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| Duct tape vould be zo much cheaper... |
The Vatican has concluded a major investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), which represents a huge percentage of women religious in this country, with an appropriately outrageous smackdown report: Apparently, US nuns have been spending too much time focusing on social injustice and the poor, while remaining silent on or questioning other issues they should be pushing, such as the Church's official positions on male-only priesthood, homosexuality, and same-sex marriage.
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| Remember when our nuns were nice and quiet? |
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/19/us/vatican-reprimands-us-nuns-group.html
These women have given their lives to support an institution which does not support them. They are NOT pushing for female ordination of priests or even deacons (don't even get me started on deacons).* Just by asking questions and voicing opinions, they are accused of advancing a "radical feminist" agenda.
There's a backstory here which I may go into sometime, but suffice it to say this: I converted to Catholicism, from nothing, in 2001. I gave it the old college try for years, eventually becoming a lay pastoral minister, but needed to step back from it for a year. It got lonely, though, and I had just started going back six weeks ago. I figured I would just set my phaser to Ignore for the many parts that don't work for me. Still good to sit quietly in a consecrated space with a group of decent people, right? And the singing is nice. An extra hour chilling with my family.
...but then this happens and reminds me (again) that I cannot ignore the vast gulf between the Church and what a lot of reasonable people think. I cannot overlook the messages that these kinds of actions send not only to women religious, but to all women in the church, to our daughters and our sisters. I can't be quiet about it any more.
* Did you know there used to be female deacons? Yup. Deaconesses. The Church doesn't make much noise about that. I learned it in my Called & Gifted Lay Minister training, incidentally paid for by the Archdiocese of Chicago. Apparently they were very handy to have around, and there were a lot of them, until somebody got the idea that menstruation made women unclean. So, like I said, don't me started...
12 comments:
Righteous outrage :)
It's tough to take a stand and I admire the nuns for having done so and you for supporting them. Especially when the cause is social justice.
I wondered why you were so silent about the church for the past year. I support your stand. Amen
thanks, you two. Appreciate it!
I admire your stand--and also appreciate how hard this must be for many people, including you. For the non-religious (like me) it's always been easy to just exclude myself from the whole issue of religious zealotry/persecution/ignorance/intolerance because I had no horse in the race. I've never felt a conflict between personal belief and giving all churches the finger.
It makes me sad and angry that Religion-with-a-capital-R has the potential to do such good in the world. All flavors of it seem to be based on such lovely ideas that they use to attract followers. But they don't. A wise friend of mine once noted that all the problems in the world are caused by two things: testosterone and mythology.
I'm not taking sides, but I am interested in process and would only ask that facts be confirmed. For example, note the following taken directly from the LCWR website: "On December 26, 2009, The New York Times published an article that led some readers to conclude that there is a division between a position taken by the US Catholic bishops and a position taken by both the Catholic Health Association (CHA) and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) regarding the federal funding of abortion in the health care reform bill. The fact is that CHA, LCWR and the US bishops are in complete agreement that no federal funding of abortion be provided in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2009." Every human orgnanization has a bias. The challenge is to find the truth.
There is no doubt that the Catholic Church still does many good things. There are many devoted followers who are dedicated to doing the right thing and are truly concerned about social justice and helping the poor; there are any number of hospitals and food banks that bear Catholic names that are a testament to that fact. However, distancing that from the church hierarchy is hard for me also as a non-religious person. The pope and the bishops are responsible first and foremost to the maintenance of the church and ensuring its continued existence as opposed to doing good. There's a dilemma there somewhere...
Thank you for your comment - it is much appreciated. These are indeed difficult and complex issues, not at ALL helped by the media's tendency to boil everything down to the simplest elements. What else is new?
However, it astounds me that, in 2012, religious women who dare to voice opinions questioning of, or contrary to, the Magisterium are told by the (male) hierarchy that they are making an error, due to their imperfect understanding of their role in God's plan: http://www.doctrinafidei.va/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20040731_collaboration_en.html.
The Magisterium teaches its own infallible authority on certain doctrines (including women's ordination)...but even the Catechism states that, in the end, judgment is ultimately up to God. Which, if you think about it, is the Magisterium's ultimate out? We're right, but actually God's right because he's in charge - so even if we're wrong now, it won't matter later.
A while back, Ratzinger, who as you probably know, headed up the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, published the official response to the question of women's ordination, and affirmed the Magisterium's infallibility in this teaching. Effectively, it was saying, "Not only can you not ever be priests - you can't ever TALK about becoming priests because this teaching is infallible according to the Magisterium of the Church." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordinatio_Sacerdotalis
Does God want these women to shut up? It certainly seems like the Church's power structure wants them to pipe down, or go away altogether. LCWR has something like five years to retract its statements and come out with bowdlerized versions. It seems at times like this that the Church doesn't care who they drive away - that these sorts of actions are almost intended to blow away the dangerous, opinionated chaff, leaving the smaller polished kernel of true believers.
This is the point at which I make a pretty crappy Catholic. I assume I was assigned a brain, free will, and a conscience for a reason. I am in big trouble if the only valid way forward in the Church is to avoid using all three.
It is problematic to be sure. But the Church was there for me at a time when I needed it, so I don't regret having taken the plunge (literally). It was only after I had been speaking as a lector or writing the pastoral letter in the bulletin that it occurred to me: Geez, I'm having trouble getting behind a significant percentage of this A little more picking at the paint and I was in a real pickle. And it didn't help that a number of fairly churchy people told me not to worry - that nobody believes all of it. That made it worse, actually - the notion that I was surrounded by people who didn't believe either, or weren't even thinking about what they were expected to believe. Just going through the motions.
Made sense to take a break, but that got lonely - even though I wasn't lonely before. Oh well. Buddhism is looking kind of appealing at the moment :D
exactly, Pete. And most practicing Catholics live that doublethink every single day. For many of them, their response to this dilemma is to shrug and say, "well, WE are the Church," and do the good thing they were going to do anyway.
My mother-in-law, who I love very much and is an active Catholic, says the answer to the dilemma is to stay and fight to make it better. I don't know how to do that without getting stomped on like one of those giant Terry Gilliam cartoon feet in a Monty Python cartoon: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GiantFootOfStomping. Or more likely, just ignored.
The thing that organizations like the Church have alwasys had to deal with from, and the thing that most often causes them to falter is the conflict between practice and doctrine, i.e. that you must do the right thing, but you must do it the right way. The problem comes when doing things the right way precludes doing the right thing.
True that, friend. and then I think, "you must do it the right way..." - or WHAT? You don't get eternal life? You go to hell? Why does the fear of not living forever need to be an incentive for people to follow a particular faith? Why does it need to be that transactional? Believe in this and you'll live forever. Why not just believe in doing these good things because this one guy, who was a really good guy, thought they were a good idea too? Ralph, I'm going to be so sorry I let the dog off the leash...
Why not indeed? If you are trying to find the truth, sometimes you have to let the dog off the leash. You may find this interesting, if you haven't already encountered it: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/God-Government-and-Roger-Williams-Big-Idea.html
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