What Do You Think?
We in the Southeastern Pennsylvania division of Women’s Ordination Conference on each Holy Thursday hold a witness calling for the ordination of women. We stand in song and prayer outside the Basilica of Saints Peter & Paul in Philadelphia in all kinds of weather – rain, snow, sleet, heat – while, inside, the (Vatican-sanctioned) male priests, warm, dry, and comfortable, receive the holy oils for the anointings at Easter. I’m not even going to go into the metaphor and irony in all that because it is so glaringly obvious.
We have been holding this witness for over thirty years, and so you can imagine that we often feel as if all that needs to be said has been more than said and proclaimed and lamented. However, we are nothing less than undaunted, and so each year must come up with a new theme for the witness. This year the core committee considered and debated two options. I wonder which you would choose.
Did we want readings, songs, and prayers to focus on “A Renewed Church for A New Day”? Or “How Long My God Must We Wait!”?
Take your pick: Hope? Despair? Optimism? Frustration? Rosy-colored viewpoints? Realistic outrage? What will capture their attention? What will preserve our sanity? A vision of serene persistence? Or of moral indignation?
Here’s something I wrote recently in another publication about the uses of anger:
“I am more interested, however, in the second kind of anger, moral indignation” (the first kind was personal anger) “because that can be the most productive, has the most potential for doing good, and where I believe we [in the women’s ordination movement] fit in. There is a caution with moral indignation though – besides the warning about annoying in-your-face self-righteousness – in that, if the morally indignant believe their anger is not being heard, they can turn to the third type of anger: the quest for revenge and for inflicting destruction and punishment”…
Which can provoke backlash, not only from those to whom it is directed, but from those more peaceful souls currently on their side.
Omigosh. What hubris, to quote yourself…and yet I go on!
The article [“Why Is America So Angry?” by Charles Duhigg in the January/February 2019 Atlantic] used the example of Cesar Chavez as a master of using moral indignation to effect positive change. According to the author, he succeeded by making ‘his followers see their discontent as part of a larger story about right and wrong.’ He also realized that people protesting injustice cannot see themselves as victims or they will, according to Marshall Ganz who worked alongside Chavez and recorded his words, ‘have no sense of agency, no sense of power. But when you tell them that we’re fighting an injustice or an offense to their dignity, they become angry and involved’.I sometimes worry that our specific cause, women’s ordination in the Catholic Church, may seem too small in light of other very prominent issues in the Church – and world. But then I realize, we do have to stress more urgently and consistently our moral outrage at the offense to our dignity – men’s, women’s, all genders’ dignity – by not only the hierarchy’s prohibition, but its unwillingness, with a turn of the back, with a slam of the door, to even talk about the prohibition. We are unheard because no one is “allowed” to hear us. No wonder we hear some say: Burn down the Church or let it implode. Unheard anger so readily can turn into that third vengeful, destructive kind where no deal is on the table …if we let it.
But we won’t.
Full disclosure: I proposed and voted for the theme, “A Renewed Church for a New Day”. After writing this piece, however, “How Long My God Must We Wait” is resonating more and more. What do you think?
12 Responses
Every good wish to all of you on this faithful, important, and world-changing work. Thank you.
I would add to the conversation something I recall Sr. Teresa Kane remarking. There is anger motivated by hatred, and anger motivated by love. Let’s choose the anger motivated by love.
“How Long My God Must We Wait”
A Cultural Revolution for an Integral Ecology
http://www.pelicanweb.org/solisustv15n04page24.html
BUT, we better keep in mind that “avenger feminism” is BAD, BAD, BAD!
Over 30 years outside the cathedral every Holy Thursday!!!! WOW!! Well done Ellie and to all your supporters!!
I would like to suggest a third option: Start living the Renewed Church NOW! Celebrate the Eucharist in your homes without an officially ordained priest. We are all baptised as Prophets, Priests and Kings.
Some time in the future the hierarchical church will catch up with the laity leading the way.
I vote for the “Renewed Church.”
I think Holy Thursday is not the best day to demonstrate for women’s ordination. It buys into the false narrative that Holy Thursday is about the institution of the priesthood. Holy Thursday to me is about Jesus and Gethsemane and his massive act of love. Period.
I do however support your efforts for equality for women in the church – but on a better day – like every Sunday!
I also do not believe what the church claims occurs in Holy Orders and my opinion on that would not change if women were ordained.
Priests of whatever sex are not required.
Do you really think the Vatican and its entrenched patriarchy will ever “allow” women to be priests?
Do you think meetings and talking will change things in any significant way? Or you going to wait for more decades to go by?
Vote with your feet and pocketbooks now.
Schism! For a better Catholic church. One that is not exclusive and patriarchal and misogynistic. One that follows the true gospel.
How Long, My God, How Long?? Seems very appropriate! Other seemingly impossible causes have seen reforms happen more quickly than could be believed: from “Defense of Marriage” laws to states enabling gay marriage by laws upheld by the Supreme Court. But the US bureaucracy is several hundred years younger, and perhaps less complicated, than the Vatican bureaucracy! But we can still hope!
Thank You for all your doing. Please Continue to not support Sexism especially within The Church, actually against Vatican II World Wide Council of Bishops about every 100 years, this time ignorned by males in Control of Vatican Pastoral Constitution stated in 1965 there was to be “no more discrimination within The Church in regards to racism, sex…as Not the Will of God” Article 29
The belief of inequality is widespread it is not just the Catholic Church but in most Religions, Politics as well as profit making Economics are controlled and have been for 1000’s of years primarily by males. Believers in inequality, instead of God’s “Equality” of Equal Rights, Opportunity. The Universal belief found in all major religions of the Golden Rule.
Best way is to stop supporting Sexism, racism and all other forms of negative inequality.
I like :-
“How Long My God Must We Wait”
Think that has more impact and more force
(if that makes sense ?)
And do the Women who have
had the calling from God want to wait any longer???.
Would they consider going to USA and being ordained by ordained women bishops.?
Perhaps it grows as we grow older, this sense of righteous indignation. It is absurdi that 51% of the population being dismissed and silenced by the gender that is responsible for the so much soul damage in our church and destruction in our world Today I found an old box with bumper stickers. In spite of my enjoyment of my current cars uncluttered look, I decided today that the “ORDAIN WOMEN OR STOP DRESSING LIKE THEM is being resurrected! Thanks to SEPAWOC for its writings and its fortitude in witnessing for justice and Equity for women in our deeply dysfunctional church..
I vote for How Long Must We Wait. 30 years? In light of the recent events; MCCarrick, etc. might it be time to step things up?
I have to admit that this year I find myself in the “How much longer, O God, must we wait!!” I am very inspired by the courageous resignations of Lucetta Scaraffia and other staff of Women Church World, a monthly supplement to the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano. We have worked through SEPAWOC and other groups for years and there are the same tone deaf responses from the institution. Women have tried respectful inquiry, excellent scholarship, effective leadership and creative approaches to Eucharistic. But with all the recent expose of corruption and the sex abuse scandal, it seems, that short of a non -violent equivalent of a knock upside the head, they just don’t get it. The Church as we know it is dying. Maybe that is a good thing and the Holy Spirit has better things in store.
This year, lamentation is winning over hope for renewal. Is renewal even possible? It feels like patriarchy and clericalism is an addiction and the institution has yet to hit rock bottom.