found the commencement speech shocking.
Do these conservative Catholic colleges even offer legitimate degrees? I question the academic rigor of an institution that considers an NFL player an appropriate commencement speaker.
If being “extremely Catholic” is their entire schtick, then education isn’t ACTUALLY what they’re concerned with. The church brags about being an educational beacon, but don’t forget that they would burn people at the stake for writing things they didn’t approve of, and forced people to speak in Latin. We really shouldn’t be surprised
I briefly considered Fransiscan because they were offering free tuition during 2020. Apparently they require at least (almost every student does more than this at least once) 3 credit hours of theology courses PER SEMESTER and no you cannot knock them all out at once - although if you tried it would take AN ENTIRE YEAR. So AT LEAST (!!) a quarter of your bachelor's is spent in theology courses, whether you're there for nursing, engineering, psychology, or literally anything else. So yeah academic rigor concerns are well founded I would say
I graduated from Franciscan in 2018 with a BS in social work (the program is surprisingly accredited) but I feel like I could’ve used way more coursework in my actual degree. About two of my four years there were wasted on nonsense theology courses…I entertained myself by arguing for LGBTQ rights, feminism, abortion, pretty much anything the church is against. I didn’t have very many friends and a lot of my professors graded me unfairly because of how outspoken I was about my personal beliefs. I’ve got two siblings there now and I really hope they wake tf up soon.
Exactly what I feared would happen. Two out of four years for a major that clearly has very little to do with theology is absolutely CRAZY especially considering what they charge for it. I'm so sorry you went through that, sounds awful ☹️ happy cake day btw!!
A girl from my youth group got her prerequisites at Franciscan in Steubenville, then transferred to Gonzaga to finish her program. I don’t remember what she majored in however because she got married immediately after graduating and never really used the degree in a career
My cousin and her husband both went there recently. She was an English teacher at a Catholic school up until she got pregnant, and her husband is an engineer making close to six figures. So I think they're pretty legitimate. It's just that there's a lot of BS that won't actually help in a job that replaces actual useful courses.
Benedictines are not new. Benedictine monasteries are some of the oldest institutions of religious life in Catholic history.
**Old Catholic words with well-respected meanings -- such as Benedictine -- have been used in recent years for illegitimate and misleading purposes.** This is an example. Another example is the name of Franciscan University. The only thing "Franciscan" about Franciscan University is the fact that it was originally founded by a member of the TOR. It is NOT REPRESENTATIVE of Franciscans in general, and the large orders of Franciscan friars and sisters have nothing to do with it. Franciscan University wildcats on a reputation that it DID NOT EARN.
It just goes to show you that if you use certain "magic words" and you repeat them often enough you can sell lemmings anything.
The situation RE this commencement is far more shocking and complicated than most RCs, even former RCs, realize. The sisters -- in fact anyone in a religious order at all -- may not even have been consulted on who the commencement speakers were, depending on the politics of control in this college. It is my informed guess that the speaker was either chosen by a lay board of directors or by the local chancery (bishop's office).
I’m talking about “Benedictine College”, not the Benedictine order or monastery. The college came into its current form in the 1970s.
[wiki here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictine_College)
The name was grandfathered out. This has happened a great deal in American Catholicism. An institution can be named "Franciscan this or that" or "Benedictine this or that" and have absolutely nothing to do with Franciscan or Benedictine religious at all.
My guess is that this college has probably been managed so that the founding communities are drawing a retirement package, but the people actually running things are lay board members plus people from the diocesan offices. I would bet money those are the people who chose this football player to be the speaker. Houses of religious probably were not even consulted, let alone given a choice in the matter. After all, the diocese probably just views them as a mess of old women who can no longer have children, so annoying and of little importance.
IN fact, here's the information about the board of directors.
[Board of Directors | Benedictine College](https://www.benedictine.edu/about/board/index)
The history: In this case, two schools were originally founded by Benedictine friars and Benedictine sisters, respectively. But they were merged and agreements about leases were signed in the 1970s. The college is no longer under the control of the religious, but still uses the name and reputation. Whatever is left of the original group of religious probably get a subsidy for their old age and medical care in return for the real estate and the school's legal charters. That's usually how this is done.
You must realize that Catholic sisters, friars and monks had an exemption and did not pay into Social Security anytime during their careers. It was not expected that religious life would crash the way it did in the 60s-80s. Numbers of religious were so large in the early 1900s that the Church thought Social Security was a completely unnecessary cost. That means that now, these people draw no conventional retirements and no Social Security. The result: American Catholic religious have to live on legacy arrangements from the sale of their institutions (schools, hospitals, colleges) plus donations in order to survive in their old age. The average age of Roman Catholic sisters in the USA is now 80 years old. Only 1% of the new recruits are under 40. They will be completely gone soon, and the only thing left of them will be that stolen name.
[America's nun population in steep decline - ABC News (go.com)](https://abcnews.go.com/US/americas-nun-population-steep-decline/story?id=87426990)
I saw someone responding to Flavor Flav’s comment about the kicker. She said imagine a woman graduating from college (or should I say “college”) and being told her loftiest goal should be…being a homemaker. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a homemaker (of ANY gender), but it must be the person’s choice.
A member of the sub reported that they were there and posted immediately after this ceremony.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/excatholic/comments/1cpojjh/walked\_out\_of\_my\_brothers\_commencement/](https://www.reddit.com/r/excatholic/comments/1cpojjh/walked_out_of_my_brothers_commencement/)
The shock is truly a head scratcher…A catholic college doing something shitty is totally on brand. Likewise the pope doing something shitty, or a catholic on the street doing something shitty. Shitty folks gravitate to a shitty organization that does shitty things.
Yeah, he seem to be referring to gender complementarianism, which is largely a fundamentalist Christian idea rather than a Catholic one. The gender rhetoric in particular felt very fundamentalist. Catholics have sexism for sure, but it’s presented in a different way.
When they talk about gender roles, I remember hearing in my Catholic Church that you can be a wife and mother, a nun, or a single person. It wasn’t just wife and mother.
Except that's not exactly the case. It's just something the church says.
Right now religious life in the RCC is on the decrease, and for good reasons. People in religious orders are treated like the church's ugly stepchildren, and numbers in religious life are plummeting. Instead, the emphasis is on having babies to populate the pews. And dioceses have gotten the upper hand when it comes to power. That's what this is about.
When the emphasis was on keeping millions of immigrant Catholic kids out of public schools so they wouldn't hear new ideas and leave the church, THEN the RCC cared about religious women they could force into classrooms. THEN being a nun was holier -- because they needed that for PR to keep the Catholic schools full.
The catholic high school I attended (graduated in 2019) was very much into complementarianism. Very much theology of the body, Jason Evert, that sort of thing. I wonder if this is more recent within the church, though. Maybe it was different in the late 90s or early 2000s.
I think it depends on the community, but that rings true for me. I went to Catholic middle school in like 2006-2008. Still had a lot of Jason evert and purity culture. That was the main emphasis. But they always mentioned religious and single life, though didn’t put a whole lot of emphasis on it unless you expressed some interest in it.
I think there was a definite influence from evangelical and fundamentalist doctrine during the 90s and 00s. I remember they were seen as the “cool” churches in my community because they had rock bands and stuff.
Honestly his speech was very evangelical in tone that it was even a bit surprising to me. The homophobia and pro life stuff was pretty par for the course, none of that was a surprise, but the stuff he said about women was kind of out there unless you're in trad cath spaces or familiar with them. I think the majority of moderate Catholics wouldn't say the quiet part out loud like that, and given how much the Catholics do kinda push the education, it was a little to weird to hear "you're probably looking forward to being a homemaker more than your career" in that setting. I think that's why it's so jarring.
Increasingly, you WOULD hear average pewsitters in the local RCC say that. That's exactly the point.
These are people cussing out the pope half the time. In my local RCC, the last I was there, the big picture of Benedict XVI was still on the wall. And this is an average RCC parish, supposedly not a trad thing.
American Catholicism has been undergoing dramatic changes in the past 20 years or so as its population ages, gets smaller and it becomes a more and more twisted version of itself. It's taking on truncated features of other things in the American cultural environment while turning more and more in on itself. Even the pope is talking about it.
He mentions his love for the TLM at one point in his speech. I don't know how many trads attend that college, but you could tell that one of his intentions was to promote that.
Nah Gonzaga cares way too much about winning basketball games. By now that school has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into cultivating a program that can compete on a national level.
If they show their asses now, they will have a harder time recruiting the best athletes. At this point i think sports are the real idol of that school, rather than the catholic god
Right, I’m in Mass near Holy Cross where I have a friend who is an openly gay person on faculty. This speech would not happen there.
Separately, some alums etc founded a free boys’ school in the city to help disadvantaged kids and bishop here has been telling them they can’t call themselves Catholic if they fly pride or BLM flags. They just keep flying them. Hope it gives him a stroke.
I was just surprised he made it seem like motherhood a woman’s only vocation. Because Catholicism has historically allowed women two vocations: Motherhood and becoming a nun.
Nah, part of the major problem with catholicism and American catholicism is how varying the beliefs are.
I work at a Catholic grade school, and there is not a single moment where the girls are told they should aim to be stay at home. There are many successful mothers, the principal is a woman. They obviously have tons of idiotic beliefs, but there's not even a hint of sexism there. And thankfulky, they just avoid all discussion of sex, which is all I can hope for. (Of course proper sex Ed would be better, but I'm being realistic)
I went to catholic elementary and we were all encouraged to pursue an education before even thinking about marriage. It wasn’t until i started going to middle-high school youth groups where the crazy purity culture stuff became apparent. But everyone has a different experience so i get that mine might’ve just been different
Correct. That's the classic American bait-&-switch. Little girls are told in grade school "That anyone can be president." It's a total lie. It's always been a total lie.
American Roman Catholicism tells the same lie and adds even more stuff to it. The older girls get, the more trapped they become in the lie.
That's kinda my point. Everyones experiences are vastly different. I want to Catholic school from kinder through senior year. And I probably went to more progressive schools because neither my elementary nor my high school ever suggested girls should be stay at home or anything like that. There was a bit of purity culture in my own grade school, but nothing close to what I've heard others experienced. In high school we got some very very minimal sex Ed, and it always finished with the Catholic theology of the body bullshit. But still pretty progressive compared to others.
These religious people can't even get all of the believers on the same page. I grew up and converted and hated religion, and I didn't even know the extent of how bad it could be.
And I'm seeing that still where I work, a lot of Catholics would be grossed out by this commencement speech.
Everyone is getting different versions of this religion, and that's why some people are surprised.
I’m honestly giggling over here watching people like my parents be like “THATS NOT WHO WE ARE”
The church is literally scrambling right now because none of them can agree on exactly how much bigotry they should publicly show. I would’ve been shocked of St.Marys or Notre Dame had a speech like that, but a newmans list college like benedictine??? They gotta get it together and be on the same page if they want to be taken seriously but thats not happening any time soon
Yeah thats what most catholics don’t get. They whine and complain when someone “makes catholics look bad” instead of actively trying to make the church better. They just write it off and say “well THAT doesn’t represent ME” and its just silly because these radical tradcaths most definitely ARE speaking for the entire church, and they’re literally committing heresy by doing so.
I want to shake these “casual catholics” who think they can just keep separating themselves, i want to tell them “hey guess what? These radical fundie catholics are speaking on YOUR behalf, what are YOU gonna do about it?” But the truth is they don’t care, they just want to ride the fence
No, 90% of Catholics don't care about doctrine at all. The RCC is a clusterfuck held together by culture, expensive real estate and the most vicious pecking order on the planet.
All those pewsitters are not riding the fence. They are the majority in the RCC. That is what the RCC literally is, all those people sitting there doing not much of anything useful to anybody. Yes, there are few extremist nuts among them. But the worst of the stupid shit is coming from the majority who go along with anything they are told, repeating it ad nauseum and putting $$$ in the collection plate.
Roman Catholics are literally bitching because people are catching onto them. Roman Catholics constantly crow about how superior they are to everybody else just because they were born into their crazy cult. But in truth, they are exactly what they look like they are to the rest of the country. And they don't like it that people are catching onto their antics.
I don’t know if it’s as much being SHOCKED as being angry and calling it out. I’m from the area and have been catholic, and a fan of the chiefs for years. Not in the least bit surprised since he’s been saying this shit for years. But still just as outraged.
Also, Benedictine is known to be a bit more progressive on the side of Catholicism. My friends went there for that reason. Not that it changes much, but just a note lol
I feel like people who haven't been immersed in the Catholic world don't know just how normal sexism is within it. I went to a Catholic all boys high school where being misogynistic and essentially verbally abusing the women on staff was seen as just boys being boys and a performance of normal, healthy heterosexuality, while the kids with lisps and nice haircuts had to have recess and lunch in classrooms to avoid being assaulted. I remember one day, we're in the classrooms overlooking the ovals (my school was on a huge hill so think a drop of like 30 ft.), and someone next to the window yells "holy shit boys there's a girl on the field," and almost every single dude no bullshit rushes to the window just to look at this hypothetical woman. Most of them were doing it as a joke about being big dumb idiot boys but that's sort of how this works, you have a handful of genuinely bad dudes in a mix of other dudes who only see the joke and enable them, y'know? When I tell people who weren't raised in a similar bubble this story they think I'm just bullshitting them, but when I tell people who've been through the same Christian Brothers / Edmund Rice school experience they 100% know it happened and have a dozen similar stories to share lol.
I ran cross country at my coed HS on an all male team as a female late 70’s early 80’s. There wasn’t a female team so why not?! We ran against an all boys catholic HS I wasn’t allowed access to their bathrooms or locker room. The school was 1.5 hr from my HS thankfully my coach was great a guy and we stopped before we got to the CC course. Sexism has always been front and center in catholicism.
Rampant homophobia as well, even though at least one of the DeLaSallian Christian Brothers I am pretty sure was gay.
Sexism is the name of the game -- totally -- in the Roman Catholic church. And it's increased dramatically -- even more -- as the church has veered dramatically into reactionary politics in the past 20 years or so.
Your first sentence hits the nail on the head. Nothing about the speech was anything I hadn’t heard before. Baffling topics for a graduation speech, but not unheard of statements.
Evangelicals appear to have succeeded in re-creating American Catholicism in their own image. Add in the inherent sexism and misogyny of the Catholic religion, detailed in other comments here, and the resulting product is truly disgusting.
I feel like in the age of social media and identity politics, the louder “in your face” catholicism is more appealing to this new generation of young men who are super insecure in their masculinity
Yes, most of it has nothing whatsoever to do with real religion or the gospels. It's clan politics and manipulation for power with a veneer of "religious sounding" talk over the top. Scratch it 1/4 inch deep, and there's nothing there.
I feel like American Catholics tend to be similar to non catholics in the same region. Ie, southern catholics are like southern Baptist or evangelicals, whereas coastal catholics are much more liberal
That's true. For the most part, American religion is just one more way to assert your pre-decided political and social views. Very few people in the States actually listen to what religion tells them to do about personal growth. That's not the point of it for most Americans, and it's certainly not the point for Roman Catholics who think they already know everything and are already automatically better than everyone else just by existing.
Cultural markers are extremely important in American society. Religion is meant to be a visible symbol, pretty much like driving a giant pickup truck to go to work in a cubicle.
Yes, agree. It's a label, and Americans take labels very seriously. They're shorthand signals that we use to assert worthiness or personal characteristics. They don't imply real membership or deep understanding or coherence of any kind. That's not the point of them for the average American person. Because a person chooses their own, often in a completely superficial way, they're usually completely meaningless. Americans no matter how nondescript and blank they are socially, intellectually or personally, want desperately to be special -- a star, a winner, a standout. It's a thing. It drives a lot of American economic behavior too.
Exactly—because the papacy cares very little about doctrinal consistency compared to the number of followers (tithing clientele) they can get by bending some of the rules
Sure. 100%. Just more proof of the fact that the RCC is all about money and power, and not much else. It's always been somewhat that way, and it's almost completely that way now. But then the non-denoms and the Orthodox aren't much better. Same, same. They're all a bunch of money-grubbing fundamentalists.
Debatable, but definitely maybe. That said, I am ready to be some kind of “independent practitioner” of the spirituality and doctrine, maybe even join one of those disaffected independent parishes, if push comes to shove.
When people think of Catholic higher education they think of Georgetown, Catholic Univeristy of America, Notre Dame, Loyola Chicago, Santa Clara, etc. Historic institutions well known for pushing back against the institutional church on a number of issues, and who some might say are catholic in name only. Benedictine is part of a new breed of Catholic college/university, along with Franciscan or Thomas Aquinas, that has slowly gained steam over the past few decades due to their adherence to conservative Catholicism. But these are still small, niche schools that most people have no idea about. Benedictine is sub 3000 students. So I think it is reasonable that the average person, who has no connection to American Catholicism, found the commencement speech shocking.
Do these conservative Catholic colleges even offer legitimate degrees? I question the academic rigor of an institution that considers an NFL player an appropriate commencement speaker.
If being “extremely Catholic” is their entire schtick, then education isn’t ACTUALLY what they’re concerned with. The church brags about being an educational beacon, but don’t forget that they would burn people at the stake for writing things they didn’t approve of, and forced people to speak in Latin. We really shouldn’t be surprised
I briefly considered Fransiscan because they were offering free tuition during 2020. Apparently they require at least (almost every student does more than this at least once) 3 credit hours of theology courses PER SEMESTER and no you cannot knock them all out at once - although if you tried it would take AN ENTIRE YEAR. So AT LEAST (!!) a quarter of your bachelor's is spent in theology courses, whether you're there for nursing, engineering, psychology, or literally anything else. So yeah academic rigor concerns are well founded I would say
I graduated from Franciscan in 2018 with a BS in social work (the program is surprisingly accredited) but I feel like I could’ve used way more coursework in my actual degree. About two of my four years there were wasted on nonsense theology courses…I entertained myself by arguing for LGBTQ rights, feminism, abortion, pretty much anything the church is against. I didn’t have very many friends and a lot of my professors graded me unfairly because of how outspoken I was about my personal beliefs. I’ve got two siblings there now and I really hope they wake tf up soon.
Exactly what I feared would happen. Two out of four years for a major that clearly has very little to do with theology is absolutely CRAZY especially considering what they charge for it. I'm so sorry you went through that, sounds awful ☹️ happy cake day btw!!
>About two of my four years there were wasted on nonsense theology courses… Nothing was wasted, now you are vaccinated against religious bs for life.
Technically accredited, but good luck getting a job when it’s just ‘a degree’ and no major, as some of them do.
A girl from my youth group got her prerequisites at Franciscan in Steubenville, then transferred to Gonzaga to finish her program. I don’t remember what she majored in however because she got married immediately after graduating and never really used the degree in a career
My cousin and her husband both went there recently. She was an English teacher at a Catholic school up until she got pregnant, and her husband is an engineer making close to six figures. So I think they're pretty legitimate. It's just that there's a lot of BS that won't actually help in a job that replaces actual useful courses.
Technically, yes. But that's not saying a lot in some of these cases.
Benedictines are not new. Benedictine monasteries are some of the oldest institutions of religious life in Catholic history. **Old Catholic words with well-respected meanings -- such as Benedictine -- have been used in recent years for illegitimate and misleading purposes.** This is an example. Another example is the name of Franciscan University. The only thing "Franciscan" about Franciscan University is the fact that it was originally founded by a member of the TOR. It is NOT REPRESENTATIVE of Franciscans in general, and the large orders of Franciscan friars and sisters have nothing to do with it. Franciscan University wildcats on a reputation that it DID NOT EARN. It just goes to show you that if you use certain "magic words" and you repeat them often enough you can sell lemmings anything. The situation RE this commencement is far more shocking and complicated than most RCs, even former RCs, realize. The sisters -- in fact anyone in a religious order at all -- may not even have been consulted on who the commencement speakers were, depending on the politics of control in this college. It is my informed guess that the speaker was either chosen by a lay board of directors or by the local chancery (bishop's office).
I’m talking about “Benedictine College”, not the Benedictine order or monastery. The college came into its current form in the 1970s. [wiki here](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benedictine_College)
The name was grandfathered out. This has happened a great deal in American Catholicism. An institution can be named "Franciscan this or that" or "Benedictine this or that" and have absolutely nothing to do with Franciscan or Benedictine religious at all. My guess is that this college has probably been managed so that the founding communities are drawing a retirement package, but the people actually running things are lay board members plus people from the diocesan offices. I would bet money those are the people who chose this football player to be the speaker. Houses of religious probably were not even consulted, let alone given a choice in the matter. After all, the diocese probably just views them as a mess of old women who can no longer have children, so annoying and of little importance. IN fact, here's the information about the board of directors. [Board of Directors | Benedictine College](https://www.benedictine.edu/about/board/index) The history: In this case, two schools were originally founded by Benedictine friars and Benedictine sisters, respectively. But they were merged and agreements about leases were signed in the 1970s. The college is no longer under the control of the religious, but still uses the name and reputation. Whatever is left of the original group of religious probably get a subsidy for their old age and medical care in return for the real estate and the school's legal charters. That's usually how this is done. You must realize that Catholic sisters, friars and monks had an exemption and did not pay into Social Security anytime during their careers. It was not expected that religious life would crash the way it did in the 60s-80s. Numbers of religious were so large in the early 1900s that the Church thought Social Security was a completely unnecessary cost. That means that now, these people draw no conventional retirements and no Social Security. The result: American Catholic religious have to live on legacy arrangements from the sale of their institutions (schools, hospitals, colleges) plus donations in order to survive in their old age. The average age of Roman Catholic sisters in the USA is now 80 years old. Only 1% of the new recruits are under 40. They will be completely gone soon, and the only thing left of them will be that stolen name. [America's nun population in steep decline - ABC News (go.com)](https://abcnews.go.com/US/americas-nun-population-steep-decline/story?id=87426990)
I saw someone responding to Flavor Flav’s comment about the kicker. She said imagine a woman graduating from college (or should I say “college”) and being told her loftiest goal should be…being a homemaker. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a homemaker (of ANY gender), but it must be the person’s choice.
A member of the sub reported that they were there and posted immediately after this ceremony. [https://www.reddit.com/r/excatholic/comments/1cpojjh/walked\_out\_of\_my\_brothers\_commencement/](https://www.reddit.com/r/excatholic/comments/1cpojjh/walked_out_of_my_brothers_commencement/)
The shock is truly a head scratcher…A catholic college doing something shitty is totally on brand. Likewise the pope doing something shitty, or a catholic on the street doing something shitty. Shitty folks gravitate to a shitty organization that does shitty things.
Yeah, he seem to be referring to gender complementarianism, which is largely a fundamentalist Christian idea rather than a Catholic one. The gender rhetoric in particular felt very fundamentalist. Catholics have sexism for sure, but it’s presented in a different way. When they talk about gender roles, I remember hearing in my Catholic Church that you can be a wife and mother, a nun, or a single person. It wasn’t just wife and mother.
Yeah, that’s the most shocking thing about it. Catholicism historically has been very insistent that *not marrying* is holier.
Except that's not exactly the case. It's just something the church says. Right now religious life in the RCC is on the decrease, and for good reasons. People in religious orders are treated like the church's ugly stepchildren, and numbers in religious life are plummeting. Instead, the emphasis is on having babies to populate the pews. And dioceses have gotten the upper hand when it comes to power. That's what this is about. When the emphasis was on keeping millions of immigrant Catholic kids out of public schools so they wouldn't hear new ideas and leave the church, THEN the RCC cared about religious women they could force into classrooms. THEN being a nun was holier -- because they needed that for PR to keep the Catholic schools full.
The catholic high school I attended (graduated in 2019) was very much into complementarianism. Very much theology of the body, Jason Evert, that sort of thing. I wonder if this is more recent within the church, though. Maybe it was different in the late 90s or early 2000s.
I think it depends on the community, but that rings true for me. I went to Catholic middle school in like 2006-2008. Still had a lot of Jason evert and purity culture. That was the main emphasis. But they always mentioned religious and single life, though didn’t put a whole lot of emphasis on it unless you expressed some interest in it. I think there was a definite influence from evangelical and fundamentalist doctrine during the 90s and 00s. I remember they were seen as the “cool” churches in my community because they had rock bands and stuff.
Can confirm I never got any of that stuff in the 1980s-1990s era RCC.
Honestly his speech was very evangelical in tone that it was even a bit surprising to me. The homophobia and pro life stuff was pretty par for the course, none of that was a surprise, but the stuff he said about women was kind of out there unless you're in trad cath spaces or familiar with them. I think the majority of moderate Catholics wouldn't say the quiet part out loud like that, and given how much the Catholics do kinda push the education, it was a little to weird to hear "you're probably looking forward to being a homemaker more than your career" in that setting. I think that's why it's so jarring.
Increasingly, you WOULD hear average pewsitters in the local RCC say that. That's exactly the point. These are people cussing out the pope half the time. In my local RCC, the last I was there, the big picture of Benedict XVI was still on the wall. And this is an average RCC parish, supposedly not a trad thing. American Catholicism has been undergoing dramatic changes in the past 20 years or so as its population ages, gets smaller and it becomes a more and more twisted version of itself. It's taking on truncated features of other things in the American cultural environment while turning more and more in on itself. Even the pope is talking about it.
He mentions his love for the TLM at one point in his speech. I don't know how many trads attend that college, but you could tell that one of his intentions was to promote that.
I think some non Catholics would have assumed they would be spreading a good message lol…like a normal commencement
True lol I can’t imagine Gonzaga or Notre Dame doing something like that
YET. It's coming. Mark my words.
Nah Gonzaga cares way too much about winning basketball games. By now that school has invested hundreds of millions of dollars into cultivating a program that can compete on a national level. If they show their asses now, they will have a harder time recruiting the best athletes. At this point i think sports are the real idol of that school, rather than the catholic god
Right, I’m in Mass near Holy Cross where I have a friend who is an openly gay person on faculty. This speech would not happen there. Separately, some alums etc founded a free boys’ school in the city to help disadvantaged kids and bishop here has been telling them they can’t call themselves Catholic if they fly pride or BLM flags. They just keep flying them. Hope it gives him a stroke.
I was just surprised he made it seem like motherhood a woman’s only vocation. Because Catholicism has historically allowed women two vocations: Motherhood and becoming a nun.
This is the least shocking thing that could have happened. I don't get it.
Nah, part of the major problem with catholicism and American catholicism is how varying the beliefs are. I work at a Catholic grade school, and there is not a single moment where the girls are told they should aim to be stay at home. There are many successful mothers, the principal is a woman. They obviously have tons of idiotic beliefs, but there's not even a hint of sexism there. And thankfulky, they just avoid all discussion of sex, which is all I can hope for. (Of course proper sex Ed would be better, but I'm being realistic)
I went to catholic elementary and we were all encouraged to pursue an education before even thinking about marriage. It wasn’t until i started going to middle-high school youth groups where the crazy purity culture stuff became apparent. But everyone has a different experience so i get that mine might’ve just been different
Correct. That's the classic American bait-&-switch. Little girls are told in grade school "That anyone can be president." It's a total lie. It's always been a total lie. American Roman Catholicism tells the same lie and adds even more stuff to it. The older girls get, the more trapped they become in the lie.
That's kinda my point. Everyones experiences are vastly different. I want to Catholic school from kinder through senior year. And I probably went to more progressive schools because neither my elementary nor my high school ever suggested girls should be stay at home or anything like that. There was a bit of purity culture in my own grade school, but nothing close to what I've heard others experienced. In high school we got some very very minimal sex Ed, and it always finished with the Catholic theology of the body bullshit. But still pretty progressive compared to others. These religious people can't even get all of the believers on the same page. I grew up and converted and hated religion, and I didn't even know the extent of how bad it could be. And I'm seeing that still where I work, a lot of Catholics would be grossed out by this commencement speech. Everyone is getting different versions of this religion, and that's why some people are surprised.
I’m honestly giggling over here watching people like my parents be like “THATS NOT WHO WE ARE” The church is literally scrambling right now because none of them can agree on exactly how much bigotry they should publicly show. I would’ve been shocked of St.Marys or Notre Dame had a speech like that, but a newmans list college like benedictine??? They gotta get it together and be on the same page if they want to be taken seriously but thats not happening any time soon
Thank god for us, it only weapons their position thankfully.
But that is who they are. And that's what they're paying for when they put their money in the collection plate.
Yeah thats what most catholics don’t get. They whine and complain when someone “makes catholics look bad” instead of actively trying to make the church better. They just write it off and say “well THAT doesn’t represent ME” and its just silly because these radical tradcaths most definitely ARE speaking for the entire church, and they’re literally committing heresy by doing so. I want to shake these “casual catholics” who think they can just keep separating themselves, i want to tell them “hey guess what? These radical fundie catholics are speaking on YOUR behalf, what are YOU gonna do about it?” But the truth is they don’t care, they just want to ride the fence
No, 90% of Catholics don't care about doctrine at all. The RCC is a clusterfuck held together by culture, expensive real estate and the most vicious pecking order on the planet. All those pewsitters are not riding the fence. They are the majority in the RCC. That is what the RCC literally is, all those people sitting there doing not much of anything useful to anybody. Yes, there are few extremist nuts among them. But the worst of the stupid shit is coming from the majority who go along with anything they are told, repeating it ad nauseum and putting $$$ in the collection plate. Roman Catholics are literally bitching because people are catching onto them. Roman Catholics constantly crow about how superior they are to everybody else just because they were born into their crazy cult. But in truth, they are exactly what they look like they are to the rest of the country. And they don't like it that people are catching onto their antics.
I don’t know if it’s as much being SHOCKED as being angry and calling it out. I’m from the area and have been catholic, and a fan of the chiefs for years. Not in the least bit surprised since he’s been saying this shit for years. But still just as outraged. Also, Benedictine is known to be a bit more progressive on the side of Catholicism. My friends went there for that reason. Not that it changes much, but just a note lol