In the memorable opening lines of the Second Vatican Council’s Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, the bishops proclaimed their solidarity with “the joys and the hopes, the griefs and the anxieties of the men of this age.” One of the most pressing hopes of the age has been the struggle to achieve equal rights and treatment for women, and the council fathers also spoke to that concern. “Where they have not yet won it, women claim for themselves an equity with men before the law and in fact,” they wrote. “Now, for the first time in human history all people are convinced that the benefits of culture ought to be and actually can be extended to everyone.”
October marks the fiftieth anniversary of the opening of the council. Of course, no women participated in those momentous deliberations, although a few were allowed to observe the second session. If a third Vatican council were convened tomorrow, there would still be no decision-making role open to women. Since the council, women have made great strides in every kind of secular endeavor. They have also been ordained as priests and bishops in churches that long resisted such reform. Juridical authority in the Catholic Church, however, remains firmly in the hands of men. Whatever position one takes on the ordination of women, the idea that it is essential to God’s purposes that the exercise of authority in the church be reserved to men alone defies reason.
Historically it was the God-given superiority of men that justified excluding women from the priesthood. When that explanation became an embarrassment, others were proffered. Now the church teaches that it must follow the example of Jesus, who chose only men as his apostles, and that, because of their physical resemblance to Jesus, only men can act symbolically in persona Christi. Most American Catholics find these explanations unpersuasive. It is possible, of course, that the magisterium is right, and that those living in societies that place such a high value on equality cannot appreciate the importance of distinct gender roles in the church’s sacramental economy. It may be that ineligibility for the priesthood is not itself a denial of women’s “equity with men.” But the church still uses that ineligibility as a reason to exclude women from positions of authority, and this creates a serious credibility problem for the church’s leadership, especially when it comes to issues dealing directly with women.
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The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s recent censure of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious for “serious doctrinal problems” raises a number of familiar, if troubling, questions. The LCWR, which represents most American nuns, exists to provide support for the work sisters do for the poor, the imprisoned, the ill, and the marginalized, and to give the various religious communities a corporate voice. As part of the CDF’s action, the LCWR will be put into a kind of receivership under Seattle Archbishop Peter Sartain—essentially suppressing what little autonomy the group has had. Its statutes will be rewritten and speakers for LCWR meetings will now be vetted. The sisters were specifically reprimanded for speaking out in opposition to positions taken by the U.S. bishops but also for keeping “silent” about church teachings on ordination and same-sex marriage. Is silence now considered a form of dissent? Are women religious not even allowed to determine the priorities of their own ministries?
This isn’t about whether everything done under the LCWR aegis is immune from criticism. Feminism has certainly had an influence on the group, and most women religious probably do disagree with the church about women’s ordination. Yes, on occasion New Age spiritualities have gotten a hearing. Yet much of what the LCWR does looks like very smart and sensible women carrying on apostolic activities and preaching more successfully by action than most of the clergy and episcopacy do by word. The LCWR, like the church itself, is a diverse group, and the CDF offers no evidence that the women are unduly influenced by “radical” feminism. It might even be said that the LCWR has faced the same challenge as the bishops and met it better—namely, maintaining community and solidarity, dialogue and conversation, and encouraging innovation, creativity, and risk-taking in service to the gospel.
The CDF action is certain to be a pastoral disaster, another instance of the hierarchy acting in an imprudent and counterproductive fashion. All Catholics should support the effort of the bishops to preserve and pass on the fundamentals of the faith, and correcting doctrinal error is part of that process. But wouldn’t the bishops be more effective in that task if they did not confuse disagreement about public policy with doctrinal dissent—and if the experience and judgment of women were given an honored place and a decisive role in the church’s governance?
Related: Letters, September 14, 2012
Cross Examination, by Sister X
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Hi, Maureen:
What is the difference between a woman acting "in persona Christi" in her everyday life and her being able to act the same way at the altar? JESUS is the only true Priest; the clergy are ministers of this priesthood. The Mass is a narrative, asking God to remember what God has done for us in Jesus and asking God to make that present to us now. Why must the minister be male in order to do this? Can't God hear the prayer of a woman in that same place? Also, in your schema, the non-ordained men of the church would be "in drag," too, wouldn't they, since they are, according to the traditional idea, members of the "Bride"? I don't know any Christian woman who seeks to do away with the maleness of Jesus, but I know plenty who want to break through the idolatrous notion that his maleness is what saves us. "What is not assumed, is not redeemed," so said the Cappadocians. Well what is assumed in the Incarnation is humanity in all its fullness, one constituitive part of which is gender. If the maleness of Jesus is emphasized as "saving" in and of itself and in a privileged way, then women are not saved. One more thing: the church teaches that all people, including women, have the right to pursue their God-given vocations. No one has a "right" to the priesthood in the same way that one would have a right to a job based on equal qualifications, etc (your EEO reference). But each Christian does have a RIGHT to have his/her vocation tested and tried and affirmed. That is church teaching. Unfortunately, the age-old and idolatrous association of Jesus Christ with the human clergyman is what causes such discomfort and apprehension about somehow "attenuating" the reality of Jesus in the way you describe.
I would like to hear your reply to my questions about the order of grace...if you care to respond. Thanks.
By Frank and Judy Splitt
April 30, 2012
On April 6, The Wall Street Journal reported: "Pope Benedict denounced priests who have questioned church teachings on celibacy and the ordination of women."
Next came the crackdown on the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. See
"Vatican orders LCWR to revise, appoints archbishop to oversee group," http://ncronline.org/print/news/women-religious/vatican-orders-lcwr-be-closer-teachings-and-discipline-church
These pronouncements bring to mind Andrew Sullivan’s April 9, 2012, Newsweek article. See “The Forgotten Jesus,” at http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/04/01/andrew-sullivan-christi...
The issue’s cover boldly proclaimed "Forget the Church Follow Jesus." An editorial comment stated: "Christianity has been destroyed by politics, priests, and get-rich evangelists. Ignore them, writes Andrew Sullivan, and embrace HIM."
What are Catholics to make of these goings on and coverage in the national press? We offer a few thoughts for consideration:
1. Heed retired Australian Bishop Geoffrey Robinson's call for a total reexamination of Catholicism in his March 28 talk at Chicago's Newberry Library. See “Bishop: Total re-examination of Catholic faith, culture needed,” at http://ncronline.org/news/bishop-total-re-examination-catholic-faith-culture-needed?page=1
2. Note the message in Brian Terrell's article on the genesis of the phrase "filthy, rotten system.” "It is unfortunate that Dorothy Day's famous words have been distorted over the years by the loss of a crucial detail --- that they were directed at the church she loved with all her heart, even as it was so often a scandal to her,” wrote Terrell.
3. Learn more about the Leadership Conference of Women Religious at https://lcwr.org
4. Consider the different points of view expressed in opinion pieces by Elizabeth Scalia, Carol Marin, Maureen Dowd, Nicholas Kristof, and Margery Frisbie, to wit:
“A three-year inquiry ends with a sharp but measured assessment of unorthodox religious practice in the U.S.,” wrote Scalia in "The Vatican's Corrective to Liberal Catholics," The Wall Street Journal, April 27, 2012, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304723304577367752400899214.html
“Surely, there are thoughtful bishops who recoil at what the Vatican is doing here. Why
they don't speak up, I will never know.," wrote Marin in "Vatican waging a war on nuns," The Chicago Sun Times, April 22, 2012, http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/12026003-452/vatican-waging-a-war-on-nuns.html
“While continuing to heal and educate, the community of sisters is aging and dying out because few younger women are willing to make such sacrifices for a church determined to bring women to heel,” wrote Dowd in “Bishops Play Church Queens as Pawns," The New York Times, April 28, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/dowd-bishops-play-church-queens-as-pawns.html?ref=todayspaper
“They were the first feminists, earning Ph.D.’s or working as surgeons long before it was fashionable for women to hold jobs. As managers of hospitals, schools and complex bureaucracies, they were the first female C.E.O.’s. They are also among the bravest, toughest and most admirable people in the world. In my travels, I’ve seen heroic nuns defy warlords, pimps and bandits. Even as bishops have disgraced the church by covering up the rape of children, nuns have redeemed it with their humble work on behalf of the neediest,” wrote Kristof in “We Are All Nuns,” The New York Times, April 29, 2012,
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/29/opinion/sunday/kristof-we-are-all-nuns.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper
“I can’t separate Church and nuns in my mind. I never dreamed I might have to. And yet, with the Vatican throwing down the gauntlet to American sisters, for the first time in my life I feel in my gut what breakaway parts of the Church went through when they separated from Mother Church. What if the unthinkable happened? What if women broke away from the Church?” wrote Frisbie in “L’Osservatore Chicago: What if women broke away from the Church?” The Chicago Catholic News, April 30, 2012, http://www.chicagocatholicnews.com/?p=1262
We believe the Vatican’s pronouncements are no less than abominable distractions from the real problems in the Catholic Church—stark reminders of how power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It is our view that the Vatican is simply out of touch with the spirit within the People of God. The Vatican's focus on sex, family planning, celibacy, and its ban on the ordination of women rather than a focus on the common good, unjust wars, and the death penalty puts the institutional church above the care the People of God.
We believe women religious are the true servant-leaders in the Catholic Church who will catalyze a new age of enlightenment when the Catholic Church abandons its top-down, father-knows-best modus operandi and returns to the guiding principles of Vatican II.
Perhaps Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle who has been assigned to crack down on the climate of “corporate dissent” at the Leadership Conference for Women Religious will learn a thing or two about collegiality when he deals with educated women who form thoughtful opinions and engage in serious dialogue on the really important issues facing the Church and the world it serves.
We close with a quote and a request.
The quote is from Bishop Robinson's Newberry Library talk that gets right to the point: "The pope and the bishops have lost credibility, and it is only the People of God who can restore it to them. If the church is to move forward, these painful lessons (from its sex abuse scandal) must be learned, for this is an issue on which to leave out the People of God has been positively suicidal."
If you agree, our request is to support the sisters by signing the petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/support-the-sisters
To Frank Splitt: On the petition page to which you link, the following is listed prominently as the top signature on the petition: Archbishop Peter Paul Brennan
This so-called "Archbishop" certainly has a right to sign the petition, but I don't think it helps the cause to list him as the most prominent backer of the support movement:
http://fatherjoe.wordpress.com/2006/09/28/breakway-bishops-seek-successi...
(scroll down the page a bit and read his biography).
- Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA
Just to clarify, since I know at least one person has misunderstood me when I have said this before:
When I said that the Mass is a "narrative," I meant the actual linguistic form; the traditionalists act as if it's a first-person account, maintaining that the priest, "in persona Christi," must then be male---i.e., as if the Mass is Jesus speaking to God the Father in front of us. But it isn't that at all: it is a narrative of the people speaking to God (and the minister on their behalf) ABOUT Jesus. And I don't know why a female couldn't do that just as adequately or appropriately...The tradtitional construal suggests that the words "this is my Body/Blood" are in the first person, but they are not: even at that point, we are telling God what Jesus said, not pretending that the priest is saying it about himself. I just think we need to look more maturely at the whole dynamic. I LOVE Jesus---everything about him, including his maleness! But it is something that I think the men who run the church have used too long to exclude women and keep all the control and authority for themselves and have really caused harm. Certainly not the way of Jesus!!!
I am so impressed and humbled by the display of theological and (church) historical sense in these comments, particularly from Janet. I'd just like to add a couple of observations/ questions that I have been pondering as a result of this LCWR controversy. One is, is it not possible that by denying women the sacrament of holy orders, Rome has set up a situation in which thwarted women religious have unconsciously turned to avant garde (or actually heretical, though I am not learned enough to judge whether in fact whatever views these anonymous sisters have are "heretical") theological views out of sheer frustration for their inability to lead in the Church? And before someone tells me that there are many women leaders in the Church (and there are), full leadership is not possible when the authority bearing offices are reserved for men, by which I mean the episcopacy and the priesthood. Maybe these views could be addressed by at least re-opening the question of the priesthood and at least listening to these women? And the other question I have is to ponder what would happen if in fact the Holy Spirit inspired the Holy See to open up the priesthood to women? Is the charge made that the Apostolic Succession would be broken if that happened? If that is the concern, is the quality of the faith determined by the gender of him/her who passes it down? I used to know something about heresy, and I'm not sure if that almost genetic view of the transmission of the faith falls under that category, but if it doesn't, it surely should, because that is a strange, strange idea.
Hi, Daniel: Thank you for stating so clearly what I have been thinking and have tried to express before, probably clumsily: there are many, many people in the church---not women only---who feel compelled to search for other ways to imagine God's reality that "are beyond" what the institutional church presents because that image is so oppressive, so NOT life-giving, so very unlike what the Jesus of Scripture is like. It is sad and tragic when the search leads people to something that cannot be said any longer to be an authentic Christian faith, and yes, there are Sisters whose experience has led them to this. The answer, it seems to me, is not censure or hostile takeover of a group, but first, and above all, a humble questioning on the part of those who claim to have all the insights and all the authority: Why don't people find what we are saying to be compelling and life-giving the way we do? Why is there such struggle and why does it always come to our having to "crackdown" on other believers like this? Are we missing something? And they need to really SEARCH the Scripture, too, which it doesn't seem apparent that they---the "authentic teachers"---are doing. Yes, there will be people who will eventually lose their Christian faith and fall away from the Church; I am sure that the spiritual abuse buried within each act of clergy sexual abuse has caused this for many victims, for example. And then there are others who simply lose their faith for whatever reasons known to God alone. But when you have an enormous group of dedicated people---like the Sisters and the millions of "lay" people who are hurting and angry about the way authority is exercised in the church and who are desperate to stay faihful in a structure that oppresses and harms in its arrogance----then it's time for the authorities to step back, examine themselves and start to take stock of their responsibility in this mess. This is precisely what is NOT happening; I am on record as thinking that the response of the pope and bishops, as a body, to the sexual abuse scandal was shockingly inadequate and I have lost all trust in these men as authentic teachers of anything, and most especially as teachers of the Gospel of repentance, conversion and salvation. So I am not sold on any action they take against other members of the Body of Christ and will pretty much come to the defense---in principle---of anyone they attempt to censure, especially those whose lives exemplify the teaching of the Gospel (vs the institutional) Jesus. If I could say one thing only to the assembled body of pope and bishops ( and I certainly have more than one thing to say!!!), it would be simply this: "REPENT AND BELIEVE in the Gospel". For I am convinced, when I read the Gospel, that it is these men who have "gone beyond" Jesus and left him behind in order to protect their own interests or indulge their own fears. They need to be converted, and the revelation of the sex abuse scandal, to me, was God's great act of mercy toward them a salutary wake-up call. Unfortunately, they did not respond. So all they have left now is their naked power masquerading as "authority" and their tendency to bully others masquerading as a desire for "dialogue."
Still further to my previous comments, here are a few more items for consideration:
"I think that the Church is the only thing that is going to make the terrible world we are coming to endurable; the only thing that makes the Church endurable is that it is somehow the body of Christ and that on this we are fed."—Mary Flannery O'Connor, from a letter to her friend, 1955
“A story has it that Napoleon once told a cardinal he could destroy the Catholic Church with his fists, in an instant, if he wanted to. The cardinal laughed and said, ‘We clergy have been trying to destroy the church for eighteen hundred years with our sins and stupidity but haven't come close. What makes you think you can do better?"’—Michael Leach, from Why Stay Catholic (Loyola Press. 2011)
In May 1430, Joan of Arc was captured by the Burgundians and sold to the English. After months of imprisonment, she was tried at Rouen by a tribunal presided over by the infamous Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. She was condemned to death as a heretic, sorceress, and adulteress, and burned at the stake on May 30, 1431. She was nineteen years old. Some thirty years later, she was exonerated of all guilt and she was ultimately canonized St. Joan of Arc in 1920, by Pope Benedict XV.—Reference Catholic Online(http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=295)
I find it ironic that the feast day of St. Joan of Arc falls on May 30 – during the May 29 - June 1, 2012 time period when LCWR’s national board will begin its discussion of the conclusions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s doctrinal assessment and the implementation plan put forth by that Vatican office.
Isn't it our right as Catholics in being and acting as Christ to question, to wonder and to dialogue about all matters? Radical Feminism is about equality and about hearing the message of Christ from the other side of humanity, not just one-sided. It is about fulfilling our call to be all that we can be in the light of the Gospel as fully integrated human beings.
I continue to blog and say that half of humanity has been silent and missing from the table for the entire era of Christianity. We all, men and women alike, have been cheated from hearing what the 'other' half has to say and how we interpret the Word without being relegated to third person epithets as if we cannot articulate our own selves as thinkers and carriers of our baptismal calling. Again, I say Mary has kept all this in her heart for way too long and she can no longer remain silent about matters that concern all of humanity and its healing and empowerment, so we can share the table and partake as full memebrs of this Church that I love and that is struggling in so many ways into a new paradigm of Christ's wonderful reversals that make us all think and feel beyond ourselves to the mystery that will forever baffle us and challenge us beyond any understanding. The LCWR walks in the true state of grace.
In his May 13, Washington Post opinion piece[1], E. J. Dionne, Jr., writes:
Do the bishops notice how often those of us who regularly defend the church turn to the work of nuns on behalf of charity and justice to prove Catholicism’s detractors wrong? Why in the world would the Vatican, apparently pushed by right-wing American bishops, think it was a good idea to condemn the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the main organization of nuns in the United States?
The Vatican’s statement, issued last month, seemed to be the revenge of conservative bishops against the many nuns who broke with the hierarchy and supported health-care reform in 2010. The nuns insisted, correctly, that the health-care law did not fund abortion. This didn’t sit well with men unaccustomed to being contradicted, and the Vatican took the LCWR to task for statements that “disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops.”
Revenge? It could very well be that revenge against the many nuns who broke with the hierarchy played a part, albeit a very small part, in the Vatican’s statement. It is all the more likely that the predominant part was played by the ultra-conservative forces that have been and still are working to reverse John XXIII's call to “…reestablish the principle of shared authority with all the church's members…in the biblical phrase `People of God’—a community of believers moving forward with humanity…”
Leading the forces to undo Vatican II’s vision of a collegial, less hierarchical church with increased lay involvement and revert to a pre-conciliar, strictly male-led, authoritarian church were Paul VI [2], John Paul II [3, 4], and Joseph Cardinal Rat zinger (now Benedict XVI)[5].
A caveat: Reading the noted references could lead to depressing thoughts about the Catholic Church if one forgets that WE ARE THE CHURCH. Also, reading Michael Leach's Why Stay Catholic? (Loyola Press, 2011) can serve as an antidepressant.
NOTES:
1. E.J. Dionne Jr., "I’m not quitting the church," The Washington Post, May 13, 2012,
2, Giovanni Franzoni, " Vatican II: Lost and betrayed'" Iglesia Descalza, September 19, 2011,
http://iglesiadescalza.blogspot.com/2011/09/vatican-ii-lost-and-betrayed.html
Franzoni, a former Benedictine abbot, Catholic theologian, and eyewitness to Vatican II, offers reflections at the 31st Congress of the Asociación de Teólogos y Teólogas Juan XXIII in Madrid, Spain.
3. Penny Lernoux, People of God, The Struggle for World Catholicism, 1989.
Toward the end the author's tragically short life (January 6, 1940 – October 9, 1989) she focused on the clamping down on dissent by John Paul II and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Benedict XVI). The book was based on years of research in Latin America and the United States. Lernoux described John Paul II's attempt to fortify an authoritarian model of the church as an effort to restore pre-Vatican II Roman Catholicism. The book documented the church's dismissal of scholars who questioned John Paul II's papacy. It also dissected various groups struggling for control of the church.
4. Gary Wills, Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit, Doubleday, 2000.
See Chapter 7, "Excluded Women, for John Paul's 1979 "Mary was not a priest."response to then LCWR President Sister of Mercy Theresa Kane ' public request that "half of humankind be included in al the ministries of the church."
5. Matthew Fox, The Pope's War: Why Ratzinger's Secret Crusade Has Imperiled the Church and How It Can Be Saved, 2011.
Fox's provocative book covers three decades of corruption in the Catholic Church, focusing on Josef Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, providing insights from his 12-year, up-close-and-personal battle with Ratzinger. He traces the historical roots of degradation in the Church and offering a new way to understand why Benedict XVI is now mired in crisis as Pope.
While quitting the Church is not for me, I personally know, love and respect several women who have concluded that they just do not have the energy to remain in the Roman Catholic Church. Two are nuns. These women see the Pope, Curia, and Bishops as rigid, thriving on control, and inspiring no hope for change. It is my personal reading that, because these woman are highly educated, articulate, with an ample amount of wit, and very intelligent, out of fear Rome will never confront them in person. We are all sinners, and that includes the Roman Catholic Hierarchy who seem too often like the hierarchy of the Gospels; it seems clear to me that over sacred time and space these women share that frustraion of Jesus.