The Tipping Point

Marie Collins of Ireland will be the speaker for the third Tipping Point tour sponsored by Catholic Organizations for Renewal. Collins was a member of the Vatican’s Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and resigned because – well, this is the quote used to publicize the tour: “Survivors will not be satisfied with more words or promises, they need to see real change.” It’s just about a year since the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report about child sexual abuse in the church. If you remember how you felt last year, show up to see Collins in Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, New Orleans, or Los Angeles. Listen to someone who stands up, speaks out, makes change

How do tipping points work? This week New York state opened a year-long window for survivors of abuse to sue. Such legislation has stalled in Pennsylvania, but laws have been passed in fifteen states to reform statutes of limitations. ChildUSA has an excellent summary, ranking each of those efforts. Was last year’s Grand Jury report the tipping point?

My guess that long-time workers in the field like Marie Collins and Marci Hamilton of ChildUSA – two women among many others – would say it’s more complicated. Certainly the publicity that is so hard to generate suddenly comes your way. How do you take that moment and convert the aroused public and the real decision makers to move to make real change? The struggle continues in the church, and that’s what Collins will address.

I started thinking about tipping points in another context, however, upon listening to the wonderful Fresh Air interview with Helen Prejean, CSJ. Prejean’s work has been against the death penalty, and she has confronted public and church authorities to push for an end to its use in the United States. Important work. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolfe, among others, refuses to impose it.

But death penalty work is not what brought the tipping point to my mind. We have been long-time workers in the field of women’s ordination. We have demonstrated, written everything from books to blogs, talked to bishops and other Catholics to the point of exhaustion. Yet many who agree with us in private have been reluctant to express their support in public.

One of Malcolm Gladwell’s points in his 2000 book of the same name is that tipping points depend, finally, on “‘persuaders,’ charismatic people with powerful negotiation skills. They tend to have an indefinable trait that goes beyond what they say, which makes others want to agree with them,” according to that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia. The “information specialists” — us – have already compiled the facts and the arguments and the “connectors” in the progressive Catholic world have developed the use of social media among other resources to create a community.

For years, I have been trying to think of influential Catholics who could serve as “persuaders” for women’s ordination, and suddenly Helen Prejean publishes a book, River of Fire: My Spiritual Journey, which she concludes with a letter she sent to Pope Francis “in which she shares her concern about the way the church excludes women. ‘How do you love your Church and raise the questions?’ she says. ‘You do that because you do love your Church! … You keep the dialogue going!’”

Women can’t preach in the Catholic Church. Women cannot read the Gospel at Mass. A young little pimply teenager who happens to be a boy could read the Gospel. You’ve got to be male. [There are a] million ways it plays out that women somehow cannot fully image Christ. It was what I said in the letter [to Pope Francis], was that women need to be in on those decision-making councils when policies are being decided in the church, because the presence of women — our consciousness, our empathy, what we bring to the table — is really important for the dialogue. And if men in the church are always only talking to other men at the top decision-making levels, and that’s the curia in Rome, that’s the bishops when they meet — it’s always all males. And … if we don’t have full dialogue with women represented … we are never going to be able to embody what the gospel of Jesus is about.

I hope these long quotations from the online summary whet your appetite to listen to the whole interview.  Prejean is a Catholic woman who is a real leader, a person who uses humor as well as deep feeling and tremendous honesty to talk about her life and work – and our lives and work.

Let us keep asking other persuaders to speak out the truth about women in the church. At some point the Pope will have to realize that justice for women informs so many of the causes that he cares about.