Tag Archives: women priests

Pray, Don’t Pay, Disobey: The Catholic Revolution Has Begun

Prickly Pear, at Far From Rome, has written about a personal decision to remove himself from the sacramental life of the Church. He says that this was “precipitated” by moving house, but has been a long time coming – and was preceded by substantial time for reflection, during a time without easy internet access.  It’s important to note here, that this time was accompanied by an increase in meditation practice.  I was alerted to Pear’s post by a report on it by Jayden Cameron at Gay Mystic, who writes on his own experience outside the formal life of the Church for over 25 years. Anyone who is familiar with Jayden’s writing will recognize that he too may have left the institutional church, but retains a very strong spiritual, even sacramental life, with a strong devotion to the Eucharist. He simply chooses to practice his spirituality independently.  Pear quotes from a Commonweal article by Cathleen Kaveny (sadly, hidden behind a paywall I cannot access), on many others who are doing the same thing:

From the perspective of these Catholics, doctrine and practice are not developing but withering. But why not stay and fight? First, because they think remaining appears to involve complicity in evil; second, because fighting appears to be futile; and, third, because they don’t like what fighting is doing to them. The fight is diminishing their ability to hear the gospel and proclaim that good news. The fight is depriving them of the peace of Christ.

Bill Lindsey at Bilgrimage is another important Catholic blogger who writes specifically as a Catholic theologian, at his own site and at Open Tabernacle, and has frequently made clear his objections to participating formally in the sacramental life of the Catholic church. He has a useful summary of Kaveny’s piece, and includes this extract:

From the perspective of these Catholics, doctrine and practice are not developing but withering.  But why not stay and fight?  First, because they think remaining appears to involve complicity in evil; second, because fighting appears to be futile; and, third, because they don’t like what fighting is doing to them.  The fight is depriving them of the peace of Christ.

Prickly Pear, Jayden and Bill are far from alone. It has been widely reported that ex-Catholics, those who have either transferred to another denomination or simply ceased to identify as Catholic, are now the second largest religious denomination in the US. Similar patterns of disengagement are seen in many other parts of the world. (Research has shown that the most important reasons people give for leaving concern Vatican teaching on gender and sexual ethics, compulsory clerical celibacy, and the child abuse disgrace). I am more interested though, in another phenomenon: the abundant evidence that Catholics who choose to stay are simply ignoring official doctrine, on matters ranging from sexual ethics to church discipline.

A couple of months ago, an Irish paper asked, with reference to the call for a boycott of Mass, “Is this the start of a revolution in the Catholic Church?” My response is no, the start of a revolution is no longer possible. The revolution has already begun, and is well under way, in Ireland, in the US, and elsewhere.

Velvet Revolution, Czechoslavaki

Sexual Ethics

It is now commonplace to observe that almost nobody any longer pays any attention to official doctrine on contraception – obedience to other matters of sexual ethics is not much stronger. There is abundant research evidence that demonstrates that “What the church teaches”, in the sense of Vatican doctrine, and “What Catholics believe” (i.e. in real life) diverge dramatically, on all other matters of sexual ethics. On premarital sex, on divorce, on masturbation, and even on abortion, most Catholics disagree with the formal Vatican doctrines.

Not only are the laity disregarding the rules: even among the clergy, estimates are that a substantial number of priests are disregarding their vows of celibacy, and so also ignoring the Church’s insistence that genital sexual expression outside of marriage and procreation is to be avoided at all costs. Some conduct faithful relationships with regular partners, sometimes even with the knowledge of supportive parishioners, others have covert one-night stands, or pay for prostitutes.

Church Rules

How many Catholics still wrestle with their conscience if they miss a Sunday Mass? There was a time when it was axiomatic that loyal Catholics would be in Church for Mass every Sunday morning (or possibly on Saturday evenings for the vigil Mass). This was more than simply an occasion to demonstrate the numbers, and provide an opportunity for the priest once more to pound away at his message of obedience to Church authority – it was also an opportunity to rake in the money from the Offertory collections. Today, even those who continue to see themselves as faithful Catholics may attend Mass less frequently – and often deliberately withhold contributions to the Offertory collections, especially where there is a sense that the monies are to be used in an inappropriate, socially divisive way, as with the use of Church funds in Maine to support the campaign against gay marriage.

The practice of regular private confession to a priest has almost disappeared. When I was at school, I was taught that as Catholics we should be grateful for the gift of the confessional, which for many Catholics reduced or eliminated the need for psychotherapy. When it works correctly, with a wise and sensitive confessor, I am sure that the observation is sound. But far too often, over many centuries the confessional has instead been abused as a site of terror. For as long Catholics believed that without formal absolution for their sins they were doomed to hellfire for all eternity,  and that absolution could be obtained only from a priest in the confessional, many will have felt compelled to knuckle under to every command of the Catechism, no matter how ludicrous, or to submit to the scrutiny of a priest in the confessional.   The confessional was thus a source of power for the clergy, even in areas of sexuality where they had demonstrably less real-life expertise than the people they commanded. Fortunately, the whole concept of the confessional has been transformed, to one of reconciliation rather than simple confession of guilt, and ever since the publication of “humane vitae”, there has been a much stronger awareness of the role of individual conscience. The confessional has lost its power of intimidation, and many people now simply refuse to go, or go much less frequently.

Women priests

The emergence of the Roman Catholic Womenpriests movement is for me the most striking example of outright defiance within the Church. At America Magazine,  MICHAEL O’LOUGHLIN reflects on the image he saw in his local cathedral during a recent All Souls’ Mass. Of 20 people in the sanctuary, 18 were men. He asks,

What does an image like that say to girls and women sitting in the pews? That is, what do women and young girls feel while looking up at a sanctuary filled overwhelmingly with men?

The question has been asked before, and must be asked again, repeatedly. In the comments thread, one reader points to an appropriate response, to this and other examples of the inappropriate and outdated rules coming from the Vatican:

I wonder what qualities of ministry attach to a penis over a vagina, to put it graphically. My conclusion is that hierarchs feel threatened, and prefer to keep the status quo – not really out of any theological consideration, but as markers of their psychological dysfunction. The fear of the feminine is a powerful one. It poses too many centering questions.

I have since attended services where Episcopal women priests preside, and always welcome our female pastoral associate filling in at Eucharist services or whatever. A sign of the alarm women ignite is a recent chancery communique warning anyone to stay away from a woman priest in our area, and promising excommunication to those who attend her celebrations.

No matter, change is coming from the bottom up, and someday all this will seem like foolishness. Maybe that priest shortage is for an inspired reason, though married men come first, and when all other options are spent, women become acceptable. I don’t sweat it too much because the time is coming, and eventually, it will be, ‘What was all that fuss about?’

It is indeed remarkable, given the strong Vatican insistence on automatic excommunication for anyone assisting in the “attempted” ordination of women, that this movement continues to grow and attract support. As the number of male candidates for the priesthood continues to stagnate, how long will it be before the number of female ordinations exceeds that of men – at least in Europe and North America?

Obedience and dissent

Growing up in South Africa, I was taught that when faced with a choice between the demands of unjust laws and the prompting of conscience, the Catholic obligation is to follow conscience every time. When people have done so in sufficiently large numbers, they have frequently been able to overcome unjust laws: “the best way to destroy an unjust law is to ignore it”.

“From the bottom up” is an important part of how change came to South Africa, and to Eastern Europe, and before that how Mahatma Gandhi, with his campaign of Satryagraha forced change on the British in the Indian sub-continent – and hence on the rest of the British colonial empire. These examples, and many others, overcame forces with substantial military and political power. In the Church, the power of the episcopal oligarchy rests entirely on their control of our minds – and it is now obvious that that power is eroding rapidly. The manifest wrongheadedness of Humanae Vitae taught many Catholics the validity of following conscience before Vatican doctrine – and that lesson is now being applied elsewhere.

“That was a watershed. Up to that time, I think, practically all Catholics accepted that, whether they disobeyed Catholic teaching or not, the teaching was right. It was there that the questioning began.”

-Bishop Willie Walsh, quoted at Irish Times

Yet this doesn’t mean that people are turning away from God and religion – interest in spirituality and personal prayer remains high.

The Kairos moment

Jayden Cameron at Gay Mystic, reflecting on the decline in allegiance to the institutional church offers his own explanation in theological terms – he sees this as a sign of the Holy Spirit at work:

There is a movement underway here and I’m convinced it’s a movement of the Holy Spirit – showing us in such lives that the ‘sacramental life of the church’ (and I would include the Eucharist) can continue, flourish and survive outside the present formal obediential structures of the Roman institution (though this was not exactly Prickly Pear’s intent in his statement, I’m enlarging here). Many of us are being called to witness to the life of the Spirit independent of the institution. When it is healthy, it can be an enormous help, but it is not an Absolute entity that is essential to the spiritual journey. When it becomes unhealthy, it becomes a danger – to young gay persons especially. The great Catholic tradition, however, is another matter, and here as well I feel many of us are being given the calling to maintain the living flame of this tradition in the wilderness of a very dark time

The Spirit is ahead of us on this one, way ahead. The bottom line for myself: peace and joy and the living face of the Beloved are found outside the door, not within the formal chamber of the church. And since so many of us are feeling this, what then is the Spirit saying by this powerful witnessing movement? We cannot claim credit for it ourselves, something very significant and powerful is being messaged here about the very nature of institutional religion. Peace, joy and love in the Spirit flourish on the margins of belief.

Change indeed is coming from the bottom up. The old slogan “pray, pay, obey” has given way to “pray, don’t pay, disobey.”

And I thank God for that.

God’s Tricksters, Prophetic Vision, and Justice in the Church.

I’ve been reading about Catholic Bishop, Patricia Fresen . That’s right: Catholic Bishop, Patricia Fresen.

Bishop Fresen is one of three consecrated Bishops in the Womenpriests movement. Now, I’ve been fascinated by Bishop Fresen since I first heard of her a couple of years ago, but all my natural instincts are in turmoil over this. On the one hand, part of me says this can’t be valid – the Catholic Church does not allow women priests, let alone bishops. On the other, another part of me says, right on! After all, she appears to have been legitimately and validly consecrated by a (male) Catholic bishop in good standing, witnessed by three other male bishops, and other women bishops – who had previously been consecrated themselves, in similar fashion.

women priests

The second feature that appeals to me, that warms the cockles of my heart, is that I share one part of Bishop Fresen’s path of resistance. She and I both spent the major part of our lives in the church in South Africa. As legally “white”, we were both beneficiaries of the apartheid structure. As Catholics, we both accepted the national church’s insistence that it was right and appropriate to stand up against injustice, and to resist, even to disobey, unjust laws. I myself attended several meeting of peace and justice commissions, where the regular slogan was “If you want peace, work for justice”, and quite deliberately ignored and contravened some significant pieces of legislation, opening myself to real risk of prosecution.

Bishop Fresen logically applied church teaching on justice to her own position:

“As she left childhood, she realized that this neat division into black and white was not the Will of God. It was unjust. Through her experience in her Dominican community, which had broken barriers of white and black among the sisters and in their schools, Patricia came to understand that there is a moral obligation to change unjust laws and that this is often done by refusal to obey those laws. Therefore, when she heard about the ordination of seven Catholic women on the Danube in 2002, she immediately recognized that their ordinations were moral resistance to the apartheid of sexism in the Catholic Church.”

I do not know enough about canon law on what constitutes a legitimate episcopal consecration, but I do know that this issue is not going away any time soon. In addition to the women already ordained, they are training more – as well as married and gay men.

[UPDATE: By sheer chance, I stumbled upon this story on Clerical Whispers from 2007, focusing on one of the American women ordained. Have a look here, at the original source, for a different perspective.

I am also struck by the action of the (male) bishop and his colleagues who had the courage to initiate the ordination of womenpriests, and then the consecration of three women bishops, to continue the work. I have been reading Virginia Mollenkott on “God’s Tricksters”, in “Take Back the Word” (ed Goss & Webb).

MollenkottMollenkott argues that for those compelled to read Scripture, and to follow authority from “low and outside” (which includes women, gay men, and especially lesbians), it is sometimes necessary to adopt a certain amount of deception and trickery. This sounds dishonest, but she quotes convincing Scriptural precedents for the strategy (Jeannine Grammik has proposed something similar, for subverting Vatican authority from the inside). I also like Mollenkott’s observations on assigned authority. She is not here speaking of the Catholic Church in particular, but if the cap fits…

“Those who find themselves disadvantaged, on the outside, in the margins as it were, make use of trickery and other forms of manipulative behaviour because they do not have assigned power….Assigned power is just that: assigned (usually by the elite in favour of the elite) but masquerading as divinely ordained, cosmically correct and unquestionably true.” (emphasis mine)

It seems to me that the unnamed male bishops have done just that – used their legitimate authority to ordain & consecrate women priests and bishops. But because the people chosen are women, and therefore not approved in the modern church (the evidence is that this was not also the case: women deacons, and possibly priests, were certainly ordained in the early church), the identity of the consecrating bishops must be kept secret for now.

At Bilgrimage, meanwhile, William Lindsay has been critically discussing the stance of Archbishop Rowan Williams on gay marriage, contrasting it with that of the British Quakers. He notes that what is required here is not endless debate, commissions, scholarship and clear majority support, but the adoption of a prophetic stance against injustice.

“To my mind, what British Friends have just decided to do, and the theological rationale they advance to justify their decision, strongly supports the argument I offered yesterday against the Archbishop of Canterbury’s understanding of how churches change their moral minds. When social attitudes begin to show churches that certain practices they have long taken for granted are no longer morally defensible, churches usually change their moral minds not because they have reached wide agreement about a new moral consensus, or as a result of ongoing study and discussion about the new consensus.

They change their moral minds because prophetic, cutting-edge groups within the churches and outside the churches needle the churches into rethinking their complicity in practices that can no longer be justified on theological, biblical, or moral grounds. “

This is precisely what I was taught by the Church in South Africa, what Bishop Fresen has followed in her calling to the priesthood, and what the Quakers have now done.

See also:

Mollenkott, Virginia Ramey “Reading the Bible from Low and Outside: Lesbitransgay People as God’s Tricksters ” in Take Back the Word, (ed Goss & Webb)

Wild Reed, Women Priests ordained in Minneapolis

Roman Catholic Womenpriests:

From the Womenpriests website:

“Roman Catholic Womenpriests Celebrate Eucharist at
CALL TO ACTION 30th Anniversary Conference
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

Link to a 9:46 minute video on Google Videos
“Highlights from Roman Catholic Womenpriests‘ liturgy at Call to Action”
this video downloads on either Windows or Mac

Link to a 3:55 minute video on Google Videos
“Roman Catholic Womenpriests Celebrate Eucharist at Call to Action”
this video downloads on either Windows or Mac

Link to a 3:44 minute video on Google Videos
“A New Inclusive Model of Priestly Ministry”
this video downloads on either Windows or Mac”

Give me Back That Old Time Religion

Gary Macy, a historical theologian, has an article at National Catholic Reporter prompted by the Vatican “Visitation” to US women religious. Macy reminds us in this article that this very concept would have been unthinkable until fairly recently in church history.  Quoting just one example, he notes that

“The abbess (of Las Huelgas near Burgos in Spain) had the power to appoint parish priests for the countryside subject to the convent of Las Huelgas, some 64 villages. No bishop or delegate from the Holy See could perform a visitation of the churches or altars or curates or clerics or benefices under the care of the abbess. The abbess of Las Huelgas was even able to convene synods in her diocese and to make synodal constitutions and laws for both her religious and lay subjects.”

Trappings of the modern church?

Previously, Macy has written about women’s active role in the priesthood of the early church. (Treasures from the Storeroom: Medieval Religions and the Eucharist) .While agreeing that this role was not the same as that of modern ordained priests, nor was that of their male peers in their own time. (I am grateful to The Wild Reed, once again, for drawing my attention to these two articles)

Exploring these ideas a little further, I came across another piece in the NCR which caught my attention: Under the Heading “A Map to the Future Church” , Tom Roberts writes about the ideas of Sr Christine Schenk on ways in which to renew the church.  Reading these, I was struck once again by how so much of the obvious way forward (dispense with compulsory celibacy, ordain women, accept homosexuality as natural, invigorate the laity and accept their participation in decision making and the appointment of bishops) are not radical new ideas at all, but simply return to the best traditions of the church.  (I do NOT say the “early” church, which brings suggestions of the first centuries of a small band struggling against a hostile Empire.  The practices to which I refer were part of the mainstream church for twelve centuries – for over half of Church history.)

All of this confirmed what I have long suspected.  Somewhat to my astonishment, I find that I am at heart a deeply conservative, traditional Catholic:  but not of that sham “tradition” which  emerged in the 19th century, and falsely claims to represent the historical “truth”.

My readers will know of my conviction that LGBT Catholics should be more aware of their respected place in Church history.  To find a more viable future for the church, so should we all better understand the truth of our past.

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