I know everyone's MMV, but....

Newsweek's David Noonan has a predictable "the nuns smacked us around in the olden days," editorial that purports to "tell all." (Yes, the headline writer's phrase, not his.)

My parish had Sisters of Charity when the school had nuns teaching, (when they had a school, for that matter, several sea changes since my childhood.)

I attended but a single year, but my oldest brother went through it, and he was, to put it mildly, the kind of kid that is bound to receive punishment.

And he was never. Let me repeat that, never punished physically.

Whereas Himself, who was raised Methodist and attended public school, has a great deal of (vicarious,) experience in this regard. (He was himself a goody two shoes, but saw teachers get physical with other students frequently, and as a student teacher part of his duty was sometimes to be the witness of corporal punishment.)

So can we please get over this, "the bad old sisters were evil to me because it was the way the mean old Catholic Church was" whinging?

Because it wasn't the way the Church was, per se, it was the way society was.

He also has this to say: Our parents weren't much help; they'd been through it themselves when they were kids and they accepted it.

No, I don't know, but I'm willing to guess that his parents also favored physical punishment. But that is not mentioned -- because saying so wouldn't advance an agenda of spreading the gospel of the bad old days in the awful old Church, with the cruel old nuns?