Who but women can save the church?
Photo by Miguel Bruna on Unsplash
I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news of the Pennsylvania Grand Jury hearing, and I expect I will remember for quite some time. Twelve other young women and I had just concluded our initiation ceremony into the Loretto Volunteer Program, surrounded by the Sisters of Loretto at their Motherhouse on 800 acres of Kentucky farmland. Upon hearing the news, in the powerfully emotional way only a group of women can, we alternated between righteous fury and gut-wrenching, heartbreaking sadness. Some of us volunteers shouted and cursed, and many of the sisters shook their heads in pain. We wondered aloud how this could have happened, but inside, all of us already knew.
Catholics everywhere are beside themselves, and on top of frustration, anger, and pain, I imagine I am not the only one who feels helpless. After all, who am I in the face of the vastness of the Catholic Church in all its hierarchical misery?
The truest evil of this crisis is its pervasiveness.
It has permeated throughout the entire Church; it is in the Church’s blood. The problem does not stem from the tenets of Catholicism itself, but rather from the systemic power structure in which the Church – the human counterpart to the faith – has ingrained itself so deeply.
Reactions to the crisis have ranged from the vague to the concrete, the dismissive to the radical. For me, the most shocking and affecting reaction came in the form of a Daily Theology guest post entitled “Statement of Catholic Theologians, Educators, Parishioners, and Lay Leaders On Clergy Sexual Abuse in the United States.” In this statement, Dr. Susan Reynolds of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology calls for the collective resignation of all United States bishops.
While this call urges bishops to resign “as a public act of repentance and lamentation before God and God’s People”, and holds implicit in it a mostly symbolic meaning, it has been rattling around in my mind since I first read it. When all 34 Chilean bishops resigned in the wake of that country’s own sexual abuse scandal, Pope Francis only accepted the resignation of three of those bishops. Were all American Catholic bishops to come forth with resignation letters, Pope Francis would surely only accept a small percentage as well.
But what if he didn’t? What if Pope Francis accepted the resignations of every single American Catholic bishop?
Would anything change?
Emotionally, this call speaks to me. Completely razing the infrastructure of the Church often seems to me like the only way to ensure real or lasting change.
But a power structure this insidious and wide-ranging is aided first and foremost by the Church’s deeply-rooted patriarchy. Would replacing men with more men do anything to solve the vast problems in the Church right now? Can the Church ever be free of this insidious system of abuse while it is governed solely by men?
Even if Dr. Reynolds’ call was heeded and each and every member of the USCCB’s resignations was accepted, I do not believe that this problem would be resolved so long as women are barred from the higher ranks of the Catholic Church.
If there was ever a time for the Catholic Church to ordain women to the priesthood and diaconate, it is now. Women’s turn to stand at the altar – and more importantly, have a say in the moral governance of the global Church – is long overdue, but it is especially clear right now that the Church needs big change soon, and I believe that ordained women can help usher that change into existence.
This crisis stems ultimately from the patriarchy of the Church. The magisterium of the Catholic Church is made up solely of men who, for their whole lives, have been the most powerful people in each room they enter – men who have had no need for checks and balances, no need for accountability. This utter lack of willingness to distance themselves from the power they thrive on has had catastrophic consequences on thousands of lives and on the institution of the Church itself.
This is not to say that women have never been abusers or are incapable of assault or abuse; however, it is to say that systemic abuse of this nature is rooted in power structures like the all-powerful patriarchy of today’s Church. The ordination of women could usher in greater transparency in the institutional Church because, like survivors of clerical abuse and assault, women have known what it is like to be silenced by the Church. Empathy between and among marginalized groups engenders productive change, and women in the Church can be conduits of just that.
The ordination of women alone cannot rectify the Church’s situation; the Church feels nearly beyond repair right now, and there are countless steps to be taken to even inch towards justice. But the ordination of women has the potential to bring about an era of greater equity and justice for the members of the Church, current and past, whose pain and trauma must be avenged.
The women of the Loretto community, with whom I stood in shock and pain as news of the Grand Jury broke, shine with intelligence, humor, insight, and compassion. They, like all of us, are deeply hurt and angered by this crisis, this failure of the Church most of them have served for upwards of 50 years. When I look at them, I see more than just a group of spunky old nuns. I see a group of women with whom I feel comfortable discussing topics that are painful and difficult and important, and I see a unified body of faithful people who have beautiful gifts that are being ignored by the institutional Church. When I look at the Sisters of Loretto – and at all Catholic women – I see the possibility of an alternative to the abusive and patriarchal structure of the Church I share with them. I see a future Church in which women have the institutional power to protect the ones who so desperately need the freedom to grow and heal in safety.
One Response
“Equality”, not just women will save The Church but so right on that it will mostly come from women.
CHAPTER TWO “RELIGION IN CRISIS”
INSPIRED BY FRANCISCAN SISTER DELIO OSF THEOLOGIAN AND VISIONARY OF MANY BOOKS AND ARTICLES ON SCIENCE AND RELIGON. FOUNDER OF THE OMEGA CENTER IN WASHINGTON D.C.
The extent of documented depravity repotted and buried in the past, present and future, if not dealt with “Equality”, among the laity, Pastors Bishop, Cardinals, even to the most world’s most Holy Pope’s laps ,with little effective change for hundreds of years is overwhelming and no longer acceptable to most sane and moral individuals.
This Theologian and scientist shows us how past views of science influencing theology helped create the justification by the misuse of inequality with male only power, that like any power that assumes the rights of another, be they children or adults can be easily misused, and in this case the rights of the female half, results often in corruption! As is also true in the justification of slavery.
For many people, in good conscience and not seeing change within, have left to create a new culture “Equality” for gender, racial, cultural diversity,now in process.
Culture based on hierarchal pecking order, patriarchy, careerism, inequality even to language mistranslations of scriptures from the original Words of God’s Holy Spirit, became organized power and institutions often pitted against individuals by those individual’s natural conscience, and only those with a good heart, not too damaged by previous indoctrinations, fear, or violence!
Thousands of years of male only control has ingrained within so many of us the inferiority of the female half with feelings and emotions of which “Love that is God” * I John 4:16 etc. is a great deal of, for without the feeling of Mercy, equal Justice, equal concern, there can be no valid just intellectual thinking or justification for any moral action. Feelings are equal important to logic.
Clericalism is a type of corporate ladder-climbing,.. marked by the dominant male, far from the “Good News” of Jesus, but typical of the culture of his time, that has continued to creep in!
She points out two flaws:
1. The Ontology of Being. The belief that the male is closer to the nature of God. That God is not equally a Mother as well as a Father!
2. The notion that women are intellectually inferior and the source of sin. That only the male receives the breath of life from God. That sex and sexuality are inferior qualities of human personhood.
John Scotus Engena in the 9th century claimed that at the resurrection sex will be abolished and nature will be made one-only man-as if he had never sinned. Many of the past Theologians held women do not have fully formed intellects, an idea that goes back to Aristotle, and is wedded to official theology of The Catholic Church and turns a deaf ear to modern science or the Scotistic notion of being or “St. Paul’s Gal. 3:28 “In Christ”, “neither male or female”.
“While the Catholic Church has supported modern science reflected by the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences, it has not adopted the principle of scientific shifts of modern biology, evolution or quantum physics, despite the fact that these areas are pillars of Modern Science. As a result the official theology of the Church is based on the ancient cosmology of Ptolemy and the medieval Thomistic-Aristotelian metaphysical synthesis. As a result, the foundations of theology remain out of sync…
A closed system! Can it become Open to a new direction as “cooperative co-creators” making a difference in how we live our lives. “Our participation in the mystery of “Divine Love, incarnate and hidden in the brokenness of our world, lies at the basis of a healing world.”
When one abuses, or is abused, we all suffer!
Our faith must remain. Christ has risen, will return, the final word is not death, but life! We can rise from these ashes but we cannot stand still, or turn back. The Church can be born anew, for God is always doing new things! This is the message too that I have received in the one word of “Equality” at my spiritual “Rebirth” Jesus taught was necessary. Are you in need of One?