Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
What’s So ‘Awesome’ About Those Shareholder Activist Nuns?
What’s So ‘Awesome’ About Those Shareholder Activist Nuns?
Jan 11, 2026 8:43 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
Jimmy Lai Appeals National Security Committee Decision—Again
Lai’s legal team is arguing that mittee’s decision, which directly affects his personal freedoms and the rights of Hong Kong citizens, should be subject to judicial review. Read More… Jimmy Lai, the imprisoned Hong Kong media mogul and pro-democracy activist, has lodged an appeal after his previous attempt to challenge a decision made by the National Security Committee was rejected, according to the Hong Kong Free Press. The high-profile entrepreneur and former Apple Daily publisher is seeking to overturn mittee’s...
A Culinary Introduction to the Devout Life
Want to be more disciplined in your spiritual life? Chow down with the saints. Taste and see that it is good. Read More… es a time when you yearn to live out your faith more deeply. This can mean different things for different believers, but it usually entails taking up a variety of personal disciplines, returning to tradition, mitting oneself to prayer and introspection. For harried souls making our way in a hectic, secularized world, an idealized spiritual life is...
There Are No Alternatives to Free Market Capitalism
Exploring Catholic social teaching in relation to economics is fine, but if we’re too open-minded about seeking a new mon good” capitalism, our brains might fall out. Read More… Alexander William Salter’s new book, The Political Economy of Distributism: Property, Liberty, and the Common Good, is an odd fish. It begs questions, contains numerous chapters that consist mostly of lengthy quotations, and at times seems to contradict itself, yet in the end it affirms an essential truth that we may...
Freedom of Religion Is Inherently Good
In many parts of the world, and even among some thinkers in the United States, freedom of conscience is seen as a threat to order and decency. But free choice, especially in religion, aligns perfectly with our free wills and is necessary for true human flourishing. Read More… Growing up in Yemen, a conservative branch of Islam was ‎very popular in my household, school, and mosque. Freedom of ‎religion was a myth frowned upon. It was thought that Islam ‎is...
Was the British Empire Evil?
It’s a given among most academics today that Britain’s empire and economic success was the result of the depredation of native cultures and gross exploitation. But what if it’s not true? Read More… There is edy sketch from British television, now made immortal by the internet, in which a Nazi soldier, waiting for Russian troops to advance on his army’s position, uneasily examines the skull insignias on his uniform and wonders if they might, in fact, be the baddies. Today...
Spreading the Flame: The Pioneering Ministry of William Grimshaw
The 18th-century evangelical revival is believed to have saved England from a revolution akin to France’s. Among the lesser-known names who brought gospel hope to classes alienated from the church was a man whose tenacity at saving souls made almost as many enemies as friends. Read More… We have discussed so far the nature of the 18th-century evangelical revival in Britain through the eyes of the most well-known names, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield. From the 1740s munities...
This Fathers’ Day, Remember that Property Is Holy
What can a Christian socialist teach us about being a father and faithful steward of God the Father’s gifts? Plenty. Read More… The French Revolution of 1848, which began on February 22 in Paris, led to the fall of the July Monarchy in France, the founding of the Second Republic, a wave of democratic revolutions across Europe, a revival of European liberalism, and the spread of various forms of socialism. Once again, just as in 1789, the old order of...
Bridging the Church-State Divide
This sixth installment of a short history passionate conservatism explores what it meant to finally get into the White House and see policies implemented. Skepticism was not in short supply. Read More… In 2000, I didn’t realize until it was too late that my astronomically exaggerated proximity to presidential candidate George W. Bush would make me a target. For example, I had said in 1998 that women volunteers had run charitable enterprises in the 19th century, so women’s entrance into...
European Union Demands Immediate Release of Jimmy Lai
Growing concerns over deteriorating human rights situation in Hong Kong, and the persecution of political dissidents, prompt EU’s call for immediate action. Read More… The European Parliament condemned the persecution of jailed newspaper publisher and pro-democracy activist Jimmy Lai, calling for his immediate and unconditional release from prison and the repeal of Hong Kong’s national security law (NSL), in a resolution passed on June 15, according to Voice of America. The resolution passed with 483 votes in favor, 9 against,...
Can Fraternities Save America?
There’s a movement afoot to abolish Greek life nationwide. But what if frats are actually great places to form virtue and character in young men and not just reboots of Animal House? Read More… Dr. Anthony Bradley is on a quest to make fraternities virtuous again. “This is the craziest thing I’ve ever done,” he tells me. “I’m essentially bailing out water on the sinking Titanic.” The problem he’s confronting is well engrained in American culture and media: a quick...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved