The Rest of the World

I suddenly realized that I haven’t written much about the rest of the world, even though I’ve tried not to write about the elections in the United States. They have absorbed my energy and my waking hours for several months. So, I will use two stories about women from foreign sources to bookend the story that exploded about many flawed men this week. 

First of all, I call attention again to Anne-Marie Pelletier, one of the members of the new Vatican commission on women deacons. With Monique Baujard, she takes on the attempts of French bishops to lift the ban on public worship that’s required by the coronavirus lockdown. “It is as if a form of Trumpism was insidiously winning over people’s minds, dividing society, deepening distrust of the other and making people barricade themselves in an identity that they claim is being threatened.” Woah! 

They argue that Christians must be bearers of hope in especially hard times, when much suffering afflicts the people. That hope comes from Christ: “Who will dispute that sacramental life is the most natural way of this relationship?” But why, they seem to ask, would you “claim, in particular, to assign the relationship with Christ to a devout participation in the Mass celebrated by priests, face-to-face or virtually?”  There’s so much more “that makes us creative in new forms of community life.”

Look at their reasoning: 

Certainly, it is the Eucharist that makes the Church when the Church celebrates the Eucharist. But it is wrong to claim that the Eucharist is the only means by which a Christian shares the life of Christ and is a part of the mission. This is the same rationale the institutional Church has used to help explain its reasons for denying the Eucharist to divorced and remarried Catholics. [emphasis added]

I’m not sure exactly what they mean by the last; it certainly took me by surprise. Should those denied Eucharist read the Scriptures together? Enlighten me in the comments, please.

The larger argument they wish to make is that “the Word of God is, in an equally necessary way, the table of life.” Rather, “in solidarity with a society full of emergencies,” gather with other Christians and “experience the Church as a community of discipleship in a new way.” Don’t be “curling up inwardly.” Be together, as Fratelli Tutti urges us, they say.

It is remarkable that a woman on a Vatican commission would seize this moment of confusion among bishops to make such a strong statement in favor of the laity leading their own common worship: “a Christian reality with mystical density!” Pelletier is not saying anything about deacons here, but her attitude is definitely not clerical. 

There’s nothing mystical about the McCarrick report, endlessly elaborated on in the Catholic press and widely reported on in secular outlets. On Facebook Live Thursday, NCR reporter Joshua McElwee characterizes it as “traumatizing” and Juan Carlos Cruz, a survivor and friend of Pope Francis says it is “disgusting.” NCR editor Heidi Schlumpf says that this report establishes “a new standard of investigation,” I think because it exposes the actions and omissions of those from Popes down to New Jersey bishops. All hid or ignored the rumors about a popular, political priest. The hierarchy was wrong. They are exposed in their claim that they were not aware of what was going on.

It is the worst excess of patriarchy to protect those who abuse the vulnerable, and who then exercise their power to protect themselves. 

If it’s exhaustive that you want, McElwee and others are included in a series of articles in NCR. I will focus on Christopher White’s interview with Mercy Sr. Sharon Euart, who provided a strong defense in the midst of the 2014 Vatican investigation of American sisters. She suggests that “the questionnaire that is meant to provide feedback on potential bishop candidates ‘might be reviewed and expanded to include questions that would lead to understanding personal and behavior issues’” and that “the process could be expanded to include more laypersons ‘who know the potential candidates professionally and personally.’” Jesuit Thomas Reese also looks to the future. His summary, which is more explicit and names New Jersey names, concludes with this: “Every seminarian in the church should be asked at least once a year whether he has experienced sexual abuse or harassment. This interview should be done by someone independent of the seminary and the diocese.” 

There is so much more; I’ll conclude this part with two reports that wind up in the same place, though they get there in very different ways. If it’s snide and snarky you want, turn to Robert Mickens in La Croix International. In fairness, he says he’s only being skeptical. If it’s a summary format you prefer, go to Colleen Dulle in America. Despite her clarity, she does not avoid the crucial question “whether this will set a new standard for transparency, or if the Vatican will simply revert to its usual way of operating.” 

Finally, I draw your attention to a British writer I’ve also been following for a long time. Joanna Moorhead summarizes her own book, Rebel Saints for 21^st Century Girls, in The Tablet. The drawings by Clare Körmöczy are wonderful, and the attitude is thoroughly Moorhead: “In almost every case, being ‘great’ involved standing up to male authority (either inside or outside the Church), pressing ahead even when priests and bishops were assuring them they were wrong, and overturning expectations about how women ‘should’ behave.”  Moorhead notices whether her saints were “rehabilitated” or not after being “regarded with suspicion” in their own times, and she includes, even in this brief summary, a few women I don’t know. She places their stories in a larger context of church politics: “Few of the men who have always run the Catholic Church intended it, but the institution they designed has been a cradle of radical feminism from its earliest times – and will always be a source of pride and inspiration for single-minded and idealistic young women.

If you’re going to read anything this week, read about inspiring women, not dispiriting clerics.