FM: National Productions
DT: Friday June 15, 2012
RE: 51% Show #1196
STATIONS: If you have comments or suggestions, please contact Susan Barnett at SBARNETT@WAMC.ORG
We encourage stations to air the entire show in full, but you can also excerpt portions, with appropriate credit given upon notification of WAMC.
Here is this week's information on 51% #1196.
(SHOW THEME)
BILLBOARD – Susan Barnett (Music Out)
(:47)
According to the Vatican, America’s nuns have a “serious doctrinal problem.” This spring, the Vatican announced its intention to reform the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization that represents the leaders of most U.S. nuns. The Vatican took issue with Conferencestatements that it says “disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops, who are the church’s authentic teachers of faith and morals.” A doctrinal assessment of the LCWR concluded it has ignored various church doctrines and has pushed – quote “certain radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.”
Anne Butler, author of Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920 wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in May, saying the tension between the patriarchal Catholic Church and its religious women is an old one – and cited examples from the American frontier.
9:22 Frontier Nuns Butler Barnett
Coming up, we’ll continue our conversation with historian Anne Butler, author of Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920. And Gilles Malkine will profile a mathematician whose innovative thinking helped weave related disciplines together. If you missed part of this show or want to hear it again, visit the 51% archives at wamc.org. This week’s show is #1196.
(11:33)
Anne Butler is an historian whose book Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920 chronicles the challenges and triumphs of Catholic nuns who braved difficult travels, physical hardships and sometimes poor treatment by the priests and bishops with whom they worked to bring comfort to settlers in the West. She describes strong, independent women who had to work to support themselves and their order, donating their salaries and devoting themselves to service while living in poverty. It’s a story she says many Americans don’t know – and one that she believes is coming to light as today’s American sisters face challenges to their autonomy from Rome.
3:34 Frontier Nuns Butler Barnett
Anne Butler is an historian and author of Across God’s Frontiers: Catholic Sisters in the American West, 1850-1920.
Finally, Gilles Malkine profiles a pioneer of another sort… a woman who devoted her life to the beauty she saw in mathematics, and whose vision revealed the interconnectedness of it all.
6:09 Emmy Noether Malkine
Gilles Malkine is a writer and musician. He lives in New York’s Catskill Mountains.
(10:58)
That’s our show for this week.
Thanks to Katie Britton for production assistance. Our theme music is by Kevin Bartlett. This show is a national production of Northeast Public Radio. Our executive producer is Dr. Alan Chartock.
If you’d like to hear this show again, or visit the 51% archives, go to our website at WAMC.org. You can also find a regular column related to 51% atfeminist.com.
Thanks so much for joining us; we’ll be back next week with another edition of 51% The Women's Perspective.
(:36 pads out to 25:00)
