“a priesthood that excludes and minimizes women”

The full quotation is not an April fool’s joke. Sometimes we feel like holy fools, but our mission here at The Table is to reassure us all that we are not alone, nor are we the first:

“It has sometimes seemed to me that, in the Church today, there are three perishable stones dangerously committed to the foundations: the first is a government that excludes democracy, the second is a priesthood that excludes and minimizes women, the third is a revelation that excludes, for the future, Prophecy.” Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (letter to Abbé Gaudefroy, October 7, 1929)

I am indebted to the French church reform group Christians in the Parvis [Federation Reseaux du Parvis], which uses the open square close to a church as a symbol to illustrate where sometimes we are forced to stand. They put this quotation in an open letter “to our brother bishops…gathered in Lourdes this week…[and] all Catholics.” The letter is strong, asking for a church “open to the world and generous, which will know how to go beyond clericalism and the withdrawal of identity in order to trust in the competences and charisms of all the baptized, women and men, equal in their dignity as disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.”

Will it convince the Bishops that the reformers quote from this French Jesuit scientist, theologian, philosopher and futurist? Teilhard de Chardin died in New York in 1955. He became a hero in the years afterwards as his most remarkable works, The Phenomenon of Man and The Divine Milieu, were published and passed around. Teilhard’s understanding of evolution opened up a new way to approach the natural world in light of the spiritual realm, and influenced a generation awakened to change as Vatican II began. From almost the beginning of his career, Teilhard was moved around and warned, even as he was honored for what he was able to publish. I’m sharing my own admittedly American appreciation of his impact; someone fighting for intellectual freedom had to inspire my generation.

My guess is that the French bishops will bend their ear closer to the Catholic Conference of French speaking Baptized (CCBF) – a lay group founded in France in 2008 that now claims to have some 10,000 supporters, according to La Croix International. This lay initiative seeks “governance thorough dialogue,” and proposes thirteen points to achieve that, including the “co-responsibility” of priest and laity. These more timid steps still give me hope; it seems that there will be no workshops in Catholic spaces that do not address what came from these: celebrations with liturgical roles, including preaching homilies, “all without discrimination based on gender.” So Teilhard’s democracy and prophecy get actualized in this group.

Or maybe the Bishops will look across the border with Luxembourg and try to follow the twists and turns of Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich’s recent interview in a Catholic weekly, Glas Koncila, in Croatia. Hollerich is Francis’s right-hand-man on the Synod as the relator, or chairperson, and he was just added to the Council Cardinals. So a person of influence.

Headlines followed Hollerich’s suggesting that the ordination of women might be possible in the future, but he was a lot more tentative than Teilhard was almost a century before. Maybe he was trying to figure out how this might happen. On the one hand, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis may not be infallible, so its “arguments” could be “developed.” On the other, “It surely is a true teaching for its time, and we cannot just push it aside. But I think that there might be some space to expand the teaching.” He found a stumbling block that is surprising to me: if the Orthodox churches did not accept it. “We could never do that if it would jeopardize our fraternity with the Orthodox or if it would polarize the unity of our church,” he said. “Love is not something abstract; it is the love for our sisters and brothers that prevents us from doing things that would alienate them.” I am always amazed that that alienation of women willing to serve is ignored.

“I am a promoter of giving women more pastoral responsibility. And if we achieve that, then we can perhaps see if there still is a desire among women for ordination,” Hollerich says, reflecting a similar attitude. Why would assuming responsibility without ordination lead women to accept a subordinate status similar to what exists now? The final crumb? Over time, women priests might be accepted as easily as the prohibitions in the 1864 “Syllabus of Errors” were abandoned. Religious freedom and interfaith dialogue were infallibly condemned. Democracy and prophecy again?

The bottom line? The Pope is not in favor of it, and Hollerich, a fellow Jesuit, obeys the Pope. He notes that there are people who obeyed the Pope when they agreed with him, and now they are less likely to do so; they even attack him. But not Hollerich.

I find it interesting that Hollerich is less conflicted on LGBTQ issues, as Robert Shine details for New Ways Ministry. Yet the headlines go to women’s ordination instead, where real change seems less possible.

I have three postscripts. First, Nancy Pelosi, thinking of headlines. Aleja Hertzler-McCain in NCR starts off her coverage of Pelosi’s talk at Georgetown on March 23 with her comment “that, growing up, she was more attracted to being a priest than being a Catholic sister because of the priest’s ability to celebrate Mass. ‘Turning bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, that is real power,’ she said. ‘Maybe one day women will be able to do that as well,’ Pelosi said, expressing hope that Pope Francis would act on women’s ordination.” No hesitation. There’s a lot more in this article, too.

Second, J.P. Grayland, a New Zealand priest and theologian. His article, “To the priest who has everything… give him another parish” is the clearest coverage I have read in a long time to detail the structural implications of the decline of numbers in the church, and the way the episcopal mindset deals with them. I keep thinking of blowing the house of sticks down in the fairy tale which will remain unnamed.

Finally, the poor Pope. I grabbed my heart at his hospitalization. For all his imperfections, he’s begun a remarkable process of change. Will this push to evolution result in democracy, women’s ordination, and prophecy or will the house of sticks fall down? Up to the Spirit.