Dear Cardinal Dolan: Is the Pope Catholic? Carol DeChant

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carol-dechant/is-the-pope-catholic-letter-to-cardinal-dolan_b_1472421.html

"Dear Cardinal Dolan,

Because "60 Minutes" names you Our Man in Rome (as the most likely to become the first American Pope), I'm writing to ask about the Vatican's investigation of American nuns -- presumably for not being "Catholic enough." Can you find out: What is the Pope thinking? Can you influence this disastrous endeavor?

Let's assume the Vatican lacks knowledge of the role of nuns in American history: those women who pioneered health treatments, of cancer and hospice (Sister Rose Hawthorne Lathrop), of alcoholics (Sister Mary Ignatia) and of lepers (Mother Marianne Cope); who built schools --through college -- to educate African- and Native-Americans more than 80 years before our Civil Rights movement began (St. Katharine Drexel); and the colonist who founded the first American religious order (St. Elizabeth Seton) to care for poor children. Does the Pope know that American nuns developed the first infant incubator, built and ran the hospital that became Mayo Clinic and founded the world's largest private school system? That nuns were once THE educated working women in our country, establishing orphanages, hospitals and social service agencies with creativity, grit and perseverance (and sometimes being silenced by their bishops for their innovations)...."

..."These questions remain: Does the Pope really want to force American Catholics to choose between standing with our nuns or with a male hierarchy interrogating them for nebulous infractions, with a stated agenda of keeping their findings secret? Where could we find Jesus in all this -- among our nuns, whose life of service is based on the Gospels' call to justice and charity, or in the Vatican, whose concerns appear to be power and secrecy? At the very least, let the investigators ask those who know our nuns best -- the homeless, prisoners, battered women and their children, immigrants, inner-city students, the disabled, the bereaved and the bullied -- if these elderly women are "Catholic enough." And if not, then who is? Is even the Pope "Catholic enough"?

Carol DeChant founded the public relations firm DeChant-Hughes & Associates, Inc. Her recent book is "Great American Catholic Eulogies" (ACTA Publishers).