I saw this piece in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette today about how young women are still taking those vows of celibacy and devoting their lives to God. I instantly thought of a longer Time.com article from 2006 called “Today’s Nun Has a Veil–And A Blog” by my friend Tracy Schmidt (along with Lisa Takeuchi Cullen). The message of both stories are the same–in the age of hypersexualization, being a nun is quite radical.

Radical, perhaps. But can becoming a nun be feminist? You’d never think so, but as one of our Girldrive interviewees, Katharine, claimed back in 2008, a nun is “the ultimate feminist.They are looking at the world and saying, ‘Listen, you want to care about what your clothes look like? I don’t care. You want to care about making money? I don’t make any money! You want to cast down those who are burdened? I want to pick them up.’ She has given up her entire life, her clothes, her cool shoes, just so that she can help people who don’t have help. That’s really empowering.”

Incidentally, Katharine never became a nun–in fact, she’s currently engaged to a human. But I’m sure she’d still stand by her point that rejecting consumerism and oversexualization is a feminist act in itself. Either, way, I’m not convinced–I just can’t separate the politics of the Catholic church on birth control, abortion, gender roles, and gay rights from individual good deeds of nuns. Even if a nun has the best intentions on Earth, she is still devoting her life to an institution that continually curtails women’s rights. And even if it is true that women are too hypersexualized, is the answer to commit to lifelong celibacy?

Then again, quite a few women we encountered on our road trip told us that religion can be interpreted any way one wants. What you do you all think? Does institutional action overshadow an individuals’ actions?