Random? Acts of Women

“Mother’s Day at a migrant shelter?” My attention is drawn to this story by its author, Rhina Guidos, Global Sisters Report’s Latin American correspondent, in an NCR Forward letter.

“We know that you’re whole as you are?” Ariell Watson Simon writes for New Ways Ministry about the message a group of women religious wanted to send to the community on the Transgender Day of Visibility in March by publishing an article in Newsweek.

“Put flesh on the dry bones of principles and ideals?” In America, James T. Keane resurrects Dorothy Day who was writing about United Farm Workers founder Dolores Huerta in 1969.

“What is it to be and live as an Afro?” Also for GSR, Luis Donaldo Gonzalez does a Q and A with Sister Roberta Palacios Silva, the coordinator of Afro-descendent ministry for the Latin American and Caribbean Conference of Catholic Bishops (CELAM).

“What does it mean to be pro-life beyond the issue of abortion?” National leader in ministries for and with young Catholics Nicole M. Perrone answers her own question in NCR, based on her experiences as a pregnant person and now mother bringing a new baby to her parish church.

“What does it mean to believe in an ecological God?” Theologian Elizabeth Johnson also asks and answers her question in NCR, but in a remarkable distillation of her theology infused with feminist insights.

These articles are at the top of my folder called “women.” All except Johnson’s showed up in two days this week. I am struck with how deliberate the causes taken up are. Not random at all. No question about it.

Sometimes when I say I work for Catholic women’s ordination, people reply that Catholic women already do more than their share of good in the world. Of course I agree. But I do not want women with experiences like these excluded from decision-making in the church. They all see the signs of the times and act on them.

Case in point at the migrant shelter. I had trouble counting the number of non-profits, parishes, and communities of religious women involved in this Mother’s Day effort. Timed for a day before the US asylum policy would change, their party was intended to let the detainees know they are not invisible. Whether it lessened the confusion they would be feeling, another aim, it had to have distracted them. That much is clear from the pictures. Games. Laughter. Gifts.

I am struck by how similar the situation is with the sisters and their transgender witness. Years ago they had joined together to welcome those excluded by the church. Now they were responding not only to a USCCB statement but also to “horrendous” state legislation that limited trans access to health care and other opportunities. They did identify themselves as “Vowed Catholic Religious…to have gender-neutral terms in the whole document,” as urged by the LGBTQ+ people they consulted, which somewhat undercuts my premise, but they are women able to address complex identities.

Dorothy Day and Dolores Huerta are the only truly famous people I’ve included, and I’m sure you know about their radical witness for the poor and the farmworkers, and just about everybody else on the minus side of the inequality equation. Huerta is 93 and her leadership is recognized now more than it was in her organizing days, including in a 2017 PBS documentary, “Dolores.”

The very existence of Afro-Mexicans was denied in church and culture; talk about invisibility! Eventually, after Mexico, other Latin American countries began to recognize the phenomenon as well, and Sr. Silva was able to act out her passion by leading a new ministry for the very Synodal CELAM.

“Feeling welcome” is really what Nicole Perrone is addressing. Perhaps the need to do that comes from her experiences with young Catholics, but the examples she uses are the kindnesses she experienced from having chosen the “right” parish. She’s saying genuine welcome and real pro-life attitudes can be distinguished from mere words.

Finally, far be it from me to summarize Elizabeth Johnson. I am struck by her aim: to “stimulate our thinking about the sacred importance of the natural world,” including animals. She explores the great communion implied by creation and then what an obstacle the “hierarchy of being and its anthropology” is to realizing the unity God intended. I am a great lover of trees, so also loved her counter example: “Take away trees, and humans would suffocate. Take away humans, and trees would do just fine; probably better, for we would not be cutting them down.” Johnson’s call to be converted to Earth echoes Laudato Si at every turn; if you haven’t read the encyclical recently or not at all, read this.

The Signs of the Times are all around us. Which one are you taking random acts to address?  Or are you as deliberate as these women in what you choose to do?