Household names

I am so impressed by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s decision not to name the gunman who killed fifty people at two mosques last week. I would like hers to become a household name — “very well-known,” as the dictionary defines it — and not only for this decision. She and her cabinet have figured out a way to buy back automatic weapons in order to ban them.

This week, I learned about three other women whose names I will endeavor to remember in my household.

Do you know Sister Joan Chittister, the American Benedictine who spoke in Dublin at the Women’s Ordination Worldwide meeting in 2001?

Sister Ruth Schoenenberger is a German Benedictine who said, “It is surely only natural for women to be priests and I cannot understand the reasons given as to why not,” according to LaCroix-International.

Schoenenberger was interviewed in katholisch.de, the official website of the German Catholic Church. Can you imagine that in this country?

Or these:

I am surprised that the presence of Christ has been reduced to the male sex.

Our present image/concept of the priesthood urgently needs to be fundamentally revised and I am genuinely surprised that priests themselves don’t protest more against present developments since they involve them, not just [to] comfort us women somehow – as, for example, by promising to look into the question of women deacons.

After all, we experience concrete examples of subordination day after day. If we, as a group of women religious, want to celebrate the Eucharist together, we have to arrange for a man to come and celebrate it, every single day. He stands at the altar and leads the celebration. We are not allowed to. We intend to look for forms (of celebrating the Eucharist) which suit us and develop new ones.

These are not the ravings of some fringe participant in Catholicism. The Benedictine Priory of Tutzing is the Bavarian motherhouse of a worldwide missionary order, numbering 1300 sisters in 19 countries. Schoenenberger is the head of that priory and two other convents, and also draws attention to “the prayer initiative for gender equality in the Church that was launched in February by Sister Irene Gassman.” The prayer is moving and would be a terrific addition to a World Day of Prayer or Holy Thursday witness. 

So we also have a Swiss Benedictine to make a household name, Sister Irene Gassman, prioress of the Monastery of Fahr.

It’s not only sisters I wish to recall. Remember Doctor Helen Caldicott, the Australian crusader against nuclear weapons? She’s added environmental issues to her portfolio, and is a household name, at least in my household.

But I was struck by this opening paragraph in a Commonweal article this week, “Today marks the centenary of the birth of Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret Anscombe, one of the most brilliant and influential Catholic philosophers of the twentieth century.”

And I have never heard of her? She resisted Britain’s entry into World War II because “unjust deliberate killing is murder” and she protested Oxford’s awarding an honorary doctorate to Truman because of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. Her 1956 paper, “Modern Moral Philosophy,” argued for “the Hebrew-Christian ethic”:

For it has been characteristic of that ethic to teach that there are certain things that are forbidden whatever consequences threaten, such as choosing to kill the innocent for any purpose, however good; vicarious punishment; treachery…; idolatry; sodomy; adultery; making a false profession of faith.

Her position was “uncompromisingly orthodox,” according to author John Schwenkler, “defending positions that would offend both sides of today’s liberal/conservative divide.” Remarkable photos accompany the article of her being hauled off in an anti-abortion protest. She and her husband had seven children, so she lived her creed. She also was a respected woman in a very male world.

G. E. M. Anscombe will be a household name for me as I realize the hard thinking that must accompany every moral decision. Good intentions are not enough. Consequences matter. While I will not read the works of this friend of Wittgenstein – who is a household name, if not well-understood – I will think about how easy it is for women’s names to be forgotten.

Let us pray: Jacinda Ardern, Joan Chittister, Ruth Schoenenberger, Irene Gassman, Helen Caldicott, G. E. M. Anscombe, lead us to speak our truth in our household of faith.