Wasting women

Christ calls us to rebel against injustice. He held up the powerful and privileged for ridicule because they mistreated others or did nothing to stop it. Religious authorities were among His favorite targets because their definition of 'holiness' consisted of following rules rather than righting wrongs.

Women have long been relegated to second class status in the body of Christ. Although there have been some gains, antagonism toward women holding leadership positions in the church remains fairly entrenched in some quarters. That injustice is particularly apparent in the Catholic Church where the Vatican has interpreted any advocacy for the ordination of women as an apostasy tantamount to evil. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), the superiors that represent 80% of the nuns in America, were labeled 'radical feminists' in large part because of their call to expand leadership roles for women in the Church.

It appears that this fight is far from over. The LCWR will decide next week how to respond to their spanking at the hands of the Vatican and the coterie of bishops selected to be their overseers. One possibility is that the group will decide to leave the formal structures of the Catholic Church. Sanctioning by the powers that be should not mean having to sell one's soul, but the temptations and corruptions of power should never be underestimated. Suffice it to say that the LCWR is giving strong thought to rejecting thought control.

Framing the situation as the Vatican "blocking the development of thought and the place of Gospel in that thought," Chittister said, "The obstruction and the control of thought is so important to the evolution of theology and the church itself that if it has to be done outside the structures for a while, then it will have to be done."

"This is not necessary," she continued. "This doesn't have to be. But if those elements of the conversation are the central elements and they are nonnegotiable, then it seems to me that the possibility of that other approach will rise, will occur and will have to be faced."

The LCWR got into trouble in part for allowing 'dissidents' like Father Michael Crosby to address the group's convention. Crosby is an outspoken critic of the Vatican's stance on the ordination of women. In his 2004 seminar during the LCWR convention, he did not mince words:

Yet we still have to worship a God that the Vatican says “wills that women not be ordained.” That god is literally “unbelievable.” It is a false god; it cannot be worshiped. And the prophet must speak truth to that power and be willing to accept the consequence of calling for justice, stopping the violence and bringing about the reign of God.

In a commentary published last week, Father Crosby noted the disingenuous response to his position by the powers that be. He, too, has decided to rebel against injustice.

Because of such a nonresponse to these and other communications I have sent to the Vatican in the last 15 years, I decided to make some of them public in my recent book, Repair My House: Becoming a "Kindom" Catholic (Orbis, 2012). Furthermore, given the recent actions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Bishop Blair, I believe my private dissent on the issue of women's full equality in our patriarchal, clerical church should be made public lest any perceived silence on the matter by clerics like me might be construed as consent.

Thus, I reiterate here what I wrote in those letters above, as well as the statement attributed to me by Bishop Blair at the 2004 LCWR/CMSM assembly: I simply cannot believe in a god who discriminates against women. To do so would be sinful because this would reflect violence against women as equal members of the Body of Christ. Furthermore, I have come to be theologically convinced that the worship of any such god who wills that women not be ordained either reflects clearly debatable teaching or sinful ideological idolatry. The role of prophecy in our church (the special charism of those of us in religious life) is, above all, to try to keep the people, and especially the priests, from promoting the worship of false gods.

In other words, the Vatican is engaging in false witness against God by discriminating against women. I think that hits the nail squarely on the head.

There are three justifications typically given for excluding women from leadership positions in the Church: (1) Jesus did not include women among His first disciples; (2) some epistles included in the New Testament disparaged women; and (3) the Pope said no.

While there were no women among the first disciples, women were part of the larger circle of the Lord's first followers. Women were described as His friends and were even present during the Passover celebration that became known as the Last Supper. After His crucification, Jesus first appeared in resurrected form to Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-18).

Katie German, writing in her blog Confessions of a Thinking Woman, pinpoints some remarkable discontinuity in New Testament epistles regarding women. The letters most clearly attributable to Paul recognize women in leadership positions in the early church. Letters originally attributed to Paul, but later thought to have been written by others (labeled the 'Deutero-Pauline Epistles'), contain some disparaging views of women.

In the authentic Pauline corpus, with very few exceptions, Paul values women as workers in Christ whose role in the church is not in any way diminished by their gender. The Deutero-Pauline authors, on the other hand, restrict the realm and influence of women and generally portray women as silly, weak, and easily led astray.

It is ironic that women were rejected as potential leaders in some epistles because they were viewed as more easily corruptible. All too many men in leadership positions in the Church have betrayed Christ in ways that make Judas Iscariot look good by comparison. Perhaps the patriarchal biases of some disciples in the early church were on display in the epistles as men succumb to temptation just as easily as women. In fact, men seem even more prone to the temptations of violence and exploitation of vulnerable than women.

That just leaves the glorious construct of papal infallibility.

Infallibility belongs in a special way to the pope as head of the bishops (Matt. 16:17–19; John 21:15–17). As Vatican II remarked, it is a charism the pope "enjoys in virtue of his office, when, as the supreme shepherd and teacher of all the faithful, who confirms his brethren in their faith (Luke 22:32), he proclaims by a definitive act some doctrine of faith or morals. Therefore his definitions, of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church, are justly held irreformable, for they are pronounced with the assistance of the Holy Spirit, an assistance promised to him in blessed Peter."

Irreformable. How convenient. No change until the Pope decides. I wonder how many popes Christ would judge to be infallible and truly guided by the Holy Spirit. It is fair to say that it is far less than all. If Jesus thought future church leaders were going to be infallible in matters of faith, He would not have warned us so forcefully about false teachers and prophets.

The body of Christ needs women as shepherds now more than ever. An act of disobedience to corrupt authority seems like an excellent way to set the wheels of reform in motion. Jesus rejected flawed religious leaders and so should we.