“Major Statement on the Role of Women”

Mary McAleese at Voices of Faith 2018

This is a quote from John Allen in Crux, who notes that every twenty years, “the Vatican has felt compelled to issue a major statement on the role of women.” Leave it up to Crux to remind us of Inter Insigniores in 1976 and Ordinatio Sacerdotalis in 1994.

This time the major statement has been issued by a woman. Just outside the walls of the Vatican, Mary McAleese puts the very credibility of God at issue in the church’s denial of equality to women. Who could believe in a God who would do that?

Certainly Cardinal Farrell knew something in denying her a place to speak within the Vatican.

I encourage you to read the entire address. Many news outlets have picked out her vivid statements. But did she, as Allen writes, take ordination off the table?

McAleese argues for a strategy with measurable timelines to make accountable the – oh, what to say – kind thoughts and prayers (Thank you, Stoneman Douglas teens, for revealing how hollow that always is.) of church officials about women’s equality.

“Yet paradoxically it is the questioning voices of educated Catholic women and the courageous men who support them, which the Church hierarchy simply cannot cope with and scorns rather than engaging in dialogue. The Church which regularly criticizes the secular world for its failure to deliver on human rights has almost no culture of critiquing itself. It has a hostility to internal criticism which fosters blinkered servility and which borders on institutional idolatry.”

McAleese grabs Pope Francis’ unfortunate simile of “the strawberry on the cake” to say that “Women are the leaven in the cake.” Here she’s referring to all women in the church, not just educated women. They pass on the faith – or not. McAleese herself is a theologian as well as a successful politician, and she draws from both aspects of her career to ask Pope Francis “to develop a credible strategy for the inclusion of women as equals throughout the Church’s root and branch infrastructure, including its decision-making.” She doesn’t say “ordination,” but she’s talking about power, real power.

How hard is it to do this kind of change in the church? The struggles of the papal sex abuse commission suggest how difficult it is for this institution to honestly address an uncomfortable situation. There is a dialogue of sorts with the Vatican about this issue, painful as it is for many of those involved.

Voices of Faith, Jesuit Curia 2018

Tina Beattie of England and Nivedita Lobo Gajiwala of India put ordination right back on the table in the news conference, according to Joshua McElwee in NCR, if indeed, McAleese took it off at all. I am struck with how international this meeting in Rome is as I look at the links in the WOC email to members, which I look forward to viewing. Figuring out how to pull together all the important threads of women’s life in the church is a challenge, and those leaders who organized this Voices of Faith event have done it.

Others have as well. I was greatly encouraged by an article in NCR about the Ecumenical Catholic Communion (ECC). This Catholic church has just ordained Denise Donato of Rochester as its first women bishop. Certainly this is something to celebrate; Denise is priest of extraordinary depth and ability. But Jamie Manson also gives us an idea of what the ECC has done in creating a network of faith communities in this country – and now abroad, I believe. A majority of its members are Latinx, and the church has also ordained a Latinx bishop. I must confess I suffered through reading the constitution of the ECC – but guess what? They have a constitution and they do things democratically. The ECC is a model of the church McAleese can see for Roman Catholicism.

And what does Pope Francis want? I am sure that the movement for a new feast day for Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church has been in the works for a while, and the memorial he established is meaningful to many people. But it’s more of the same, and not the change McAleese or the ECC embody. As Lise Hand said in The Times, “If the hierarchy of the Holy See wants to take the role of women in the church seriously, they should start by listening to this Irishwoman.”