{"id":4417,"date":"2006-08-28T10:45:31","date_gmt":"2006-08-28T10:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=4417"},"modified":"2025-09-25T15:49:52","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T15:49:52","slug":"ny_times_on_clo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/?p=4417","title":{"rendered":"NY Times on cloistered nuns praying for Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The NYT had a somewhat odd article this morning. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2006\/08\/28\/us\/28album.html?_r=1&amp;th&amp;emc=th&amp;oref=slogin\">For 56 Years, Battling Evils of Hollywood With Prayer &#8211; New York Times<\/a><\/p>\n<p>As is often the case with these sort of articles in the Times, the writer feels required to offer his opinion on Catholic theology and practice:<\/p>\n<blockquote dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>The sisterhood is a dying way of life in America. Forty years ago, the United States had about 180,000 nuns. Today there are perhaps 70,000. Fewer than 6,000 are younger than 50. There are estimated to be about 5,000 cloistered, contemplative nuns, a piece of women\u2019s history that may be on the way out.<\/p>\n<p>Reasons for the collapse can be traced to the mid-1960\u2019s: the flowering of the women\u2019s movement, which broadened opportunities beyond secretary, housewife, nurse, teacher and nun. But the <a title=\"More articles about the Roman Catholic Church.\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/r\/roman_catholic_church\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\"><span style=\"color: #004276;\">Roman Catholic Church<\/span><\/a> unintentionally inflicted damage on itself when it ratified the Second Vatican Council. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cBasically it said that religious women were no more holy than lay women,\u201d said Sister Patricia Wittberg, an associate professor of sociology at <a title=\"More articles about Indiana University\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/i\/indiana_university\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\"><span style=\"color: #004276;\">Indiana University<\/span><\/a>&#8211;<a title=\"More articles about Purdue University\" href=\"http:\/\/topics.nytimes.com\/top\/reference\/timestopics\/organizations\/p\/purdue_university\/index.html?inline=nyt-org\"><span style=\"color: #004276;\">Purdue University<\/span><\/a>, Indianapolis. \u201cIt was devastating.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Still, the sisters of the Angels, frail and birdlike, go on with a vocation to which they sacrificed their youth: perhaps never to have known a man, never to have rowed the banks of the Seine, never to have taken a moonlight drive. High heels and self-adornment were given up after high school graduation. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The NYT had a somewhat odd article this morning. For 56 Years, Battling Evils of Hollywood With Prayer &#8211; New York Times As is often the case with these sort of articles in the Times, the writer feels required to offer his opinion on Catholic theology and practice: The sisterhood is a dying way of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9604,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4417\/revisions\/9604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tomfarandasfolly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}