Three Valiant Women

There is only so much room in a single blog, so that’s why I am focusing on three women among the excellent articles that have arrived on my desk this week: Soline Humbert, Joan Chittister, and Christine Schenk.

First, Soline Humbert. If you attended the wonderful WOW liturgy last Sunday and hung around for the chat, you heard people congratulating Soline on her article. What article, Marianne Tucker of SEPA WOC asked? Kate McElwee sent it to both of us. This is more descriptive than the title: “For me, to write about synodality in an honest, authentic manner would necessarily mean engaging with this pain and listening to what it is telling me and sharing it, in all its vulnerability. There was no way of ignoring it.” Soline invites us to share her journey of nearly fifty years; one many of us have lived as well.

I was brought up short by Soline’s reflection on the openness of the Synod to the “periphery.” “And where exactly is the center of the church? Is the center where the Pope, the curia, the bishop, the parish priest are? Who defines the center, and therefore the periphery? I like to think that the Heart of Christ is the center, and in that case I know there is room and a welcome for me there.”

Spiritual abuse defines most of Soline’s journey; “crudely,” she says, “I was either ‘mad, bad or sad.’”  In examining the Synod, she concludes: “In a patriarchal church we simply don’t exist,” even to Pope Francis. If you are registered to hear Sr. Nathalie Becquart speak to New Ways Ministry tomorrow, remember that Soline highlights her saying that the Synod requires “trust and humility.” But her whole journey militates against that trust in the church. And what about humility? Soline’s definition from a French priest, “Humility is knowing one’s place and taking it,” makes more sense to me now than it did to her at the time; I think we are a very humble group of persons called to priestly ministry.

Of course, saying this and being heard is another thing entirely. The morning this blog appears I will have been at a “listening” session in the Philadelphia archdiocese. (You could always comment below on your experience.) Soline’s next to last sentence: “Whatever trust and hope I have do not come from a pope but from the One who speaks in the depths of my being: ‘See, I have opened a door for you that no one can shut’ (Revelation 3:8).” I’ll end with what she said after people mentioned this article after the liturgy; she’s giving it away to those she knows are preparing for the Synod. That includes us.

It may seem like a major shift to turn to Joan Chittister, but wait. Again, Joan explains her purpose this week and I must quote it in full: “For years, there has been a growing concern about the diminishing number of priests in the church. Everybody talks about it. I, on the other hand, have watched it all a bit wryly. After all, the real builders of the church, the people who have taken care of the church by developing ministries that few could yet see, but really needed badly, the ones who actually set out to meet the issues of the day, and gave their hearts and minds and lifetimes to the world have really been the orders of sisters. They, too, it seems are dwindling in number, if not in spirit. Will anyone notice? Will it matter?”

Joan deals with the numbers but also acknowledges that the fact, “conscious or not,” that nuns are women is a major reason for those numbers declining.  As opportunities opened up outside of “the regimentation and anonymity and dehumanization that characterized pre-Vatican II religious life,” she writes, “These newly woke women wanted to do important things for God themselves.” Do you sense a theme here? (And FutureChurch will be hosting historian Margaret Thompson for two lectures in April that I imagine will deal with similar themes.)

Joan’s reflection on the talents sisters developed and exercised for the good of the Church is an inspiring journey, in contrast to Soline’s painful one. Yet “These women who have been the beating heart of God for the world, once gone, will be missed in a church that needs both spirit and heart.” This the first of a series of articles, in Joan’s inimitable fashion, which will consider “whether — or even, should — religious life for women rise again in this time. Or not.”

Joan writes about how European religious orders reinvented themselves after their monasteries were closed in the nineteenth century. When the politics changed and the institutions reopened, “women’s orders re-formed and relocated in great numbers to follow the various nationalities and serve the spiritual needs of each ethnic kind of émigrés to the New World.” Many of us were probably educated by these women.

And I think about the connections between Soline’s pain and Joan’s hope. Maybe we are seeing the same kind of institutional development with the ordinations into new church communities led by women and persons of all genders, making unique contributions.

Which allows me to shift to Christine Schenk, who places her statement of why she is writing this week at the end of her article. Always the activist, Chris urges “advocates [to] approach their bishops, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the 2023 Synod on Synodality to request a re-examination of liturgical texts in light of so many contemporary concerns about omitted and problematic readings. A reconsideration of psalter and lectionary texts originally approved by U.S. bishops in 1991 also seems to be in order.”

Chris’s journey to update “texts and translations” used on Sunday is so important because that mass, more than anything else, reaches so many. Even the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1993 thought more could be done to carry out the wishes of Vatican II. “After commenting on article 35 in the Constitution for the Liturgy asking that readings be ‘more abundant, more varied and more suitable,’” Chris notes that they concluded in what I see as measured Vatican doublespeak, “In its present state, the lectionary only partially fulfills its goal.”

Chris uses as her framework a webinar at Boston College led by liturgist Sr. Eileen Schuller, a Canadian, and notes that the lectionary approved for use north of our border has more inclusive language than ours. Schuller’s focus was on two other concerns, however: “what is and what is not included in the Sunday lectionary” and “how the Old Testament is presented.”

Not surprising to any of us,  “Foremost among the omissions are passages about women, especially women in leadership roles.” Chris quotes Schuller: “The rich Biblical resources about the role of women in the Old Testament, and especially in the early Christian communities, are still simply unknown.” Chris gives examples from the Canadian lectionary.

Something it took me years longer to understand, however, is Schuller’s other point: Old Testament texts are too often “applied according to a patristic typological principle … by a simplistic prophecy-fulfillment relationship that easily slides into a supersessionism [the belief that Christianity supersedes or replaces Judaism] or, at worse, by a paradigm: ‘Nice, good Jesus; mean, bad Jews.’ “

Along with Schuller, Chris urges “good preaching, parish Bible study, and using omitted passages for parish meetings and prayer sessions” to address these deficits. I have another suggestion as well, inspired by last week’s WOW liturgy. Look at the Gospel and think about the subtle changes that using the Inclusive Lectionary, available through WOC, made in this reading, compared to what we’ve heard all our lives.

Continue to journey with each of these valiant women, through the Synod and beyond. You might be inspired, as I am on the day I write this, if you listen to the Global Sisters Report’s session on the Synod, “Witness & Grace Conversation: The Synod and Consecrated Life.” I imagine the recording will be widely available soon, given NCR’s usual practice. I am inspired by it to think of positive aspects of my journey and how far we have come together.