Women’s Equality Day

You know what it’s like when you return from vacation: a huge pile of mail. One magazine cover leapt out to me: “Prayer and Power,” with a photo of Paula Clark, “the first Black and first Episcopal Bishop of Chicago, on building a truly inclusive ministry.” My welcome home!

I am always thrilled when our issue gets explored sensitively in secular media, and Amy Worden’s story “Brave Enough to Be It” does that in my alumni magazine. Clark found her place to confront racism and sexism in the church. After hearing one of the “Washington Five” speak at her Episcopal prep school, she knew she was called. Her mother’s opposition was only one barrier to pursuing that path, but at 39 she entered Virginia Theological Seminary and was ordained in 2005. She used her experience in public policy and government to rise quickly in the Washington diocesan administration. Mariann Budde, the Bishop there, characterized her as having a “pastoral heart” as she led COVID-19 and anti-racism efforts. Now, in Chicago, Clark’s goals?

“I want to spread love of God far and wide among God’s people. I want everybody at the table and I want us to transform this world.”

In honor of Women’s Equality Day today, I am going once again to look at women in church leadership. First, nuns, as in the NCR editorial apparently only in the print edition of August 20-September 2, 2021 which was also in my mail: “Bishops should follow sisters’ lead on racial justice.” Dan Stockman’s article on the LCWR’s efforts against racism in the same issue also details the way that that religious congregations have been seeking to discover the history of their racism. That’s what the USCCB has not done with the same care and honesty and firm purpose of amendment, according to the editors.

Divinity schools do not escape criticism, either. Renee Roden has opened a discussion of how theologians discount Black religious experience. Key to understanding the problem: “Another religion scholar…said that the methodology of religious studies and theology departments is steeped in academic norms developed during the European Enlightenment of the 17 and 18 centuries, and they continue to value abstract, conceptual knowledge over experiential or practical wisdom that tends to inform Black spiritual lives.” Even this heady, elite world needs those women and men who speak out about intellectual bias.

If you’d like a quick review of Black Catholic history, consult Alessandra Harris’s “White Catholics today condemn slavery. But are they ready to fight its new manifestation—mass incarceration?” Harris hits all the bases, although briefly, in moving from the earliest to the most recent Black experience of massive deprivations of freedom, and the Catholic response or lack of response to it.

I highlight these two writers on racism to emphasize how women’s journalism can lead the way, institutionally and intellectually. Grace Doerfler in America does the same in her article: “I am a queer Catholic. When will the church feel like home?” She begins by saying “I went to an Episcopal church last Sunday,” and writes to provide her life story for “queer and transgender Catholics [who] grow up without hearing narratives that could well be lifelines to community and self-acceptance.” One among many insights: “the process of coming out can hold a certain sacramentality…Breaking the silence can allow the inbreaking of the Spirit.” I would love to join in the celebration of that sacrament.

But perhaps for that I will have to wait for women’s leadership in the institutional church. A lot happens in three weeks! And I will start again with sisters, this time in Latin America, whose recent synod provided a model of how today’s religious life can be “intercongregational, intercultural and itinerant.” 9000 attendees made the CLAR assembly more than a representative synod: “And the energy matched the numbers, with 20 minutes dedicated to participants waving their native flags and sharing their excitement. Even the cultural celebration with videos of dancers kept its place in the agenda.”

May the same energy infuse the Root and Branch Synod in Bristol, England, that Johanna Moorhead writes about in The Tablet. Three members of  “the pressure group, Catholic Women’s Ordination” took up her frustrated call for a synod and are making it happen, with help from more than 900 around the world. Join online or in person September 5-12; more information on the Root and Branch Synod website. You may have already shared your ideas for the various documents that have been developed in a wide participatory process, and you are going to want to hear the stellar speakers, including Mary McAleese and James Carroll. 

Post-vacation, I am less hopeful for the Synod of Bishops in October next year, though I note that the Pope has appointed a few more women to Vatican posts. Salesian sister Alessandra Smerilli is now interim secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development to replace two priests in the top jobs who resigned. I have a feeling that there’s more to this story. Smerilli has several other posts, and she’s scheduled to be a speaker at the meeting on priesthood that Montreal Cardinal Marc Ouellet organized. I wrote about this last April, sharing suspicions that it’s an anti-Francis effort.

What does it take for women to be appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences? Only a Nobel Prize! I’m still glad that the Canadian physicist Donna Theo Strickland, the French chemist Emmanuelle Marie Charpentier and the American biochemist Jennifer Doudna are now part of this august group; you can read about it in America.

The Irish Bishops have appointed a laywoman to head the national synod effort, which is different from the Vatican Synod of Bishops process. Nicola Brady is “General Secretary of the Irish Council of Churches and co-secretary of the Irish Inter-Church Meeting. She has expertise in the field of faith-based peace-building on the island of Ireland and at the international level.” La Croix International notes that two bishops will be her assistants, and that the synod will address the women question. The article concludes:

“Women often feel undervalued by the Catholic Church. A study found that 74% of Irish Catholic women believed that the Church did not treat them with ‘a lot of respect,’ compared to 6% of Protestant women. Former Irish president Mary McAleese has described the Catholic Church as ‘a primary global carrier of the virus of misogyny.’ A 2018 poll found that 55% agreed with McAleese that the Church does not treat women equally.”

Back to where we started, with an Episcopal woman bishop and in our institutional church? Watch for the meeting of the Commission on Deacons, scheduled for mid-September. Christopher Lamb summarizes the whole issue, and finds hopeful that “the Pope chose someone from outside of the CDF to lead the commission.” Cardinal Giuseppe Petrocchi is “the multi-lingual archbishop of the central Italian archdiocese of L’Aquila and a trusted advisor to Francis.” The secretary is “Fr Denis Dupont-Fauville, a relatively new official at the doctrine office, who used to oversee the permanent diaconate for the Archdiocese of Paris.” I trust him less because he told Lamb that “their work was covered by the pontifical secret.” I am tired of secrets. I trust Phyllis Zagano to keep following this issue.  

And I trust that you feel as caught up as I do in this world of church politics and women’s equality. I know I have not addressed many issues that come up in these articles, but if you find just one that you read and think about, I will have done my job. Welcome back!