No Room for Nuns at Right's Inn
jim spencer

No room for nuns at right's inn

By jspencer@denverpost.com
Jim Spencer
Denver Post Columnist
Friday, December 24, 2004 -

"God's act of hope and love birthed the Son, Jesus Christ, as Light into darkness, two thousand years ago. That same hope, love, and light is shining forth within us as we nourish these gifts daily. A blessed Advent and Christmas be yours for your journey into and through the New Year 2005."

Those words could have come on a Christmas card from Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, Denver Archbishop Charles Chaput or any of their right-wing Republican religious cronies.

Instead, the words came from the December newsletter of Ardeth Platte, a radical nun cooling her heels in federal prison in Connecticut for banging a hammer and spreading her blood on a nuclear missile silo in northern Colorado.

Platte's thoughts on the eve of America's big religious holiday serve as a reminder. Despite what the religious right likes to suggest, Christianity should operate under a very big tent.

Platte and her anti-nuke co-defendants, Carol Gilbert and Jackie Hudson, personify Christian goodness as well as any of the "morality" voters who claim credit for George Bush's re-election.

Platte, Gilbert and Hudson paid for their faith with their freedom.

A federal judge in Denver gave Hudson 30 months, Gilbert 33 months and Platte 41 months in prison for doing what they believe Jesus demands.

The nuns' sacrifice puts the lie to Chaput's holier-than-you proclamation that "real" Catholics vote only for political candidates who are against abortion and embryonic stem-cell research. In the most recent election, Chaput's edict meant "real" Catholics could vote only Republican.

Had the government not wasted thousands of your tax dollars and mine locking up Platte, Gilbert and Hudson, the Catholic sisters likely would not have voted that way.

By Chaput's measure, this seems to call into question the nuns' Christian convictions.

Ditto for Dobson. His idea of a "moral victory for America" seems to include no one who isn't a conservative Republican or an evangelical Christian.

Peacenik revolutionaries who devote their lives to protesting weapons and wars aren't on the short list.

And that's where Chaput's and Dobson's concept of closed-door Christianity breaks down.

Members of the religious right say they won this presidential election. Now, by God, they're going to turn their faith into public policy because they believe it's the way to salvation for all.

You see it in federal funding of Christian charities that may ban non-Christians from their staffs. You see it in biblical creationism taught as science alongside evolution.

All this gets done in Jesus' name.

But the nuclear nuns gather their strength and conviction from Christ, too. And the idea that conservative Christians are morally superior to Platte, Gilbert and Hudson is sacrilege.

Besides remaining "in awe of the grace of God," as Platte says in her July newsletter, here's how these menaces to society spend their time in stir.

"The opportunity to grow in nonviolence presents itself daily in the person of the most abusive guard I've ever encountered," Hudson wrote in a newsletter from prison in California. There are "many opportunities to practice the gospel message of love and forgiveness."

From a West Virginia prison, Gilbert reports that she just finished knitting "25 pairs of mittens, 2 sweaters, 5 hats, 3 scarves, 2 pairs of slouch socks, 1 shawl and 1 lap blanket" for distribution to the poor and to a nursing home.

She also reports that when she's released from prison, federal probation officers want to send her to a homeless shelter in Colorado rather than Jonah House, a community of nonviolent peace protesters in Maryland.

That's what happens when you shrink the big tent of Christianity into a pup tent. For all its lip service to piety, it seems Gilbert's country would rather see her begging than doing God's work.

Jim Spencer's column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com