Not sure why this ad for ice cream is “offensive,” except maybe it’s hitting a little too close to home?
Just when a great part of the world is trying to liberate women from disempowering, dehumanizing customs like the burqa, the Vatican is trying to force nuns back into habits and cloisters.
Like portions of the Muslim world, the Vatican knows how disempowering it is to strip away individuality and self-expression, and they want women back to being seen as a herd; hence the “Apostolic Visitation” going on in women’s religious orders across the U.S.
Let me remind you that the last Vatican Visitation was to the seminaries in the wake of the sex abuse scandal. What came from that was a new initiative to roust out homosexuals from the seminaries, regardless of their activity. Straight priests might be screwing everything in sight, but celibate gays were to be removed. In other words, gay men in the seminaries became a nice scapegoat for the sexual abuse of minors in the Church. Nevermind that the stats show differently or that the real issue — the one the U.S. courts found the Church liable for — has always been that bishops covered up their inaction. My diocese didn’t go bankrupt because priests abused kids but because the bishop lied about it.
“They think of us as an ecclesiastical work force,” said Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California. “Whereas we are religious, we’re living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet.” (US Nuns Facing Vatican Scrutiny)
Mother Clare, who heads this Visitation, says, “There’s no intention to make us all identical” which is a telling statement because we all know that’s EXACTLY what the intention is.
Detractors from this ice cream ad will tell you it’s bad because it “sexualizes” religious, but the Church always blames sex. The thing to realize is that sex isn’t a cause of anything but the symptom, and the deeper thinkers in the Church know it.
Sex is one result of experiencing independence, because with independence, you begin to feel you have a right to self-expression and pleasure. In turn, the experience of pleasure (in whatever form you find it) leads to greater joy and trust in yourself as God’s creation. You may begin to doubt the proclamations of an authority whose agenda includes the very unspiritual pursuits of power and control.
No wonder ads like this shake up the powers-that-be. Independent women always have. Hence burqas and habits.
A newspaper advertising campaign for ice-cream featuring a young nun and priest about to share a kiss has been banned after complaints that it was offensive to those working in a religious order. Guardian
Filed under: advertising, feminism, lgbt, religion, sex | Tagged: apostolic visitation, burka, catholic, habit, nuns, vatican
