Images of Leadership

Sometimes I do wonder at the contradictions. How do we make sense of it all? 

Do women need to be encouraged to lead? I can’t find a text – maybe I don’t want to – of a welcome Pope Francis sent to the Women’s Forum G-20 at their meeting before the global summit. It was the same old, same old: “our world needs the collaboration of women, their leadership and their abilities, as well as their intuition and their dedication.” Tagged on to the end is my guess about what he was really thinking about: a call for “every girl and young woman in every country [to] have access to quality education so that each of them may flourish, expand their own potential and talents, and dedicate themselves to the development and progress of cohesive societies.” Terrific. Deflect attention from the church.

That article was also circulated in the Washington Post online, but I wind up looking at a photo in the Post of Dr. Rachel Levine, the highest transgender official in the Biden administration, now made an admiral of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. I know the trials she faced being trans as health secretary in Pennsylvania during the COVID epidemic. That Corps was created and formalized in the 18^th and 19^th century, when the imagination could see health service organized in military garb. But I see a Bishop, a woman able to lead.

Mary Fainsod Katzenstein’s 1998 Faithful and Fearless traced that decade’s feminist protest within the American military and within the Catholic Church. I love the juxtaposition of these hierarchical institutions, and her Chapter 5, “Discursive Activism” dealing with Catholic women’s politics of images is a very useful framework for understanding our movement. We now have women bishops. We have a nonbinary priest, Kori Pacyniak, pictured in a major national magazine and working very hard pastoring the San Diego Mary Magdalene RCWP community. Now we call people of all genders to leadership!

And I can’t help including another image from New Ways Ministry’s Bondings 2.0. Genderfluid Emma Houle, who uses they/them pronouns, holds a rainbow flag over their shoulders to celebrate being one of the “princesses” at her Sacramento Catholic high school’s homecoming rally. I was especially moved by the support they received from the queen and the other princesses. The school administration is fluttering. Does that not say it all about contradictions? Who is leading the church today? 

But back to the Pope. What would he want church leaders to do? Maybe get people to see the importance of the environment and climate change? There’s a new Laudato si Action Platform launching from Rome on November 14, the day the USCCB convenes. How is this going to go over here? Religion News Service published a study of the columns American bishops wrote in their diocesan publications, which must have been an exciting bit of reading. The results? Only 53 of the 201 bishops “mention climate change, global warming or their equivalent at all.” And when they do, they push “solutions” like education and prayer more than external or political environmental activism. “Only 14 columns affirm the scientific consensus about climate change. Only 29 columns describe climate change as urgent.” 12,700 columns turned up that miserable showing.

If you are a reader of NCR, you know how many “Earth Beat” and “Global Sisters Report” articles feature nuns acting environmentally. Taking on COP26 or the world food system, teaching sustainable agriculture, using strategies from shareholder meetings to conservation easements—you name it, the sisters are there. That’s what leadership is—action in the real world.

In fact, “Action, Not Words” is the motto of the Holy Child Sisters order, which is celebrating their 175^th anniversary. Founder Cornelia Connelly lived a soap opera life from Philadelphia through Rome to Mayfield, England. This woman took life and death and a difficult husband in stride. She used her relative privilege to make something much larger than her individual piety. Confronted by restrictive church and secular laws, Connelly would not be confined; she chose her mission: Catholic schools for mill girls and children of the poor. I am inspired by her and all these 19^th century women institution-builders; their solution may not be our solution, but they were not afraid of leadership.

The final contradiction: theologian Massimo Faggioli in La Croix International, arguing that words still have power and the church’s lay and clerical leadership should read more books! It’s a masterful review of reading in church history, and I choose my words purposefully, because Faggioli identifies the crucial difference in the 21^st century:

Being a “listening Church” does not mean just listening to one another or listening to the Holy Spirit. It also means listening to what culture – religious and secular – has to say to the Church. 

The Council of Trent tackled the problem of ignorance among the clergy.

Today, some 450 years later, there are signs that the Catholic Church is once again facing that same problem again, at a moment when its leadership is or should no longer be identified only with the clergy.

The assumption that Church leaders can afford to be ignorant is just another form of clericalism.

As we approach the Synod of our generation, we need to take our own responsibility seriously. We need to understand the contradictions that confront us, and read – literally – to make sense of the signs of our times. Then we must see ourselves as the leaders that we need.