Conversation

Dan Stockman begins his retrospective of Sister Simone Campbell’s career at Network with the bounce that Vatican criticism gave to the organization: new support, energy, and money. She said what I say every time the Vatican condemns women’s ordination: “We often joked that we should send the Vatican a thank-you note.” 

This is a reflection after-the-fact; I’m sure it’s not possible for the LGBTQ community right now, and I write only as one concerned and caring for mistreated Catholics. My inbox is full of support and I see great energy. I don’t know about money, yet, but I hope so. 

What the Pope’s approval of the CDF responsum has generated is conversation. I’m not going to characterize it as dialogue in the Fratelli Tutti sense. People are talking obliquely to each other, not so much directly. Last week I wrote about bishops and advocacy organizations. I will focus in this post on the Pope, the theologians, and the grassroots.

The Pope.  Paul Elie in The New Yorker examines the role of Francis in this document, and concludes, “Circumstances don’t diminish either the sting of the document or the Pope’s responsibility for it.” Yet he agrees with the report of Gerard O’Connell in America that the Pope’s very brief Angelus comments on Sunday March 21 are an attempt to move back the impact of the responsum. I consider them an entry into the conversation: “Then the Lord, with his grace, makes us bear fruit, even when the soil is dry due to misunderstandings, difficulty or persecution, or claims of legalism or clerical moralism. This is barren soil. Precisely then, in trials and in solitude, while the seed is dying, that is the moment in which life blossoms, to bear ripe fruit in due time.” Maybe he’s not saying “go for it” as Simone Campbell did, but he wants not “theoretical condemnations, but … gestures of love…given in God’s style: closeness, compassion, tenderness.” The responsum didn’t condemn narrow legalism as Francis does, every time; I think the CDF attempted to incorporate some language to sound more like Francis, and failed.

A second papal gesture came on Wednesday with the appointment of Juan Carlos Cruz to the languishing papal commission on child sexual abuse. Cruz got the Pope’s ear about the horrors in the Chilean church and Francis asked all the Bishops to resign. Cruz is also a gay man who was critical of the responsum, hoped to talk with the Pope about it, and was critical of the CDF. His appointment is another oblique papal comment in this conversation, and a signal to revive the abuse commission as well. 

The theologians. Theologians put the conversation into overdrive by drawing on the depth of their prior analysis to comment on the present crisis. Sudden attention to the continuing work of these laborers in the vineyard of Catholic thought is one of the most beneficial effects when such an unconsidered statement is issued. Here are three, though there are many more; for example, so far over 230 German theologians have signed a statement for presentation to leaders of the Synodal Path there.

Isabelle Parmentier contrasts the responsum with the goodness of all creation in Genesis and with the ethics of discernment in Amoris laetitae. She destroys the idea that expressing sexual identity can be a sin. “It is unacceptable from the human point of view, wrong from the moral point of view and scandalous from the theological point of view. A disaster.” She’s French.

James Allison characterizes the responsum as “a tantrum…The kind of absolutism we associate with angry infants…Luckily, as adults know, a tantrum only has the power over you that you give it.” He uses this analogy to do exactly that: diminish the power of the CDF. He is brilliant about their circular logic, out of touch with reality and with “divine wisdom in fact, and in practice,” and calls them to experience the mercy that learning new things brings. He’s British. 

Mary Hunt focuses on the present practice of blessing same-sex unions and weddings, and argues that these ceremonies go beyond the “sacramental” of the responsum: “According to contemporary Catholic definitions, a sacrament is an occasion when a community lifts an everyday human experience to public expression because it is holy.” This is true in Baptism, in Ordination, and in Marriage, she says. “The ministers of the Sacrament of Marriage are the people who make a covenant with one another, not the priest who is a witness along with the rest of the community called church.” Again, the CDF is displaced and the wisdom of the people is affirmed. She’s American.

The Grassroots. This is the place in the conversation where I’d ask you to hold up a mirror. What has been your response? Who have you talked with? I wonder how many ordinary people are telling their stories in op-eds in local newspapers, like Jobert E. Abueva did in The Philadelphia Inquirer. Others are probably doing so in social media. Nothing I have said about developments in theology will take away the hurt experienced when your experience is discounted and you are condemned for the logical conclusion of your being. All of the theologians know this and all want you in the conversation. And, really, I think the Pope knows this, too, and is trying to figure out a better response in the conversation about the responsum.