A Difficult Woman

Is “a difficult woman” a cliché? It’s been used in an Australian television series and a biography of Lillian Hellman, not to mention a book by Roxane Gay and an anthology about twenty-nine contemporary women.

Would Lucetta Scaraffia be an Italian version? Having written about her resignation letter and now having read several articles published after that, I feel compelled to go back to Scaraffia, the editor who resigned from “Women Church World.” The situation is more complicated and Scaraffia got to the media first.

I could not bring myself to follow the changes in the Vatican Communication office last December, when the editor was replaced and several others resigned. Robert Mickens follows the politics in LaCroix International. He’s no apologist for Scaraffia, to put it mildly, but he does explain (as others have) the free reign she had before the changes, and reign may be the operative word. She had unusual autonomy and influence; that was pulled back and rather than stay, she went, and not as quietly as the others had.

Rita Ferrone in Commonweal tells a similar story, with the added annoying comment that a dedicated women’s space in the Vatican paper may not be necessary:

But I wonder if a segregated initiative is really such a good idea over the long run. I would rather see the concerns, expertise, and thoughtfulness that go into the supplement poured into the main publication, and have women’s issues established as an integral part of its usual reporting rather than sequestered in a separate publication. Is having a women’s issue “on the side” not just another way of saying that men need not pay attention?

Is whether men pay attention the only criterion? I am a great believer in the usefulness of separate spaces focused on women, where women’s voices can be heard without compromise, especially in institutions that privilege men.

And in the matter of L’Osservatore Romano, Scaraffia advised on articles regarding women in the main paper, as Rocco Palmo noted years ago. She had the best of both worlds. Curiously, he does not seem to have covered her resignation.

Scaraffia became a media personality, including a long article in The New Yorker last October. Author Elizabeth Barber quotes Kate McElwee of WOC and many others to place Scaraffia in context of women challenging the patriarchy a little more out there than any others in the article:

“The condition of women in the Church will only change if women have the courage to begin to change it from below,” she writes. Two days before the Synod of Bishops began, a symposium, put on by the group Catholic Women Speak, was held in Rome. There, Scaraffia was even more explicit. “Why don’t we become a nuisance in every place where women are not present?” she said. “I am leading a war against the patriarchy of the Church.”

Scaraffia certainly accomplished that with her resignation, and this meeting is where Jamie Manson heard her talk. Manson emphasizes that the women left “Woman Church World” together, but it now seems clear that not every woman associated with it resigned. Certainly Scaraffia insured that their leaving was placed in the context of a dispute rather than a personality conflict, the suspicion when the reasons are vague, as they were last December when others left.

This is why I have come to think about Scaraffia as a difficult woman. Everybody writes about the apparent contradictions among some of her positions: for example, agreeing with the church on birth control but not abortion. She is not afraid, as we have been singing for years. I do not think she will disappear from the Roman stage, but I am no longer expecting Pope Francis to meet with her.