Ending Minority Rule

I was struck by two questions about the political process in the above article by Kai Wright in The Nation (September 24/October 1, 2018):

Are we prepared to end the minority rule that white men have wielded over the United States for hundreds of years? Are we ready to tear down the foundation upon which that power stands and build something entirely new?

You will see where I am going with this by the end of this blog, I hope.

In a widely quoted Commonweal article, Paul Moses discusses something that’s only news when a man reports it: Pope Benedict XVI forced Bishop William Morris of Australia to resign in 2011. Why? Not because of sexual abuse or its cover-up. Because he discussed women’s ordination.

Moses describes Morris’s resistance to that decision, which the bishop had the good sense to write about in his 2014 book Benedict, Me and the Cardinals Three. Morris points out that he didn’t act on his statement that he would ordain women and married men if it were legal. He just wrote a simple sentence.

Roy Bourgeois refuses to recant his support of women’s ordination on the law of the Papal nunciature in Washington, D.C. 2011

Morris’s ordeal is reminiscent of the shadow process against Tony Flannery and the long saga of Roy Bourgeois’ excommunication. These priests, our friends, did more than Morris to support women’s ordination, and were punished for it. By the way, Roy has been writing to newspapers in Pennsylvania making the same point that Moses makes: Why is women’s ordination the unforgivable sin, while covering up sexual abuse is tolerated?

The contrast Moses uses to make this point is between Morris and Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who isn’t completely out yet (pun intended) for abusing seminarians (which was known) and children (which was less known). Moses quotes the vapid churchy language in a conciliatory statement by Australia’s bishops, who sided with Benedict when he forced the resignation of their colleague: “What was at stake was the Church’s unity in faith and the ecclesial communion between the Pope and the other Bishops in the College of Bishops.” We’ve heard that one before from priests who were reluctant to go public with their support of women’s ordination. Moses goes on to say:

Meanwhile, a hazy secrecy surrounded whatever it was that happened in the Vatican over allegations that McCarrick sexually harassed and abused seminarians. And yet, in retrospect, the McCarrick situation has proven far more devastating to the mission of the church than any progressive ideas Morris may have dared to raise during Pope Benedict’s papacy.

The progressive ideas were only a threat to a small minority of clerics in Rome and in the US and probably other countries. The real threat to the credibility of bishops is the scandal of sex abuse, which even Charles Chaput, Philadelphia archbishop and the Vatican’s investigator in the Morris case, recognizes now. The real threat is all the cases discovered by the Grand Jury in Pennsylvania and just waiting to be found in the many states that are beginning the process. All this makes clear to me the inward focus of the Vatican, the culture of clericalism that Francis is trying to change. What matters is loyalty, caution, the inside game, church politics — not the people of God who the church is meant to serve. Melinda Henneberger in CRUX is quoted by John A. Dick in a comment that summarizes Rome well:

“I’ve been very supportive of Francis, but doesn’t he have anyone around him who will tell him how serious this crisis is? Bottom line, the last three popes and who knows how many before that have failed to protect children. They haven’t seen how central a failing that’s been, either, or why if the Church can’t get that right, nothing and I mean nothing else matters.” 

I often think that people shouldn’t say that all this never would have happened if there were women priests. But Henneberger goes far to convince me otherwise.

And what happens? I go back to Kai Wright’s questions:

Are we prepared to end the minority rule that white men have wielded over the United States for hundreds of years? Are we ready to tear down the foundation upon which that power stands and build something entirely new?

John Dick has some concrete suggestions for how to get what he and others are calling the Third Reformation moving. His list is an odd combination of modern management practices and the elimination of medieval titles and dress. It begins:

(1) Starting at the local level, let our parishes be genuine communities of faith in which male and female equality is our ministerial practice, and shared decision-making our rule of pastoral life. … Perhaps we should return to the early American Catholic practice of lay trustees, which Catholics learned from Congregational churches.

(2) In every diocese there should be a pastoral leadership council, composed of lay and ordained representatives from each parish.

Lots more specifics are in this long article. I focus on these two because they are so reflective of the democratic culture in this country. How do we create “something entirely new” in our church? Start on the local level.

Francis may have something else in mind, as he calls the presidents of all the conferences of Catholic bishops together next February, not soon enough, in my opinion, but I see something positive in it. There is a hint of a democratic, representational process here, an implied accountability to the other bishops in the country, if not exactly to the people of God. Rather thrilling is the thought that the curial bishops might not be included. See the Cardinals Three reference above. To whom are they accountable, really? You’d probably say the Pope, but maybe the Pope is trying to spread accountability beyond the closed clerical Roman culture. I would not argue that the Pope is tearing down the foundation of male supremacy in the church, but that he’s at least taking down the spire.