Women Deacons?

Well, the Synod is underway and Archbishop Paul Andre Durocher of Gatineau Quebec, President of the Canadian Bishops’ Conference, raised the issue of ordaining women to the Diaconate.  Of course it has the krazies in a flap.  There are those who still want to hold that women are to be veiled virgins or fecund mothers—leave everything else to the men.  But several of you have contacted me as to what I think about it.  I don’t know why that matters.  I don’t get a lot of say in things, just the chance to sit on the sidelines and take the occasional pot-shot when some itinerant emperor parades by naked.  Of course, given the dysfunction in our Church structures, that happens pretty often these days, faster than I can blog. 

But as to what I think of women deacons?  I think it is a great idea.  Long overdue.  I mean long—like maybe a millennium and a half—overdue.  Why did we ever stop ordaining women deacons?  They could have been a great help in spreading the faith up into Northern Europe in the sixth and seventh and eighth centuries.  They could have been of great pastoral help in the European urban expansion of the 12^th and 13^th centuries.  They could have anchored the faith in the rough seas of the 16^th century Reformations.  They could have been great and effective evangelists in the missionary expansions of the 17^th-20^th centuries.  And most important of all, if we had kept women deacons from the days of the primitive Church, our skirted clerics wouldn’t be so friggin’ frightened of human beings with lady parts now.   Honest to God, the way they go on you’d think we are going to have menstrual blood all over the altar steps.  Or that it couldn’t be cleaned up if it did happen.  Move on boys, nothing to see here. 

The first thing we need to remember is that while deacons receive the Sacrament of Holy Orders at their diaconal ordination, their participation in the priesthood is that priesthood common to all the baptized.  They do not share in the “ordained priesthood” in which priests share and bishops possess in its fullness.  Therefore, any theological blocks that may exist to women in the presbyterate or episcopate are not relevant to the admission of women to the diaconate.  Of course, since the diaconate is the fire-door to the priesthood we are letting the girls get awfully close; one senile bishop’s bejeweled hands away and no alarm bells to stop in time! Worked for the Episcopalians, but then a lot of things work for them that don’t for us and I am not going down that rabbit hole.  

It may surprise some readers too that while women deacons are a well established historical fact up until the fourth century, the Roman Catholic Church has continued the practice, albeit in a severely abrogated form.  Nuns of the Carthusian Order, perhaps the strictest of Religious Orders whose members live as hermits, on the occasion of the Solemn Profession of Vows are vested in the diaconal stole and given the right to read the Gospel at certain services.  (The right of liturgically proclaiming the Gospel is the most important of the rights and privileges of Deacons in the Catholic Church.  The Deacon takes precedence in the reading of the Gospel over any priest or bishop present.  Even the Pope!  Even Cardinal Burke!!!)  While no one considers the nuns to be “deacons,” nor to have received the Diaconate in the same sense in which men are ordained deacons, the unique role of these women is a vestige of the once common practice of nuns being ordained to the diaconate.  I have also read that the practice of Deacon-nuns has not completely disappeared in some of the non-Chalcedonian Churches of the East and there are Orthodox Churches considering reintroducing Deaconesses, especially in monastic communities.  So, in other words, some of the men aren’t afraid of the competition as long as the women are locked away where they can’t mess things up for the boys.  Got it?  Isn’t it always the way?

And I think this is the real problem in reintroducing the Diaconate to women.  For many conservative Catholic laity it is simply another indication of the radical social revolution of the last 75 years in western society where women have broken through glass ceiling after glass ceiling, displacing male leadership and chipping away at patriarchy.  For a significant portion of clergy—including male deacons—it opens a male preserve to radical change that would mark “the rise and the fall of many in Israel.”  I think there is serious need for us as a Church—note, for us as a Church, not simply the “them” in the red beanies—to discuss the broader and deeper issues of gender, power, and human sexuality.  We need to come to some level of honesty as to what the real issues are that we are permitting to shape us as a Church and how those issues are advancing or retarding our mission of proclaiming the Kingdom of God.  The questions are a lot deeper than ordaining women to the diaconate and the questions are long overdue.  

Our Whackadoodle and Friends: Not Catholic, Just Bizarre

Plenty of Room for Diversity in
the Church--but not all diversity
is legit  

 My last posting was a commentary on an article write by “a notable traditional Catholic Scholar” who affects the nom de plume of Benedict Constable. Le Seigneur Constable, to my reading, overplays his hand a bit in his wish to ban biological women (as differentiated from the more frilly-garbed transgendered clerical ones) from service at the altar.  I did point out that his ecclesiology, though perhaps having some credibility before Mystici Corporis (and certainly not since Lumen Gentium/Gaudium et Spes) is not in line with the current teaching of the Church, and his theology of the Sacrament of Orders is highly deficient even by pre-conciliar standards.  This is not to mention serious flaws in his Christian Anthropology and Christology.  But as I suggested, the even more basic problem is not with his theology but with his psycho-sexual self-understanding.   The gentleman displays some obvious discomfort of sharing space with women.  There could be multiple reasons for this; I won’t presume to guess which ones.  But what interests me in this posting is the reaction to his article and a subsequent one “Male-Female Symbolism in Liturgical Roles: Not Bizarre, Just Catholic.” 

Frankly, the sequel article made me somewhat uncomfortable in as that it reminded me of—though it was nowhere as beguilingly salacious as—a talk given years ago by Archbishop (later, when he was given one of the most undeserved red hats in the history of the Church, Cardinal) Stafford of Denver.  As I recall, the talk was reported in the National Catholic Reporter (aka Fishwrap, a name given it by the Krazies but one which I won’t dispute.  NCR to my mind is simply an latter-day ecclesial version of the William Randolph Hearst school of Yellow Journalism.  But that would be another series of posts) and quoted Stafford comparing the priest’s kissing of the altar at Mass with a husband performing cunnilingus (there is a word I never thought I would use in this blog) as foreplay to matrimonial lovemaking.  Now I have always been somewhat charmed by the adage that I once heard in a sermon that sacramentally a husband making love with his wife is to the sacrament of Matrimony what the priest celebrating the Eucharist with the people entrusted to his care is to the sacrament of Holy Orders.  I mean each act is somewhat at the center of the particular sacrament.  Nevertheless, after reading Stafford’s analogy I must admit that it was months before I felt it safe to go to Mass again and these twenty-some years later that image is still stuck, rather distastefully (if you will pardon the entendre) in my mind.  Symbols are most effective when they are employed without explanation or commentary.  And in any case, I am not sure that the various sexual symbolisms of either Cardinal Stafford or our dear Benedict Constable are inherent in the Eucharist or are the results of a somewhat overactive half Jungian/half Freudian imagination.  Maybe Mr. Constable is not alone and I too have my sexual hang-ups—most of us do to some extent or other—but when I go to Church I want to go to Church and not to some piece of theatre that is fraught with sexual undertones (if your are female) and overtones (if you are male.) (See, I do believe that the sexes are not the same.)  Let what operates in the subconscious remain in the subconscious; I am not one who wants to make Mass an occasion of sin for those whose hormones still rage. 

All that being said, what I really want to do in this blog, is to show how what the Right Honorable and Somewhat Pretentious Mr. Constable, a “noteworthy traditional Catholic Scholar,” says and what his audience hears are two very different things and while what the noted scholar writes can be amusing—perhaps even erotically so—what his audience is taking from it portends the ever widening cracks within the unity of the Church. 

Our dear Professor Kwasniewski, whom I think has been remiss in remaining in the wilds of Wyoming far too long, grasps the problem that I mentioned in my previous post—that B.C. sees lay liturgical ministers filling in for insufficient clergy rather than exercising their baptismal dignity—only Kwasniewski doesn’t see this as a problem.  But then, the good Cowboy Philosopher studied philosophy and not theology so what can one expect.    He writes:

Celeste, the way to reconcile your point and Constable's is simply to observe that whenever laymen are doing the readings, they are substituting for clerics. That's all they're doing. (The same goes for altar servers, who should, ideally, be instituted acolytes.) If we didn't have a huge shortage of clerics and if we had a better pastoral plan for the use of instituted lectors and acolytes, we wouldn't need to be always tapping on laymen's shoulders and having them fill in.

That being said, laymen are, as such, symbolically configurable to Christ the High Priest, in a way that laywomen are not -- and that makes a huge different for liturgy, which is a language of symbols.

His “clerical error” is repeated by one Romulus Charles Lewis.

If you are bringing up female competence and spunk and devotion, I can only agree that you are not getting the explanations. Our Lord is the Bridegroom. Women cannot stand as symbols of this. Because the only indispensable person in the celebration of Mass is the a priest, other persons active in the sanctuary are there only as additional hands and feet -- extensions of his body, so to speak. (The Italian word for altar boy is "chierichetto" -- a little cleric). Female servers at Mass obscure and de-signify the maleness of the priest-celebrant.

I love the name Romulus, don’t you?  Why didn’t my parents think of naming me Romulus.  Or Benedict.  Or Euston. Or Archibald.   Great names, all.    Raised by wolves, Romulus was; maybe that was the reason the name was chosen. 

And then there is Jared Clark.  That is another great name. Jared.  I also life Geoffrey, but only if it is Geoff and not Jeff.  Vulgar Americanization, Jeffrey. 

I am aware that this practice is currently licit, and I'm not actually all that concerned with appearances. It's not the bad result that women lectors and altar girls lead some to think priestesses are a real possibility (I am not a consequentialist; if that were the core of my objection, I'd just be calling for better catechesis), but that it goes against the nature of the sanctuary, wherein all liturgical action is priestly. The fact that sanctuary=priestly seems strange is one of the biggest problems in the Church today.

If taking a small step towards correcting this error by requiring a seminarian, or a non-seminarian instituted lector, or another man to read the readings would be seen as sexist....oh well. Still not a consequentialist :P

WHAT DOES IT TAKE TO GET PEOPLE TO READ LUMEN GENTIUM!!! And Sacroscanctum Concilium.  Lectors and acolytes (much less ordinary readers and Extraordinary Ministers of the Eucharist, and Altar Servers et al.) are not standing in for ordained clergy!!!  They are there by right and duty of Baptism!!! Baptism is the most important of the Seven Sacraments and yet perhaps the least appreciated.  

But then there are the ‘oi polloi, the great unwashed who act not so much out of (bad) theology as about a rejection of everything connected with the Second Vatican Council for the sake of rejecting everything connected with the Second Vatican Council. And so, one Michael Dowd writes: 

Yes, on no female lectors. And no female altar servers, either. And no communion in the hand. And forget about communion under two specials (drop the cup). And turn the priest around to lead, not face the people. Do these all these things and we are off to a good start to celebrating Mass as it should be. : God is there, we need to show proper respect which leads to love. That's what the show is all about folks!

OK, no theology here.  Keep moving on.  Nothing to see.  Just put all the toys back in the toy box and let the nursery look like the night Tinkerbelle came and led the children off to a magical fantasyland.  Pure “restorationism” without a hint of theology.  I can deal with those whose faulty theology leads them to bad liturgical practice, but when it is just this sort of thoughtless demand that the Church be refashioned to their particular taste I cannot help but think of the adage of Aristophanes:

‘Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.’

And speaking of that sort of vacuous a-theological rhetoric we have one Augustine Thomas (sounds like another Anglophile wannabe) who just dismisses Conciliar Catholicism as a perfidious devolution into an insultingly negative caricature of Protestantism   

Most Catholics who even still bother to go to church have been Protestantized in their beliefs of what the Mass, or should I say the "worship service", is.

And then, in a classic example of the fire hydrant pissing on the dog, Augustine Thomas goes on to say that it is the Vatican II crowd that are given to wildly illogical and inherent falsification of the truth:

Don't expect reason from Novus Ordo Catholics. 


They're like leftists. They don't trade in logic. They use any deception or dishonesty necessary to lead the majority astray and then use that majority to silence the opposition, no matter how wrong they are.

Mr. Thomas gives no data to support his thesis that contemporary Catholics have been “Protestantized” in their beliefs and again without any examples goes on claim that supporters of the Reforms of Vatican II resort to deception and dishonesty in advancing reform.  Give examples.  Back up your claim with evidence.  I would hardly dismiss so cavalierly the scholarship of generations of theologians and historians like Chenu and Jungmann and Dix and Bea and Congar and Bouyer and Schillebeeckx and the other brains behind Vatican II. 

But there is one “lwhite”  (perhaps Lily White) who redefines “orthodoxy” and attacks the work of John Saward to strike at two of the theological architects of the   Council, Hans Urs von Balthasar  and Henri de Lubac, both of whom were made Cardinals in their old age by John Paul II, hardly a devotee of Modernism. 

Fr. John Saward, called the "Balthasar of the English-speaking world" is not someone who is a trusted source for Catholic orthodoxy. Balthasar's writings are full of heresies and should be avoided by faithful Catholics.
It was Hans Urs Von Balthasar's writings that became the primary source of confusion in Catholic philosophy and theology. He carried further Henri de Lubac's infection of Modernism into the Church who introduced the principle of self-contradiction into the very heart of truth.


So what we have following Benedict Constable’s just bizarre, not Catholic argument against women reading in the liturgy or taking any other active role that requires their presence in the area surrounding the altar, are two diverse camps.  One camp, typified by Constable himself, rejects the ecclesiology put forth in the Second Vatican Council which recognizes the priestly character of the baptized (distinct from the priestly character unique to those ordained to the presbyterate or episcopate) and empowers every baptized individual, regardless of sex, to liturgical ministries not reserved to the ordained.   The other camp, without any theological rationale, have simply rejected the Conciliar and post-Conciliar developments in the Church out of hand and are equating authentic Catholicism with a return to the pre-Conciliar status quo.

Both these stances are not only warning signs of trouble to come but are dangerous in themselves as they represent an increasing polarizing splintering of the faith, and it will ultimately become impossible for Conciliar and non-Conciliar Catholics to remain united in the same Church.  This is not to say that there is no room for legitimate diversity in the Church.  The Eastern Church not only has a different discipline regarding celibacy, for example, and different liturgical traditions, but also differs from the Western Church on significant doctrines such as purgatory and original sin.  There is, however, a mutual respect for the varying rites and an agreement to let charity trump doctrinal disagreements and permit a certain unresolved ambiguity of belief.  What we see between the Conciliar and non-Conciliar Catholics is not merely a divergence of theological models, but a rejection of authority whether it be the authority of the reigning pope, the authority of his predecessors who approved the various liturgical changes, or the authority of the Council which established the theological framework against which the non-Conciliar Catholics are rebelling.  

Years ago I was at a seminar conducted by the Reverend Martin Marty, a Lutheran and distinguished Church historian.  I recall Dr. Marty saying that the Roman (Catholic) Church has shown itself through the centuries willing to tolerate a huge amount of doctrinal diversion but it is never willing, for a moment, to tolerate a challenge to its authority.  As a historian myself I have come to see that.  Ultimately the non-Conciliar Catholics, whether they be Bishop Fellay and his Society of Saint Pius X or the more home spun variety such as Benedict Constable and Augustine Thomas and Michael Dowd and Jared and Romulus and all the rest will have to submit to the authority of the Council and the Conciliar Popes or they will find themselves on the wrong side of the Church Door.   

The Franciscan Revolution

Youth and World Youth Day: Evil is only in the

eye of the beholder

Well the Katholic wing-nuts have gone into open despair over Pope Francis as his trip to World Youth Day in Rio de Janeiro ended with some remarkable bangs.  The right-wing has always been skeptical about World Youth Day as it is the occasion for youth to be, well, youth and that sort of freedom of the children of God is just a bit more than they can handle.  And when you finish up with a Mass on the beach at Copacabana, well, expect kids to be kids.  And Pope Francis loved it, every minute of it.  It all comes down to one’s point of view: do we live in a world where the ultimate mystery is Grace or where the ultimate mystery is Sin?  The influence of Jansenism on the religious conservatives has convinced them that depravity rules and Grace is but a Band-Aid for those who are to be saved.  Francis, on the other hand, seems to see the world as the unfolding of the mystery of Grace and does not presume the worst about people.  That is a bit of a change from the dour tone of his predecessor.  In some ways, Francis seems to be John Paul I redivivus.  The one month of that smiling Pope with his fresh and happy outlook was far too short a break between the anguished Paul VI and the Slavic Sulk and German Reich that followed.   

Catholic neo-trads organized their own parallel World Youth Day in Rio to run simultaneously with the papal events.  Juventutem Niteroi of the quasi-Diocese (Apostolic Administration) of Campos Brazil.  While massive crowds were gathering about Pope Francis for the official liturgies and programs of World Youth Day, the alternative program, led by Bishop Fernando Rifan, celebrated Mass in the Extraordinary Form and held a series of catechetical sessions in which Bishop Rifan and priests of the Apostolic Administration  taught Catholic doctrine with the neo-traditionalist twist.  The Campos program drew about two thousand youth and sponsors; Pope Francis drew two million.  Go Francis!  Let’s hear it for bringing back Vatican II.  



The Alternative Program for Neo-Trads:

the Prelate of Campos Celebrates the Old Rite

Shortly before Francis went to Brazil the Vatican Congregation responsible for religious orders, with the express authorization of the Pope, limited the use of the Extra-ordinary Form (Tridentine Mass) among a neo-traditionalist group of Franciscans, the Franciscans of the Immaculate.    The friars had been using both the “old Mass” and the “new Mass,” but apparently a decision by their leadership decided that in their monasteries they would use only the Extraordinary Form.  This displeased some of the friars who, though conservative, favor the revised liturgy.  Apparently the situation quickly devolved into a serious split in the community and the Congregation for the Consecrated Life stepped in and appointed an outside commissioner—a Capuchin Franciscan—to take temporary control of the Friars and at the same time restricted use of the Extraordinary Form.  According the guidelines individual friars and communities may apply for permission to use the Extraordinary Form but ordinarily the Ordinary Form of the Roman Rite must be used.  Neo-trads were appalled as this would seem to limit the wide freedoms given by Benedict XVI in his motu prorprio,  Summorum Pontificium.  Francis is known to be no friend of the older Rite and this step can be seen as the first step in withdrawing the free and easy access of priests to the Tridentine Mass.  

As if that wasn’t bad news enough for the neo-trad wing-nuts, Francis on his return flight to Rome signaled a remarkable change of direction both to Gay and Lesbian Catholics and to Catholics who have married outside the Church.  Francis certainly did not endorse same-sex relationships, but when asked about gay priests said:  If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?"  Who am I to judge???  This drives the neo-trads right up the wall.  If the Pope can’t judge, then how can they?  And if they can’t judge then what use is religion after all.  The main point of religion for them is to know that they are better than everyone else.  Francis went on to suggest that the Church needs to reexamine its policy of banning those who are married outside the Church, and specifically those who have remarried after a divorce without obtaining a Church annulment, from Holy Communion.  Several other churchmen have said this over the past decade, including a number of Cardinals, but when the Pope says it, it is news.  There has of yet been no official change of policy however. 

In the same interview Francis said that the Church must look again at the role of women.  He specifically excluded the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood or episcopate but he said that they must have greater roles than serving at the altar or being chancellor of a diocese or heading up a Vatican bureau.  What is he thinking of?  He was not clear.  But without ordaining women to the priesthood or episcopate while opening up top-level Vatican careers, could he be hinting at the possibility of naming women to the College of Cardinals?  It is not necessary for one to be a bishop or even a priest to be a Cardinal.  If the diaconate were open to women, and there is no reason why it could not be, a woman could be a Cardinal deacon.  And, if one looks at history, it would even be possible to name a woman—or a man for that matter—to the College without even the diaconate.  The last lay Cardinal was in the nineteenth century but there is a long tradition of them.  Wouldn’t that make the next conclave fascinating?   

All this has bunched the panties of the neo-trads and to look at their blogs, they are in a panic.  Their future which seemed so rosy a year ago is in great disarray.  Who would have thought that the tables could turn so quickly?  On the other hand, tables can turn again.  Little did we know when the ultra-staid Pius XII was writing his revolutionary encyclicals  Divino  Afflante Spiritu, Mystici Corporis, and Mediator Dei that we were on the first incline of what has proved these last fifty years to be a wild roller-coaster ride in Church history.   

Vatican II--And the Dreams of a Swiss Abbot

Pope John XXIII opened up

all sorts of possibilities for

Church when he convoked

Vatican II 50 years ago

Shortly before Christmas, an article by journalist Christa Pongratz-Lippitt about an outspoken Swiss Abbot caught my attention.  Martin Werlen is the abbot of the thousand-year old abbey in Switzerland and he gave a remarkable sermon to the Swiss Bishops in mid-December.  In his sermon Abbot Martin echoed the radical critique given by the late Cardinal Carlo Martini of Milan shortly before his death last year.  The Abbot called for the Church (in this case, the hierarchy) to reexamine several issues: the sacramental status of divorced and remarried Catholics, more democratic structures of leadership,  clerical celibacy.  Perhaps the most dramatic suggestion is that the Church bring laity—both men and women—into the College of Cardinals who elect the Pope and serve as his senate.  Let me post part of the Pongratz-Lippitt’s article:  
 Fifty-year-old Abbot Martin Werlen, leader of the Abbey of Einsiedeln and himself a member of the Swiss bishops’ conference, first voiced his appeal in a sermon on the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Second Vatican Council in October. The sermon was later published in a 39-page brochure that sold out within three days and is now in its third edition.
Titled “Discovering the Embers Under the Ashes,” it echoes remarks by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini in his last interview before his death Aug. 31. Referring to the state of the church today, Martini spoke of his sense of powerlessness and how Catholicism’s “embers” were “hidden under the ashes.”
Werlen said he is alarmed by the present state of the church. “The situation of the church is dramatic, not only in the German-speaking countries,” he said. “It is dramatic not only because of the rapidly decreasing number of priests and religious or because of plummeting church attendance. The real problem is not a problem of numbers. What is missing is the fire! We must face the situation and find out what is behind it.”
He said there is leeway for reform and discussed possible reforms at length.
For example, he said, the church could learn from the way the Orthodox church deals with remarried divorced people, who are not barred from Communion. The Catholic church has never condemned the Orthodox approach, Werlen emphasized.
Local churches should also have more say in episcopal nominations, he said, recalling that religious orders have always elected their superiors democratically over the centuries.
On priestly celibacy, he quoted the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches, promulgated by Pope John Paul II in 1990. The code says that clerical celibacy “is to be greatly esteemed everywhere,” but adds that “likewise, the hallowed practice of married clerics in the primitive Church and in the tradition of the Eastern Churches throughout the ages is to be held in honor.”
There is also a lot of leeway as far as cardinals are concerned, Werlen pointed out. Women and men from all over the world, both young and old, could be elected to the cardinalate for a period of five years and could meet with the pope every three months in Rome. “Such meetings could bring a new dynamism into church leadership,” Werlen suggested.
The church could also “rediscover” synodal processes. “If bishops’ synods are so influentially prepared and accompanied by the Roman Curia that nothing new can emerge, is that a witness of faith?” he asked. As at Vatican II, “bishops should realize their responsibilities and with the help of theologians, and together with the pope, face changes in full faith — and let paper remain paper!”
… “The problems are known. Pope Benedict on occasion refers to them. But nothing concrete is done to solve them,” Werlen said.
Sweeping problems under the table or forbidding discussion of certain issues undermines the church’s credibility, he warned.
…But polarization between conservatives and progressives in the church, which he said has now reached a “frightening” level, has a deadening effect, he cautioned.
“I myself together with the Einsiedeln community would like to take another path, namely that of seeking the embers in the ashes,” he said. He pointed out that Einsiedeln is in dialogue with both the Lefebvrist Society of St. Pius X and the progressive Catholic theologian Fr. Hans Küng.
…After reading the brochure, Bishop Markus Büchel of Sankt Gallen, newly elected president of the Swiss bishops’ conference, released the following statement: “Abbot Werlen has taken up urgent questions the faithful are asking; he has outlined the problems very clearly and has put forward possible solutions. This is an impetus for very necessary discussions in the church that are also a great concern of mine. That is why I am most thankful to him.”
 

Wanted: Sound Leadership

Hilda of Whitby,

a match for any

bishop today

I was at a talk several weeks ago by Father John O’Malley SJ, a Georgetown professor who is a historian and who has written extensively about the Second Vatican Council.  Father O’Malley was asked about the role of women in the Church and he pointed out that until recently the Catholic Church has been seen as a champion of the cause of women.  He mentioned—as I always make a point in my classes—that sixty years ago the only women in the United States who were College Presidents or Hospital Administrators were Catholic nuns.  (Even the famous “Seven Sisters” women’s colleges had men presidents!)  Catholic sisters had broken any number of glass ceilings in the professional and academic world.  (Of course, this was an America in which few women worked outside the home.)  One can go further back in history and see the medical work done by Sisters on the battlefields of our Civil War as well as some of the horrible European wars.  Educational opportunities were open to Sisters that were not open to laywomen of any faith.  Catholic women like Mary Ward and her Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Angela Merici with the Ursulines, established schools for women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when education was not available to women.  And of course in the Middle Ages the great Abbeys of nuns such as Barking, Gandersheim, Helfta, or the Paraclete were centers of learning for women that rivaled the great monastic schools of men.  There were remarkable women intellectuals such as Hildegard of Bingen, Roswitha of Gandersheim, Hilda of Whitby, Gertrude of Helfta, Heloise, Gertrude of Hakeborn.  In addition to these scholars there were the great women mystics of the medieval period—Hadewijch of Antwerp, Beatrice of Nazareth, Angela of Foligno, Catherine of Genoa, Julian of Norwich, Marguerite Porete, Catherine of Siena, Brigitte of Sweden and others who wrote books about their spiritual experiences that shaped the lives and spirituality of countless people. 
These women were not people who let others—even priests and bishops—think for them.  There were souls filled with grace and shaped by the faith of the Church but who had the courage and intellect to make up their own minds and be true to their own inner lights—or rather, to be true to the grace of the Holy Spirit within them.  And why do some people think that women—and men—should let the bishops and the priests think for them today? 
What we need are bishops and priests who themselves are intelligent, well-read, clear thinkers and articulate who can explain the principles of our faith in a intellectually convincing way. We don’t need fools like Bishop Daniel Jenky who use intelligence-free rhetoric or Bishop Thomas Olmstead who speaks without researching his subject.  We don’t need a Francis George who is brilliant but so tightly wrapped in his intellect that he inarticulate.  We don’t need a Donald Wuerl who with a second-class academic degree and no professorial experience thinks he can take on a far superior and more practiced intellect such as Elisabeth Johnson.  Hearing someone like Father O’Malley talk, I know there are people in the Church who know their stuff, see the connections between the historic faith of the Church and contemporary life, and can explain the faith at a level when people can make the connections for themselves and make rational and responsible decisions for themselves.  Is it too much to ask that bishops and Church leaders be selected from among the ranks of such men?  The day of a laity who will follow directions of a hierarchy and clergy are over.  People today need to be convinced and we need leaders in the Church who can make their case and not merely expect to impose their will. 

Is Rush Limbaugh to be the Next American Cardinal?

Cardinal Joseph Bernardin (1928-1996)
A wise prelate whose advice about 
dialogue should have been heeded

Rush Limbaugh calls a Third-Year Law Student a “slut” because she advocates mandatory contraceptive coverage. What has that to do with contemporary American Catholicism?  Well, plenty actually. Whethr or not we like it, Rush Limbaugh has joined our team, climbed on our bus, and maybe we need to relook at what we are standing for.     

      Of course the whole situation arose in response and consequence to the American Bishops opposing mandatory coverage for contraceptives as part of the Health Care legislation.  Had the bishops limited their argument to exempting Catholic institutions from having to provide coverage for those procedures to which Catholics—on moral grounds—object,  the bishops may have had an argument, By broadening their attack on Health Care to argue that any employer should be exempted from having to provide coverage, however, the Church has lost in the court of public opinion where 83% of Democrats, 62% of Independents, and even 42% of Republicans (a minority of Republicans but a remarkably high minority given this having become a partisan issue) believe that all employers (including Catholic Institutions) should have to provide contraceptives coverage.   In a clumsy attempt to define this as a battle for religious liberty (which is one facet of the conundrum) the Republican controlled House of Representatives convoked a hearing led by Chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Darrell Issa (R.CA) and invited a panel of religious leaders to testify.  At the same time Issa refused to accept the credentials of Democratic witness, Sandra Fluke, claiming that she was “unqualified.”  (The excuse was later defended by claiming that her name was submitted “too late” to the panel.)   Just to make sure that injury was not unaccompanied by insult, Representative Issa referred to Ms. Fluke as “a college student.”  Sandra Fluke is, in fact, a Third Year Georgetown University Law Student where she leads the “Law Students for Reproductive Justice.”  Ms. Fluke had done her undergraduate degree at Cornell and before going to Law School she had worked for five years at “Sanctuary for Families,” a non-profit agency that assists victims of domestic violence.  Seeing tapes of her she is extremely articulate, certainly far more articulate than Mr. Limbaugh.  In fact, she is far more articulate than most bishops.   And she is certainly as qualified—if not more so—to speak to the issue of women’s concerns about Reproductive Justice as well as the legal repercussions for women and families of the failure to provide contraceptive coverage as was the all-male panel of bishops, seminary professors, rabbis, and imams.  Note: The all-male panel.  This was the problem.  What were the Republicans thinking when they convoked an all male panel for this issue?  And what was Bridgeport CT Bishop William Lori thinking when he agreed to sit on it.  S-T-U-P-I-D!!!  Was Bishop Lori so struck by the glamor of a national spotlight (a “protégé” <and the quotes are deliberate> of the late Cardinal James Hickey of Washington, Lori is a “climber” <here the quotes are used to denote a colloquialism> of the first degree) that he had no foresight on how this would make the Church look.  The hearing had no sooner begun and the good Bishop prattling away comparing making the Church pay for contraceptives to requiring a Kosher Deli to carry pork, when a Democrat member of the panel, Carolyn Maloney (D. NY) interrupted and asked the fatal question: “Where are the women?”  What a disaster!!!  When will our leadership (aka the Bishops) realize that they need to step out of the spotlight and put lay people—and in this case, women—there as the spokespersons?  If the American Church survives the incompetence of its episcopal leadership it will be only by the grace of God.  Let us hope that God doesn’t become so disgusted with their abysmal leadership that He doesn’t abanon them to their own ineptitude. Their narrow provincialism is  making it increasingly embarrassing to be Catholic.  And now, Rush Limbaugh weighs in adding ballast to their arguments.  This is the last thing we need to have happen.  I have always found a tone of anti-Catholicism in Limbaugh—I think he knows how dangerous the papal magisterium is to his conservative (read neo-nazi) stand on immigration, social justice, human dignity etc) and is no admirer of the Catholic Church.  What a wonderful way to rob it of whatever shreds of credibility it has remaining but to come to its side in attacking a bright and articulate Law Student.  Geez, what hole will we dig to fall into next? 

      Before his 1996 death from pancreatic cancer, the late Cardinal Joseph Bernardin of Chicago had proposed a “Catholic Common Ground Initiative” to open dialogue with those who find themselves at odds with magisterial positions so that we might find the common ground on which we can build consensus. He was viciously attacked by such pillars of self-righteous authoritarianism as Cardinal Bernard Law (whose moral fiber became clear in the sex-abuse cover up scandals) and the omni-phobic Cardinal James Hickey (whose one-time secretary is the same William Lori who was testifying to this Congressional panel). 

      This current debacle only bears witness to the wisdom of Bernardin’s call.  If the Church is not to lose all credibility we need to sit down to open dialogue with a number of groups in our society, foremost among them women.  The bishops need to hear the needs and concerns of women.  Yes the Church has its moral teachings.  We are not disputing that.  But women have legitimate concerns to which we need to be sensitized.  Certainly not all women would agree with “the feminist agenda” nor allow that “radical feminists” speak for them, but our basic ignorance, as a Church, of the needs and concerns of the vast majority of women (not just Limbaugh’s “feminazis,” but of all women and especially of minority women) makes it impossible for us to bear effective witness of the Gospel to them in today’s societies.  Maybe the bishops need to invite Sandra Fluke and listen to her—I am not saying agree, I am saying listen—voice telling them what she does know better than them.  Maybe if the clergy began listening to the faithful, really listening, they would find that the Holy Spirit sings in more than one choir.  And maybe the Church might begin to regain its credibility before it brings down the entire building on itself in one huge act of self-destruction.  But then again, if the bishops are afraid of Elizabeth Johnson, Joan Chittester, and Sandra Schnieders—all nuns in their seventies—they certainly won’t want to be in the same room as a bright and articulate law student who is just over 30.