Keep on Talkin’

Sometimes the African American spirituals say it best. Today I think of “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me ’round” because of the lines ending the refrain: “I’m gonna keep on walkin’, keep on talkin’, marching down to freedom land.”

There was a whole lot of talkin’ this week about women’s ordination, and I will share my secret: I’m gloating. I wish I weren’t proud of that, but I am. There could be no clearer example of how futile it is to suppress an idea, to forbid discussion, than the 1990s Vatican decrees that attempted to do that. And what is so special about the talking this week is that we learned about the many ways mostly women talked out even when it was forbidden. And we are still talking.

What I am going to do today is let you know about opportunities to walk with the talkers. Our present moment is remarkable for the nationwide (worldwide actually) accessibility of events. Zoom and YouTube and Vimeo let you be in any number of meeting rooms on your own schedule. I want to think more about how this creates consensus and builds movements, but right now I have a lot of talking to tell you about.

The first event is one that does not seem to be available online, so I will use the contrasting viewpoints in two articles to walk with two of the panelists. The opening paragraph in Kate Scanlon’s story for OSV News, which may be in your diocesan paper, leaves no doubt about the official position: “A Georgetown panel considered ‘the question of women’s ordination’ April 17, describing the matter as ‘unfinished’ despite Pope Francis’ current teaching and St. John Paul II’s 1994 teaching that Jesus Christ reserved the sacred priesthood to men alone even as the Lord promoted the dignity of women.” Scanlon’s expert outside the panel is theologian Pia de Solenni, a former chancellor for the Diocese of Orange (CA), who says, “The gender or sex matters…This person is the bridegroom to the church.” Among other things.

In NCR, Joshua McElwee brings in someone very different who was present but not there: SNJM Sr. Anne E. Patrick, a moral theologian who died in 2016. The event was held in part to honor her memory. He links to Patrick’s 1975 essay entitled “A Conservative Case for the Ordination of Women.” She “argued that ordaining women would help with a then-looming crisis of decline in priestly numbers and would ‘touch the hearts of women who … are growing increasingly conscious of their dignity as persons.’” 1975.

On that panel was novelist and National Book Award winner Alice McDermott. In NCR, McElwee says “the church’s practice of ordaining only men as ministers had become something like a counter-sacrament for her.” She says:

“If there are outward signs of inner grace, then surely there are outward signs of inner corruption as well…Outward signs that betray our faults, our sinfulness and our failures…It grieves me to say that the all-male priesthood of the Catholic Church, my church, has become for me just such a sign.”

For OSV, Scanlon uses the opportunity to reinforce “the church’s teaching against intentional abortion” and says some panelists “suggested it is rooted in women’s exclusion from the priesthood.” After the Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson, Scanlon reports that McDermott’s reflection on being at Mass the next Sunday felt like:

“a kind of collusion, a collusion with misogyny, with hypocrisy, with the conviction that to be female is to be deemed to be the lesser, less complex, less moral, less valuable, less worthy.”

I think I have a good idea of McDermott’s talk despite the surrounding noise in Scanlon’s article.

Both journalists also quote another panelist, theologian Mary E. Hunt, co-founder and co-director of WATER, the Women’s Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual. In NCR, McElwee quotes Hunt on the failure to ordain women: it

“has left the institutional Roman Catholic Church in an intellectually and morally untenable position without much credibility to announce any good news…The loss of the enormous talent and generosity of women and nonbinary persons wishing to engage in Catholic sacramental ministries has diminished the quality and quantity of ministry for all.”

Scanlon for OSV reported that Hunt “called the church’s limitation of the priesthood to those who are biologically male ‘dated at best’ as society shifts its understanding of gender.” “How can we share the power?” she asked with respect to making women priests.

“Yes, women and nonbinary people want power to minister. How can we share the resources of the institutional church that belong to all of us?”

I detect in this quotation a not-uncommon refrain of those who want to hide the patriarchy’s secret fear: that ordained women will actually have the power to make decisions. Hunt’s perspective reflects her life-long work to challenge the control the patriarchy claims over women’s lives. We should not fear to do the same, for the good of women, for our freedom.

Each journalist selected different speakers from among the other participants, but I am going
to go on, since I have so much else. I will give you links.

If you’re new to WOC or church reform and need information about what has been done, you owe it to yourself to watch the panel sponsored by Call To Action. If you’ve been involved for a long time, it’s an opportunity to gloat. The long histories and significant accomplishments of WOC and FutureChurch are profiled by their current directors, Kate McElwee and Deborah Rose. The personal story of ordained Association of Roman Catholic Women Priest Katy Zatsick is a perfect example of feminist story-telling. This should be sent to every Catholic college and Newman center in the US. At least the screen-sharing should be on the websites. So impressive.

Anne Patrick was not the only sister speaking out early for women’s ordination. Dr. Jill Plummer, who teaches Catholic Studies at Sacred Heart University, talked about RSM Sr. Betty Carroll, also for Call To Action.

I joined the women’s ordination movement after Carroll was active; I only knew her as this elderly nun from Pittsburgh who was ministering in Peru. Plummer talks about that period in her life, as does someone on the call who went to that women’s center when Carroll served there.

Do you expect to hear about “The Formation of a Catholic Feminist Identity” when you see the photo of Carroll on the website? She’s in full habit. I figure she was born in 1913! Plummer’s work reminds us we must not forget the courage of religious women who spoke their truth when it was shocking to do so.

Finally, I did not know about a panel that provides a perfect transition to what generates the same angry reaction today in some circles. Katie Collins Scott reports for NCR on a Faith in Public Life event, “Catholic Women: Reclaiming Debates about Abortion and Reproductive Justice.” I’m going to quote only Emily Reimer-Barry, who teaches Christian ethics at the University of San Diego. Collins Scott reports she “argued there’s an intersection of Catholic social teaching with issues of sexual justice, noting she was ‘deeply grateful’ to the Black women who ‘pioneered this really important work of looking at structural injustice.’” She says,

“In reading the work of Black women who are activists in the reproductive justice movement, I’ve learned so much about the principals [sic] of Catholic social teaching that I hold so dear — human dignity, common good, labor justice — that these also intersect with the work that Black women have been doing to advocate for the flourishing of all people with uteruses.”

I’m going to watch this panel after deadline. I note that many of the participants are women teaching at Catholic colleges, like Reimer-Barry. They also created a sign-on. I credit the solidarity of movement feminism for protecting their jobs. I also realize that academic freedom in Catholic colleges cannot be taken seriously if people can be removed from college faculties because of unpopular opinions, but that’s another topic.

Their complex understandings of the way feminist consciousness operates today make the walkin’ and talkin’ of an earlier era seem naïve. But it wasn’t, and we are closer to freedom land because they did not turn ‘round.