Good News!

There is so much good news this week, I have 22 articles saved to write about. Brace yourself! Maybe that means 2022 will be a very good year for Catholic reform.

First, of course, is Kate McElwee in NCR. You really owe it to yourself to read the whole thing. It’s Kate’s response to Michael Sean Winters’ questioning the motives of WOC and New Ways Ministry in getting involved in the Synod. Kate really tells it as it is – the discouragement some of us feel because of previous Vatican decisions and – well, let me quote:

We at the Women’s Ordination Conference read the synod preparatory documents and felt incredible hope. We highlighted various sections, passed quotes back and forth with our eyes wide, and concluded: This is a once in a lifetime moment.

We are in this movement because we care about the Church, and when it comes to questioning motives, I’ll just quote Kate again: “So while the U.S. bishops may struggle to wrap their heads around showing up and listening, we are uniquely prepared for this moment.” We have nothing to lose; some others do and they know it.

Both Robert Mickens and Christine Schenk write this week from a wide perspective on Catholic reform. Where are we as a coalition of various movements? About 20 years ago, I joined the meetings of Catholic Organizations for Renewal, just such a coalition. I felt we were voices crying in the wilderness, then and even only 11 years ago, when Rome suspended Tony Flannery’s public ministry because he supports women’s ordination. COR did its thing: hosting him a few years later in a Catholic Tipping Point series around the country. This week, his Irish Redemptorist order asked Rome to reinstate his ministry. About time! Looking at you, Maryknoll. Remember Roy Bourgeois!

Schenk was a big presence at those COR meetings as founder and head of FutureChurch, which she does not mention in her review of the “burning times” of censure and silencing, investigations and dismissals. “This pretty much squelched official dialogue about some of the most pressing issues facing the church, including the human rights of gay Catholics, women’s ministerial equality, sexual ethics, war and peace, and religious pluralism.” Rather, she focuses on the story of Jeannine Gramick and Frank DeBernardo and New Ways Ministry and expresses the same kind of hope for the Synod as Kate.

From a European perspective, the “Old Continent,” Mickens lists seven examples of the crumbling of the old order.

• Calls to abolish mandatory priestly celibacy CORPUS and FCM (then Federation of Christian Ministry) were organizations at those early meetings. Read more about German Cardinal Reinhard Marx in America.
• “Change the doctrine on homosexuality” DignityUSA and New Ways Ministry joined COR, too, and probably could not imagine then that James Keenan, Jesuit vice provost at Boston College, would be writing this week in NCR about listening to transgender Catholics, much less the Pope writing to Jeannine Gramick. See Chris Schenk.
• The Vatican keeps “passing the trash” SNAP (Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests) is the newest member of COR, and Voice of the Faithful was a member for a while. Jim McDermott in America has a thoughtful reflection on the church’s listening to former Catholics without the agenda of getting them back. His best example: a Twitter commentator who says who wants to return to a church “where the remorse and atonement for sexual abuse by clergy has been minimal.” SNAP listens and advocates.
• Bishops reluctant to open major investigations of sex abuse in Italy and Spain. Bishop Accountability is an organization friendly to COR that has compiled data on sex abuse in this country. America has a terrific interview with Jesuit Hans Zollner on the investigation of sex abuse in Germany.
• The Church’s current paradigm continues to collapse Mickens emphasizes Cardinal Marx’s point that these problems are “s-y-s-t-e-m-i-c!” A lot of Mickens’ points come out of the German Synodal Path, the most recent meeting of which was covered, surprisingly, by Rocco Palma in the Wall Street Journal. 
• Tarnished symbols of the ecclesiastical “ancien regime” Mickens’ first symbol is Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI. This week he made non-accountability apology about abuse in his diocese in that German investigation. ABC, using the Associated Press coverage of the Synodal Path, begins with this. We have never forgotten.  
• A sovereign military order with no army That would be the Knights of Malta. As far as I know, the Knights of Columbus have not made any news on this side of the pond this week. But we may find good news in Mickens’ conclusions:

One wonders… what Francis will eventually do with the long, drawn out process of writing the new constitution — still nowhere in sight — for a reformed Roman Curia, which also retains still too many vestiges of a royal court.

If that’s the plan, he could be the first absolute monarch in history to voluntarily abolish his monarchy before it collapses.

As much as I like that, I notice that Mickens does not include in his headlines what is most relevant to us out of the German Synod. Shades of Winters? He leaves it up to the Catholic News Service, along with America, the WSJ and ABC, to detail the action on women deacons. The resolution was endorsed by two-thirds of the delegates and two-thirds of the bishops, a separate requirement to protect the synod from offending the hierarchy or the Vatican or the conservative Catholic press, which is apoplectic about it all.

The text, “Women in sacramental ministry,” says: “In the Roman Catholic Church, a process will be initiated in a transparent manner, with a commission taking the lead, which will continue the Synodal Path in Germany in a sustainable manner. A commission will be established to deal exclusively with the issue of the sacramental ministry of people of all genders. Scientific excellence and spiritual concerns in the sense of the proclamation of the Christian Gospel are to be combined with each other.”

I’m not sure I understand all of this, but I understand some of it very well, and I infer that the people who moved this resolution forward have a plan to accomplish it, too.

The CNS article covers the usual “why not” and “not now” blather but includes the comments of Irme Stetter-Karp, president of the Central Committee of German Catholics and the lay co-president of the Synodal Path: “women have made church possible locally in the community but have not been valued by our church. Human rights in the church will only be a reality when there is justice for all genders, blessings for all, participation of all in decisions that concern all.” Just like in the USA.

Back in my early days in COR, WOC, FutureChurch, and Catholics Speak Out at Quixote Center were arguing for girls to be allowed to be altar servers. This week, Mary Garrigan can write about becoming an altar server at 63, and how meaningful that has been: “Maybe being in closer proximity to the sacred, something as ineffable as the consecration of the holy Eucharist, strengthens me in ways I cannot comprehend.”  I’m tired now and I imagine you are, too. But how far we’ve come, in ways we cannot fully comprehend, is all very good news this week.