Without Question

I belong to a small faith group (small in numbers, hopefully not in faith!) whose recent discussion topic was: How do we live with uncertainty. Easily, I ventured, especially compared to living with its opposite which I have always found infinitely more difficult. Really, I wondered, how do we possibly manage to live with the monstrous forms of ‘certainty’ that pervade our world, justifying, for example, climate change denial and inaction, gross economic disparity, racism, unfair distributions of power and leadership, exclusion of the ‘other’, and, of course, gender inequality. Why, instead of fretting about uncertainties which make life more challenging, yes, but also far more interesting and enervating, don’t we spend our time confronting the ways of thinking that produce absolute certainties. Then I rightly apologized to the group for being so preachy.

I do think, however, our Catholic upbringing, while acknowledging all the good it accomplished, had a major role in our acceptance of certainty as a paramount value. Think about our education and formation: An embrace of ambiguity was not in its repertoire; critical thinking was not a skill to be rigorously practiced. Why, in fact, should we even need to deal with ambiguity or apply critical dexterity: The Church already had the answers – without question – or questioning. Even its recent nods to affirming individual conscience are, in my experience, underemphasized, even fleeting.

I did not attend Catholic schools, but, as a ‘public’, I had to go to weekly after school catechetical classes. I am amazed now, especially in the sphere of gender equality, how much I accepted without question. Perhaps you have to be ‘of a certain age’, but do you remember, for example, whenever the priest entered the classroom, the nun would stop mid-sentence in her teaching, make us all stand and say, “Good afternoon, Father,” and then retire to a corner in the back of the room to stand with her hands joined in front as if in prayer while he said a few cheery words or extended a blessing (or scolded us for not attending Catholic schools). Why had I accepted, without question, that she, who had just been teaching us after a full day of teaching others herself, should shut up, retreat, and defer. Without question there was something wrong in the elevation of his role as higher than hers everywhere in our Church. But I had not learned to question; I had instead learned not to dare to presume to do so.

I wonder if, today, students in Catholic schools are putting up with that kind of display, of what was framed at the time as showing ‘respect’ for Father by a form of disrespect for of Sister. I don’t know the answer (although I’m pretty sure – but not certain! – the Church does). I’ll bet, though, young people, Catholic or not, are not accepting anything they see as unjust without question precisely because people in so many organizations like ours persist in questioning. We have become – I might say this with some certainty! –  role models. We are out there showing them, by example, we are not going to the back of any room, steepled or throned or not, with our hands folded in deference to any male because he is male and to any Church that reinforces this.

By the way: The other day, Soline Humbert of Women’s Ordination Worldwide, in her homily during an online liturgy, made me aware of something else I had been accepting without question: the voices of women and others who have been excluded. I am not talking here about voices in the sense of beliefs, views, sentiments, influences, but literally, the sound of voices other than male, their resonance and appropriateness. The speaker was referring specifically in this case to the Magnificat. Fortified by the certainty inherent in ‘tradition’ and decree, the Church demands Mary’s great prayer to be said at Mass by a man. Even Mary herself in her own voice would not be permitted to pray her own Magnificat, to answer in her own voice the ‘Yes’ that changed the world.  Have you ever thought how differently we all might see or respond to those passages if said in the voice of the appropriate gender?

In the September 21, 2020 New Yorker, music critic Alex Ross, who wrote a piece called “Master Class” about white supremacy in classical music, said this: “The act of performance has enormous transformative potential…Naomi Andre, in her 2018 book, ‘Black Opera: History, Power, Engagement’ evokes the dimensions of meaning that opened up when {African American} Leontyne Price sang the title role of Aida in the nineteen-sixties and seventies. Of the passage, ‘O patria…quanto mi costi!’ – ‘Oh, my country…how much you have cost me!’ – Andre writes, ‘The drama onstage and the reality offstage crash together.’”  New meaning, one enhanced by lived experience, oppression and suffering, infused the music with new life and possibilities because it had been sung by an authentic voice.

Be aware, hierarchy, if we accepted anything ‘without question’ before, we do so no longer. We question why men only, literally, speak our yesses, why they can determine our certainties and can quash our inquiries; even further, why they are the only ones who can ‘gather our prayers’, consecrate what we have helped grow or bottled or poured, why only they can absolve and transform. Isn’t life far too complex, too contradictory, too ever-changing to be oppressed and compressed by misplaced certainty? I would answer, hopefully without a misplaced certainty, yes!