Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
What’s So ‘Awesome’ About Those Shareholder Activist Nuns?
What’s So ‘Awesome’ About Those Shareholder Activist Nuns?
Dec 3, 2025 12:50 AM

For some, the one quality most important for those pursuing a religious vocation is awesomeness. It matters not whether clergy, nuns and other religious adhere to the actual doctrines of their faith, whether they advocate for the poor and powerless and spread the Word of God. Specifically, Jo Piazza, author of the absurdly titled If Nuns Ruled the World, authored an advertisement disguised as a Time opinion piece for her recently released book. The Vatican, according to Piazza, doesn’t fairly recognize the awesomeness of nuns who stray from Roman Catholic doctrine in pursuit of progressive policy goals. And, according to Piazza, that’s bad. Very, very bad indeed. Because, you know, the activist sisters are really pretty darn awesome.

Rather, it’s far better to chase celebrity while sprinkled with the progressive fairy dust of awesome as are so many of the shareholder activist nuns who, in Piazza’s words, “make corporations responsible to the human race.” These selfless and progressive nuns, Piazza gushes, “don’t brag about all of the good that they do or hashtag how awesome they are on Facebook, many people have no idea about the things they plish on a daily basis.”

Here you go, Jo: #awesomeprogressivenun.

Make no mistake, there are many nuns doing the Lord’s work – and recognize it’s the Lord and not themselves and their works that are awesome. As a matter of fact, Piazza lists several of them in her Time article and in her book. This before she jumps the shark by asserting:

Most people don’t know about Sister Nora Nash, a Franciscan Sister who lives just outside of Philadelphia. As her order’s Director of Corporate Social Responsibility, Sister Nora wakes up every single morning determined to make corporations more responsible to the human race. Sister Nora and her assistant director, Tom McCaney have taken to task the grocery store chain Kroger over the rights of farm workers, Hershey’s pany over child labor, McDonald’s over childhood obesity, Walmart on raising their minimum wage and Wells Fargo over predatory lending practices. Nash wakes up every single morning determined to make corporations more responsible to the human race. Then she follows through on it.

For more than four decades Sister Jeannine Gramick has been tireless in her fight for gay rights through her organization New Ways, ing under intense scrutiny from the Vatican.

Get it now? Thwarting Vatican doctrine is awesome! Challenging mission drift of the Leadership Council of Women Religious has even earned a cute descriptor: “The Nunquisition,” e to think of it, also is a clever marketing slogan when one has a new book to sell.

It’s a problem that you haven’t heard about these women. You would think that, during a time when the Church has suffered from great criticism and weathered very public scandals, it would be celebrating these incredible achievements. Think again.

The Vatican doesn’t celebrate these women. In fact, it has done the very opposite. Attacks on American nuns have been happening since 2008, when the Vatican’s Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life initiated an “Apostolic Visitation,” a euphemism for investigation, of the nuns.

To put it in perspective, previous “visitations” conducted by the Church were designed to investigate things like the priest sex abuse scandal.

The nuns nicknamed it the Great Nunquisition and in the past eight years e under scrutiny from the church patriarchy.

Everyone knows that the patriarchy is holding nuns back, right? Unless of course your patriarch and sugar daddy is the octogenarian progressive billionaire George Soros (see: Surprise! “Nuns on the Bus” was a Soros-funded publicity stunt). More Piazza:

A 2012 Vatican document highlighted the Church’s problem with the Leadership Council of Women Religious, the largest group of nuns in the United States. The document claimed that the LCWR was “silent on the right to life from conception to natural death” and that Roman Catholic views on the family and human sexuality “are not part of the LCWR agenda in a way that promotes church teachings.”

Today’s nuns are simply too progressive for the Vatican. The Vatican chooses not to celebrate nuns and it chooses not to empower them

So the Vatican “attacks” nuns? That’s a loaded phrase, as is the forced equivalency of Church scandals with nuns working at cross purposes with core doctrine. Piazza continues:

Speaking at the annual LCWR assembly earlier this month, Franciscan Sister Ilia Delio described exactly what it means to be a nun today: “We are about drawing in the poor, the lonely, the marginalized, all those seeking to be part of a whole,” she said. “This is nothing more and nothing less than the most awesome vocation.”

It is awesome. The nuns are awesome. But if the Vatican doesn’t start treating them as such, there is no incentive for more young women to aspire to join their ranks.

And those nuns who perform myriad good deeds every minute of every day are certainly fulfilling the calling of an awesome vocation in the service of an awesome God. But es Piazza who lumps those nuns truly assisting the neediest with those such as Nora Nash who simply advocate for progressive political causes masked as religious in nature.

One more for you, Jo: #progressivefairydust.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
COVID-19 has exposed politicians who think themselves above the law
Whether Boris Johnson in the U.K. or Pelosi, Newsome, Whitmer, and Lightfoot in the U.S., political elites tend to think the rules are only for the little people. What we need is a return to the true citizen legislator. Read More… Each morning’s headlines in the British press bring new details of parties happening inside Boris Johnson’s government while the rest of the United Kingdom and much of the world was locked down in isolation because of the COVID-19 pandemic...
Lenin’s ugly legacy of identity politics
The arch Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin died this day in 1924. Myths abound about his beliefs. They’re not what you think. They’re worse. Read More… “I broke sharply with all questions of religion,” said Vladimir Lenin, with typical vituperation. “I took off my cross and threw it in the rubbish bin.” Such was a metaphor for the dark turn made by Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, who came to be known by an alias, “Lenin.” He was born April 22, 1870, in...
The Djokovic affair proves our elites no longer believe in fair play
Although the deported world-class tennis pro has few defenders, his cause is one we all should care about, because excellence is something we should all care about. Read More… Fair play and the rule of law are essential conditions of our civilization, regulating private and public life. We would be ashamed to look for success, prosperity, victory without them. People whom we suspect of unfair dealings or illegality stand to lose everything concerning their reputation, to say nothing of what...
Bob Dole left a legacy of civility and cooperation that is sorely needed today
The severe ideological divide that makes even debate impossible can only be bridged by a return to civility in dispute. Strong opinions civilly expressed is the best first step. Read More… One of the sadder deaths in 2021 was that of former Kansas senator Bob Dole. Wounded war-hero and long-serving politician, Dole was widely respected from people across the political spectrum not only for his skills but also for his willingness to try and work across divides to mon objectives....
The twilight of Christianity, the loss of authority, and our fragmented selves
The pervasive crisis of meaning contemporary Americans experience is directly related to a loss of moral agency and legitimate authority. That crisis manifests itself in ideological fervor, grasps at power and wealth, and immersion in mob activities that occasion in violence. Is there any hope for moral cohesion short of a Third Great Awakening? Read More… Political theorists have engaged in much debate concerning the “quarrel between the ancients and the moderns,” such quarrel evidence of the opposing claims of...
The weight of sin: C.S. Lewis’ The Great Divorce has been adapted for the stage
If you thought good and evil were superstitious binaries that will one day be married, a new theatrical adaptation of Lewis’ parable will have you pining for a divorce. Read More… Humans are incredibly skilled at rationalizing sin. We prefer to gloss over sin rather than face it. And for good reason! To grapple with the true weight of our sin is a heavy burden indeed. And even when we do recognize sin, we are more likely to note the...
Don’t Look Up looks down on you
The most popular film on Netflix right now is either a successor to Dr. Strangelove or a self-righteous and overly obvious attempt to shame the average American. But it does have a lot more of Leonardo DiCaprio than you’ve seen before. Read More… The techno-gossip that passes for objective knowledge these days assures us that the Netflix movie Don’t Look Up was watched extensively—more than 321.5 million hours streamed. Does that mean about 150 million people around the world watched...
Elections in Hong Kong ratify Beijing’s control
The Hong Kong of old is quickly descending into a Beijing-controlled client state, with recent elections ensuring CCP-loyal functionaries enjoy top legislative positions. Read More… The People’s Republic of China (PRC) pletingthe destruction ofthe old Hong Kong. The last vestiges of free expression and democratic choice are disappearing. On January 4, the media site Citizen News closed due to the deteriorating legal environment. Theorganization explained: “We all love this place, deeply. Regrettably, what was ahead of us is not just...
Is Christianity doing more harm than good to American men?
Men are in a bad way in America, with rising rates of depression, suicide, and disengagement from the workforce. And the church is not helping. In fact, it may be making things worse. But there is hope. Read More… Men and boys in America are struggling, and if we don’t do something about it soon, we’ll see the disintegration of the very institutions that allow for sustainable human flourishing—institutions like the family and the marketplace. While it was once believed...
Here’s how to offer reparations in a free society
The topic of reparations is often a nonstarter for many conservatives, but it shouldn’t be. There are classical liberal alternatives to simple government payouts that can begin to repay black Americans still suffering from the repercussions of Jim Crow racism. Read More… Today we mostly associate the idea of reparations for America’s black population with left-wing politics, and that’s no surprise. Only Democratic candidates for president, such as Marianne Williamson, mention reparations as part of their political platform. However, the...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved