Post by Teddy Bear on Sept 15, 2013 20:28:54 GMT
The BBC ends their article on this nun:
For now it seems, Catalonia's love affair with perhaps the world's least predictable political figure, is set to run and run.
From the way the article is written, it would appear as if the BBC will be promoting this woman for some time to come. It will be apparent from her views why this would be, but for now let's just say the Commentator calls it thusly: Actually, if her 10 point programme is anything to go by, she's a rather nasty, dim and immature Leftist totalitarian bigot,
Perfect for the BBC
The Commentator offers their expanded view after the BBC article.
The view of this from The Commentator
For now it seems, Catalonia's love affair with perhaps the world's least predictable political figure, is set to run and run.
From the way the article is written, it would appear as if the BBC will be promoting this woman for some time to come. It will be apparent from her views why this would be, but for now let's just say the Commentator calls it thusly: Actually, if her 10 point programme is anything to go by, she's a rather nasty, dim and immature Leftist totalitarian bigot,
Perfect for the BBC
The Commentator offers their expanded view after the BBC article.
Sister Teresa Forcades: Europe's most radical nun
By Matt Wells
BBC World Service, Montserrat, Catalonia
A Spanish nun has become one of Europe's most influential left-wing public intellectuals. This year, thousands have joined her anti-capitalist movement, which campaigns for Catalan independence, the reversal of public spending cuts and nationalisation of banks and energy companies.
As political headquarters go, the monastery of St Benet has got to be among the most beautiful and peaceful anywhere. To get there you must take a breath-taking drive up the sacred mountain of Montserrat.
Sister Teresa Forcades, the unlikely star of local television chat shows, Twitter and Facebook, had been worryingly hard to nail down. So great is the demand for her time and blessing that her secretary's email here at the monastery always returns an automatic reply that the inbox is full.
Sister Teresa seems always to be in at least two places at once. She is bright-eyed, confident, almost breezy. Her disarmingly perfect English - mastered during a few years at Harvard University - feels somehow out of place in the humble cloisters of this serene spot.
There's no politician quite like her. She's never without her nun's headdress, and says that everything she does is born of deep Christian faith and devotion. Yet, she has been strongly critical of the church and the men who run it.
Followers of her movement, Proces Constituent, which has signed up around 50,000 Catalans this year, are mainly non-believing leftists. She won't run for office, and says she won't create a political party, but she's undeniably a political figure on a mission - to tear down international capitalism, and change the map of Spain.
Her 10-point programme, drawn up with economist Arcadi Oliveres, calls for:
• A government takeover of all banks and measures to curb financial speculation
• An end to job cuts, fairer wages and pensions, shorter working hours and payments to parents who stay at home
• Genuine "participatory democracy" and steps to curb political corruption
• Decent housing for all, and an end to all foreclosures
• A reversal of public spending cuts, and renationalisation of all public services
Sister Teresa believes the Roman Catholic church should be thoroughly modernised for the 21st Century. She thinks women priests should be welcomed, and that gay people should be allowed to serve openly in the church. Pope Francis should be judged, she thinks, on how the Women Religious - which includes the majority of nuns in the United States - are treated by the Vatican.
• An individual's right to control their own body, including a woman's right to decide over abortion
• "Green" economic policies and the nationalisation of energy companies
• An end to xenophobia and repeal of immigration laws
• Placing public media under democratic control, including the internet
• International "solidarity", leaving Nato, and the abolition of armed forces in a future free Catalonia
With a natural flair for public speaking, and a razor-sharp campaigner's mind, hasn't she really outgrown the monastic life, and won't her sisters become weary of the constant trail of visitors, I wonder?
She breaks off our first, intense interview, to greet a delegation of Catalan independence activists, who have come to pay homage at the monastery.
They are just three dozen women living a quiet life of prayer, but this is Sister Teresa's political power base. She is their ambassador to the secular and often turbulent world down the mountainside. Unlike most political parties fuelled by rivalry and deal-making, Sister Teresa's inner circle loves her unconditionally and the feelings are mutual.
When I travel to see her drumming up support for the new movement in a town square, the place is packed. She grips the crowd with radical ideas that frighten many mainstream politicians in Spain. She admires Gandhi, and some of the policies of the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Bolivia's Evo Morales.
Spain's richest and most industrialised region
Many Catalans think of themselves as a separate nation from the rest of Spain
Harsh austerity measures have boosted separatist sentiment
In January this year, Catalonia's regional parliament approved a "declaration of sovereignty" aimed at paving the way for a referendum on independence from Spain in 2014
Catalonia profile
But it's the centuries-old economic model of Benedictine nuns creating useful goods to sell, that she cites most passionately.
After a two-week break, I drive up the winding road to the monastery for a last visit. Sister Teresa has been at a religious conference in Peru, where it's winter, and she's come home with a cold. Bishops loyal to the Vatican have been criticising her radical stances on everything from abortion to banking.
It's become a familiar battle wherever she goes. For now at least, her own bishop at home, has not forbidden her to carry on.
In the chapel she greets my wife and two young children warmly. She tells me that as a teenager, she herself was put off taking holy orders by the need to live a celibate life.
Is this another contradiction I wonder: is she missing a life where she can love freely, with all that that implies?
She tells me that she's been in love three times since becoming a nun, but her devotion to God and the monastery is as strong as ever.
"As long as my religious life is full of love, I'll be here," she tells me. "But the moment this life turns sacrificial…Then it's my duty to abandon it."
For now it seems, Catalonia's love affair with perhaps the world's least predictable political figure, is set to run and run.
By Matt Wells
BBC World Service, Montserrat, Catalonia
A Spanish nun has become one of Europe's most influential left-wing public intellectuals. This year, thousands have joined her anti-capitalist movement, which campaigns for Catalan independence, the reversal of public spending cuts and nationalisation of banks and energy companies.
As political headquarters go, the monastery of St Benet has got to be among the most beautiful and peaceful anywhere. To get there you must take a breath-taking drive up the sacred mountain of Montserrat.
Sister Teresa Forcades, the unlikely star of local television chat shows, Twitter and Facebook, had been worryingly hard to nail down. So great is the demand for her time and blessing that her secretary's email here at the monastery always returns an automatic reply that the inbox is full.
Sister Teresa seems always to be in at least two places at once. She is bright-eyed, confident, almost breezy. Her disarmingly perfect English - mastered during a few years at Harvard University - feels somehow out of place in the humble cloisters of this serene spot.
There's no politician quite like her. She's never without her nun's headdress, and says that everything she does is born of deep Christian faith and devotion. Yet, she has been strongly critical of the church and the men who run it.
Followers of her movement, Proces Constituent, which has signed up around 50,000 Catalans this year, are mainly non-believing leftists. She won't run for office, and says she won't create a political party, but she's undeniably a political figure on a mission - to tear down international capitalism, and change the map of Spain.
Her 10-point programme, drawn up with economist Arcadi Oliveres, calls for:
• A government takeover of all banks and measures to curb financial speculation
• An end to job cuts, fairer wages and pensions, shorter working hours and payments to parents who stay at home
• Genuine "participatory democracy" and steps to curb political corruption
• Decent housing for all, and an end to all foreclosures
• A reversal of public spending cuts, and renationalisation of all public services
Sister Teresa believes the Roman Catholic church should be thoroughly modernised for the 21st Century. She thinks women priests should be welcomed, and that gay people should be allowed to serve openly in the church. Pope Francis should be judged, she thinks, on how the Women Religious - which includes the majority of nuns in the United States - are treated by the Vatican.
• An individual's right to control their own body, including a woman's right to decide over abortion
• "Green" economic policies and the nationalisation of energy companies
• An end to xenophobia and repeal of immigration laws
• Placing public media under democratic control, including the internet
• International "solidarity", leaving Nato, and the abolition of armed forces in a future free Catalonia
With a natural flair for public speaking, and a razor-sharp campaigner's mind, hasn't she really outgrown the monastic life, and won't her sisters become weary of the constant trail of visitors, I wonder?
She breaks off our first, intense interview, to greet a delegation of Catalan independence activists, who have come to pay homage at the monastery.
They are just three dozen women living a quiet life of prayer, but this is Sister Teresa's political power base. She is their ambassador to the secular and often turbulent world down the mountainside. Unlike most political parties fuelled by rivalry and deal-making, Sister Teresa's inner circle loves her unconditionally and the feelings are mutual.
When I travel to see her drumming up support for the new movement in a town square, the place is packed. She grips the crowd with radical ideas that frighten many mainstream politicians in Spain. She admires Gandhi, and some of the policies of the late Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, and Bolivia's Evo Morales.
Spain's richest and most industrialised region
Many Catalans think of themselves as a separate nation from the rest of Spain
Harsh austerity measures have boosted separatist sentiment
In January this year, Catalonia's regional parliament approved a "declaration of sovereignty" aimed at paving the way for a referendum on independence from Spain in 2014
Catalonia profile
But it's the centuries-old economic model of Benedictine nuns creating useful goods to sell, that she cites most passionately.
After a two-week break, I drive up the winding road to the monastery for a last visit. Sister Teresa has been at a religious conference in Peru, where it's winter, and she's come home with a cold. Bishops loyal to the Vatican have been criticising her radical stances on everything from abortion to banking.
It's become a familiar battle wherever she goes. For now at least, her own bishop at home, has not forbidden her to carry on.
In the chapel she greets my wife and two young children warmly. She tells me that as a teenager, she herself was put off taking holy orders by the need to live a celibate life.
Is this another contradiction I wonder: is she missing a life where she can love freely, with all that that implies?
She tells me that she's been in love three times since becoming a nun, but her devotion to God and the monastery is as strong as ever.
"As long as my religious life is full of love, I'll be here," she tells me. "But the moment this life turns sacrificial…Then it's my duty to abandon it."
For now it seems, Catalonia's love affair with perhaps the world's least predictable political figure, is set to run and run.
The view of this from The Commentator
Totalitarian nun, all a bit of fun for the BBC
Usually the ideologues at the BBC don't care much for religion. But a far-Left nun who wants to nationalise the media? Now you're talking
She's called Sister Teresa Forcades. She's a "radical" Spanish nun who has taken Catalonia by storm. She supports abortion and gay priests, and she despises capitalism. According to the BBC's glowing account of her she's "one of Europe's most influential left-wing public intellectuals," she's "bright-eyed, confident, almost breezy." She has "a razor-sharp campaigner's mind."
Actually, if her 10 point programme is anything to go by, she's a rather nasty, dim and immature Leftist totalitarian bigot, not that the BBC would ever consider seeking out someone with an opposing world view to relate that angle of the story.
Here are the key elements of her political agenda: Nationalise the banks; curb speculation; stop firms firing people; raise wages; cut working hours; nationalise public services; raise public spending; promote the green agenda and nationalise energy companies; scrap the armed forces; end immigration controls and...drum roll please...nationalise the media, including the internet!
Minus the abolition of the military, that's pretty much what North Korea looks like.
Why does it not occur to BBC reporters to ask the obvious questions, like: Now then Sister Forcades, you do realise that you're advocating the definitive end of the free society? Or even, you do realise that there are people out there who would argue that you're advocating the end of the free society?
It obviously doesn't occur to them because in their cocooned little world of politically correct certainties, they never encounter people who would look at Sister Forcades's political programme and recoil in horror at the kind of absolutist society it appears to imply.
She's billed as controversial of course: "She grips the crowd with radical ideas that frighten many mainstream politicians in Spain." But even then the writer conveys the sense that this is all just a little bit exciting. There isn't the slightest hint that this woman might actually pose a danger to freedom.
But I suppose such matters would only occur to you if a free society was something you valued and cared about. And this, after all, is a story from the BBC...
Usually the ideologues at the BBC don't care much for religion. But a far-Left nun who wants to nationalise the media? Now you're talking
She's called Sister Teresa Forcades. She's a "radical" Spanish nun who has taken Catalonia by storm. She supports abortion and gay priests, and she despises capitalism. According to the BBC's glowing account of her she's "one of Europe's most influential left-wing public intellectuals," she's "bright-eyed, confident, almost breezy." She has "a razor-sharp campaigner's mind."
Actually, if her 10 point programme is anything to go by, she's a rather nasty, dim and immature Leftist totalitarian bigot, not that the BBC would ever consider seeking out someone with an opposing world view to relate that angle of the story.
Here are the key elements of her political agenda: Nationalise the banks; curb speculation; stop firms firing people; raise wages; cut working hours; nationalise public services; raise public spending; promote the green agenda and nationalise energy companies; scrap the armed forces; end immigration controls and...drum roll please...nationalise the media, including the internet!
Minus the abolition of the military, that's pretty much what North Korea looks like.
Why does it not occur to BBC reporters to ask the obvious questions, like: Now then Sister Forcades, you do realise that you're advocating the definitive end of the free society? Or even, you do realise that there are people out there who would argue that you're advocating the end of the free society?
It obviously doesn't occur to them because in their cocooned little world of politically correct certainties, they never encounter people who would look at Sister Forcades's political programme and recoil in horror at the kind of absolutist society it appears to imply.
She's billed as controversial of course: "She grips the crowd with radical ideas that frighten many mainstream politicians in Spain." But even then the writer conveys the sense that this is all just a little bit exciting. There isn't the slightest hint that this woman might actually pose a danger to freedom.
But I suppose such matters would only occur to you if a free society was something you valued and cared about. And this, after all, is a story from the BBC...