A Blog for Dallas Area Catholics

Progressive nuns channel Alinsky, engage in corporate politics October 25, 2010

How are these activities related to their religious rule?

A number of “progressive” women religious have chosen to use donations to their orders (and, one would presume, investments) to attack corporations by purchasing stock, and then using that stock ownership to pester corporations through proxy fights:

Although the Vatican has yet to complete its apostolic visitation of women’s religious communities in the United States, many Catholics are already aware that the more progressive religious orders have moved far from their original mission of supporting the Church through prayer, service, education, and evangelization. Shifting into the areas of politics, gender rights, environmental issues, and finance, some of these women religious  have become so involved in proposing shareholder-sponsored resolutions in proxy voting on corporate finance that Time magazine recently published an article titled “Nuns vs. Bankers: The Shareholder Proxy Wars.”

Drawing from Saul Alinsky’s 1970s “Proxies for People” strategy, progressive nuns are now attending shareholders’ meetings and engaging in proxy votes to confront corporations on issues ranging from executive compensation and derivatives to military spending to “ending the corporate control of (bottled) water.” (Time reports that under “Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rules, any shareholder of a publicly traded company that has held $2,000 worth of that corporation’s stock for at least a year can send in a proposal to be voted on at the firm’s annual meeting.”)

In “Nuns vs. Bankers,” Time reported on the role that the New Jersey-based Sisters of Charity of St. Elizabeth played in demanding that Citigroup ratify a proposal requiring the company to issue a report by the end of the year stating its policies on the collateral used to back many of the bank’s most complicated trades. The Sisters of Mercy have demanded that Lockheed Martin detail how much money it spends developing space weapons.

Another issue of interest to progressive religious orders, especially the Franciscans, is environmentalism. Claiming that the Franciscan Federation has a “special tie to environmental issues because of the emphasis on nature in the spirituality of St. Francis of Assisi,” the federation has collaborated with Protestant churches in making interfaith statements at the World Water Forum…..

The commitment to end what the nuns see as the “corporate claim on water” has led Sr. Betty Kenny, a member of the (Rochester, Minnesota) Sisters of St. Francis to lead her sisters to buy “token shares of stock in the big water companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsi and Nestle. We do this so we can work the stock—vote proxies, contact the company CEOs, and attend the shareholder meetings.”

Of all the possible problems facing the Church, of all the calls to serve the Lord, to bring souls to a loving, devout relationship with Jesus Christ, to pray for the good of souls, to work in an active external apostolate……a number of “progressive” nuns have determined that Coca Cola makes too much bottled water.  It would be laughable if it weren’t true.  This is nothing more than pursuing another sacred shibolleth of the left – corporations are bad, evil, and greedy, and if they are successful producing, marketing, and selling a product, there must be some nefarious purpose afoot.  That the efforts of these female religious seems to coincide with far, far left political agendas is, I am quite certain, strictly accidental, and would certainly in no way indicate  that these sisters have perhaps co-mingled Jesus and Marx just a bit too much. 

Whatever the intentions, they are following a plan put together by that scion of American leftist radicalism, Saul Alinsky:

Alinsky, Time reported in 1970, “would solicit proxies from foundations, mutual funds, union welfare funds, churches, and universities and vote them to compel corporations to pursue such social goals as ending pollution,” adding that he was “getting voluntary proxies every day from individual sympathizers—and telephone calls from worried and presumably un-emancipated corporate executives sounding him out about his intentions.”

Progressive Catholic parishes always held a strong appeal for Alinsky because of the access these parishes afford to organizers. As we reported earlier in CWR (April 2010), Alinsky began his “Proxies for People” program in Catholic parishes in Rochester, New York in the aftermath of serious race riots in the late 1960s. Convincing Catholic parishioners who held Kodak stock to turn their proxies over to his organizing group…….

So, there you go….channeling their leader.  But, one of Alinsky’s most important lessons to his followers was that it is critical to choose your target carefully.  Coca Cola, Pepsico, these are big, ugly corporations that every good daughter of Marx religious sister should hate.  Others, not so much:

Still, these nuns are selective about exactly when and where they choose to wield that passport. Attempting to transform the bottled water industry, and claiming that they care deeply about out-of-control executive compensation in financial firms, progressive nuns ignore the fact that among the highest-paid executives in the country are those who run Catholic health organizations and institutions. These progressive nuns conveniently pay no attention to the fact that most of these highly paid administrators are members of the Catholic Health Association, a lobbying organization led by one of their own sisters, Sr. Carol Keehan.

As CWR reported earlier this year, Lloyd Dean, the CEO of Catholic Healthcare West, is one of the highest-paid hospital administrators in the country. Recently appointed to chair the board of the Catholic Health Association, Dean received a salary of $5.3 million from Catholic Healthcare West, a hospital system based in San Francisco. According to the Wall Street Journal, Ascension Health paid its CEO an annual salary of $3.3 million.

Well, I’m sure they have a very good explanation for their selective outrage.  Shut up, they explained.

Huge swaths of American female religious are utterly out of control and use the Church solely as a (still) highly respected organization with which to give their efforts more credence.  After all, who could deny the plaintive cries of a poor, downtrodden religious sister, and who could possibly be more selfless, more caring for the good of all the oppressed proletariat masses people?

This apostolic visitation, I pray there are very significant changes coming from it.  But, by the by, it will not matter, ultimately – most of these orders will be completely gone within 20 years or so.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Read the whole thing.

Oh, I almost forgot – one female religious, so called “Green Franciscan sister” Janet Corcoran refers to our planet as “Sister Mother Earth”