Your Glass?

Half empty or half full, as the old cliché goes. Is it possible for you to keep up your enthusiasm, or do you despair that women will be ordained in the Roman Catholic Church in your lifetime? Several long articles examining this very question have appeared in the last couple of weeks.

FutureChurch’s Deborah Rose-Milavec asks “What would Mary Luke Tobin Say?” Tobin, a Sister of Loretto, was an official auditor at Vatican II. In 1986 she was hopeful that the “women’s movement in the church … is making serious headway toward its goal: restoring the equality in theory and practice that belongs to a Christian and Catholic theology of persons.”  She is saying this two years after John Paul II presented his theology of the body and a decade after Inter Insigniores, Paul VI’s letter forbidding women’s ordination. The glass was pretty empty, I’d say. But the movement continues.  

Rose-Milavec is tipping the glass back and forth, it seems to me. She concludes with a brief but stinging analysis of the two prior papacies. What she highlights in an excellent review of steps forward and back under Francis is the impact of women’s action in bringing about change. “There has been progress under his pontificate — and in some areas — serious progress in this world where persistent paternalism and even, misogyny are practiced by church men, including the Pope.” A good place to begin because she’s done the research, what impresses me the most is how the pace of change is accelerating.  

“The Catholic Church is a masterclass in patriarchy.” In The Tablet, Joanna Moorhead begins her reporting with the a similar stinging critique of church history. But look at the four photographs of the women Moorhead interviewed in Rome just before the quarantine took hold. WOC’s Kate McElwee is among them.

She’s tipping the glass back and forth as well. The immense disappointment of Francis’s tepid response to the Amazon synod’s request for women deacons was heavy on McElwee’s mind in early March, a “breaking point” in her hope for Francis. Her cheery photo perhaps reflected the last line in Moorhead’s story: “Against the odds, McElwee remains optimistic. ‘I think it’s all going to feel as though it’s impossible, and then overnight it will just happen,’ she says. ‘Catholic women are so strong. We will find a way.’” Even in a pandemic? Of course!

“‘It’s changed Catholic practice, and made space for more creativity. There’s been a growth in women-led liturgies online, and in many ways the women who are part of our movement were in a very good place to adapt to the new ways of worship. It’s an affirmation for what we’ve always been about, which is the Church beyond its walls.’”

The four others Moorhead spoke with are similarly ambivalent. Voices of Faith general manager Zuzanna Flisowska puts it well: “Either the Pope doesn’t see it, or he just doesn’t have the energy for the earthquake we need where women are concerned,” and she goes on to note that the sex abuse scandal has fundamentally changed the way church members see power having been exercised.

Does their status as Vatican employees affect the three others Moorhead talked with? Sr Bernadette Reis, who works in communications, wonders: “At least the Pope is raising the questions – that’s a big step forward. The question for me is: among the successors of Peter, where are the successors of Mary?”

Gudrun Sailer, editor of the German service of Vatican Radio, notes Francis has disappointed the “mainstream Catholic women who are acutely aware of the growing gulf between the lack of opportunities for women as leaders in the Church and the growing opportunities for them in every other area of their lives,” according to Moorhead.

Obviously not pictured is the woman who remains anonymous and says: “‘It’s men who have his ear the whole time – working here, you really notice that. In many ways, Francis seems to have gone backwards on women. You feel he’s looking for ways to appear to be doing something for the women’s cause, while not really engaging with it at all…You have to look at the culture here, and you have to look at the figures overall. Women are not in powerful positions in sizeable numbers – and for the Church, in 2020, that really matters.” The inside story: half empty.

But the French – the glass is half-full! Harriet Sherwood in The Guardian features Anne Soupa and the other women who have applied for positions not generally filled by women. This kind of bold action attracts the attention of the secular press and allows our argument to get before the general public, a strategy WOC has used successfully for years. The website for Soupa’s campaign to be Archbishop of Lyon is beautifully designed, and I notice that a lot more names are not French among those who are the last signers than those who signed first. Let us see your names!

“Soupa’s move has ‘triggered something in people – there is an outpouring of support,’” Sherwood quotes Miriam Duignan of Women’s Ordination Worldwide. “The Catholic faithful do not share the Vatican’s disdain for women, and are ready to see them fulfill their vocations to all ministries in the same way that male candidates can.” How totally fair! Tilting the glass in one sentence!

Nowhere else have I seen the quote Sherwood uses from Soupa: “Is there only one model of a bishop, that of a single, elderly man dressed in black?” Soupa also connects their movement with abuse, a point that is amplified by theologian Tina Beattie. I’d say her glass is half-full because she has a complex understanding of the current situation. “Among women in western liberal democracies, campaigns for leadership and ordination are very strong. In other areas, there is more emphasis on exposing and challenging clerical abuse of women – nuns in particular; domestic violence; abuses of power within the clergy.” Sherwood goes on to summarize: “In some places, she said, women regarded demands for women’s ordination as a distraction from campaigning for more radical change from the grassroots. They were building ‘movements and networks of solidarity and strength within the church, and not allowing themselves to be defeated by what comes out of Rome.’”

The Toutes Apôtres! WOC. WOW. Voices of Faith. FutureChurch. RCWP. ARCWP. Women-Church Convergence.

Sherwood also says “There are millions more Catholic lay women in parishes around the world whose tireless and often unacknowledged work sustains the church.” These are the women we want to acknowledge and draw into our movements. Then, indeed, all our glasses will be full to the brim.  

I invite you to lift your glass in the comments.