It’s been a big week for the papacy. From Pope Francis' sassy selection of a new Archbishop of Washington, D.C. (a frequent critic of president-elect Donald Trump) to Nikki Glaser’s star-turn singing the Conclave-Wicked crossover “Pope-ular” at the Golden Globes, it seems like Pope-culture is everywhere.
But the PR isn’t all good. While Conclave details a fictional Catholic church being desperately pulled in a new direction, this week Pope Francis insisted on keeping the real one firmly stuck in the past. His Holiness also made the news for telling a group of Dominican sisters that some of their peers need to sweeten up: “I have met nuns with a vinegar face and that’s not friendly,” The Times reported him as saying. “Vinegar is nasty and nuns with a vinegar face, let’s not even talk about it.”
Let’s do talk about it though! The Pope basically just said nuns should smile more. Sir, you do not want nuns. You want Maria von Trapp. “Smile more! Fight the Nazis! Make cute little outfits out of curtains and be weirdly, almost psychotically, into brown paper packages.”
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(Technically, Maria von Trapp was never even a ‘proper’ nun. But let’s not quibble over The Sound of Music.)
And he didn’t stop there. He also wants the sisters to stop it with the scuttlebutt: “To ask this of a woman is heroic, but, come on, let’s move forward and no gossip,” Francis continued. I’m sorry, no gossip? Do you know how hard it is to be a nun? I don’t, but based on Sister Act it involves like 3 hours of getting into your nun-outfit, a little singing, and then a lot of running from mobsters. And you want them to do all of that without having their STORIES to get them through the day?
Absolutely not.
Here’s a thing I learned about nuns that is not from a movie musical: they are, for lack of a better term, independent contractors. The Catholic Church has no responsibility to support nuns. The sisters may have taken a vow of poverty, but have to pay for their housing, food and medications just like the rest of us. And they might be married to Jesus, but I do not believe his carpentry business is a boon to all his hundreds of thousands of wives. According to the Washington Post, many religious orders have over the years not even been able to afford to bury their dead.
So let’s give these sisters a break. They simply do not have time to be a flibbertigibbet, a will-o’-the-wisp or a clown. Let them have their chitchat and a little side-eye. Besides, vinegar is delicious. A little balsamic spices up a salad; apple cider vinegar can help regulate blood sugar levels. Sometimes vinegar is exactly the tang you need to get through a tough day.
And with that in mind, I shall spend today with resting-vinegar-face in solidarity.
