Catholic women priests are an oxymoron for the
Vatican.
It considers them automatically excommunicated before the holy
oil is dry on their hands.
Other Catholics accept them as sacramental
ministers and are delighted with the innovation.
Still, others, myself
included, want far deeper structural changes in the Catholic Church such
that priesthood loses its baked-on charm and ministry becomes the
expected task of adult members.
This is an important theological
conversation that the Vatican wishes would go away. Memo to them: it is
just starting.
Pink Smoke Over the Vatican is a new documentary that is making the rounds at film festivals (it will debut in New York on February 12 at the Athena Film Festival,
hosted by Barnard College).
The title refers to protests held at
churches around the country during the Conclave in 2005 that elected
Pope Benedict XVI where women created pink smoke — instead of the
traditional white smoke that heralds the choice of a pope — to draw
attention to the fact that the election was a men’s club affair.
(Only
Cardinals under the age of eighty may vote and no women are cardinals
yet.)
Catholic women have been working on eradicating sexism from the
Church for decades; in this well-made film, director/producer Jules Hart
describes some of the history of this struggle, focusing on one aspect
in particular.
I only wish the film told more of the story — it is a
complex and rich one that deserves a fuller airing.
Apartheid at the altar
The film tells the tale of women who have chosen to be ordained as part of what is called the Roman Catholic WomenPriests
(womenpriests is all one word) movement, whose mission is to create “a
new model of ordained ministry in a renewed Roman Catholic Church.”
But
there are many models of women’s leadership in Catholicism; I think it
is important to frame the film in the context of the larger movement for
change that characterizes 21st century Catholicism lest viewers are
left with an incomplete picture.
Part of the movement is indeed focused on women’s ordination, the
lack of which is one of the most obvious signs that institutional
Catholicism relegates women to second-class citizenship.
In the movie,
many wonderful women describe their priestly vocations from childhood,
their calls to ministry, and how they have struggled to fulfill them.
Patricia Fresan, now a bishop with the RCWP group, speaks
matter-of-factly about being a professor of homiletics in a seminary
while being barred from preaching on account of gender.
She connects
apartheid in her native South Africa with this apartheid at the altar.
Alta Jacko draws on Sojourner Truth as part of her inspiration to become
what she was forbidden to be by a patriarchal church.
Victoria Rue
laughingly tells about distributing Necco Wafers to the children in her
neighborhood when they played Mass.
There is a lot of footage of ordination ceremonies with women in
colorful vestments laying hands on one another to confer the
sacrament—all the familiar Catholic "smells and bells," but with women
in charge.
Interspersed throughout the film are comments by Ronald P.
Lengwin, priest spokesperson for the Diocese of Pittsburgh who has a
weekly radio show called “Amplify.”
He repeats and repeats the
institution’s position that it simply cannot ordain women because Jesus
did not do so, that the “deposit of faith” does not include it, that the
“unity of the church” will be broken, and various other theologically
discredited notions.
He does so with the patience and equanimity of
someone who has been mouthing these same old ideas for some time, come
what may.
I can imagine that he might, at a later date, just as easily
say, “As we have always and everywhere taught, in the fullness of
revelation, women are called to the ordained priesthood” if so
instructed by higher-ups.
That hierarchical system is at the heart of the problem. Power is
concentrated in the hands of a few (ordained) men and thinking for
oneself is not a criterion for an ecclesial job in Catholicism.
Maryknoll priest Roy Bourgeoise, excommunicated for preaching the homily
at one of the contested women’s ordinations, shows that it can and
should be done especially by those who already enjoy clerical privilege.
The film includes some relevant historical matters.
Dorothy Irvin’s
study of catacomb frescos that contain images of women is of interest.
So, too, is the story of Ludmila Javorova,
who was ordained a priest in 1970 by Bishop Felix Davidek of the
underground church in Czechoslovakia.
With many priests and nuns in
prison, that community needed sacramental ministers.
The Vatican
obviously recognized her ordination enough to ban Ludmila from priestly
functions in 1990 when male priests became more plentiful again.
What
escaped them is contemporary sacramental theology that holds that a
community — and not the presence of an ordained person — is what is
necessary to celebrate the Eucharist.
But that theology would put the
Roman officials out of business.
In 2002, seven women were ordained on the Danube (to avoid the
jurisdiction of a German or Austrian bishop) by a bishop whose own
episcopal status as “valid but illicit” was enough for the women to
claim to be in apostolic succession.
Two of those women were eventually
ordained as bishops by still-unnamed male bishops.
The women bishops
have gone on to ordain dozens of women priests and bishops in similar
ceremonies.
This is the beginning of what is referred to in this film as
the ordination of Catholic women.
However, the movement is so much
older and more diverse that such telescoping does not convey the full
picture.
The origins of the fight for women's equality in the Church
St. Joan’s International Alliance, a suffrage group founded in London
in 1911, was the first to raise the ordination question.
According to
Belgian writer Anne Marie Pelzer,
“the Alliance put to the Holy Father its first official request for women to become deacons (1961), then for lay men and women to be present at the Council, as observers and experts (1962). In 1963, it presented a very cautious and respectful resolution to the Pope on the admission of women to the priesthood.”
Pioneering feminist scholars — including Mary Daly,
Catherina Halkes, Gertrude Heinzelmann, Joan Morris, and Ida Raming —
were affiliated with the Alliance.
Their writings laid the groundwork
for the later movement. American member Mary B. Lynch posed the question
of women’s ordination to her Christmas card list in 1974.
Her friends’
enthusiastic responses led scholars and activists to plan a national
gathering to discuss this then still outlandish idea.
In November of 1975, the Women’s Ordination Conference took place in
Detroit, Michigan; the eponymous organization arose from that spirited
event.
WOC sponsored another meeting in 1978 in Baltimore where women
were very specific about the kind of renewed priestly ministry they
would accept—without clericalism, without mandatory celibacy, without
hierarchy, but with the inclusion of all and a focus on social justice.
WOC became the go-to organization on these matters, holding
subsequent meetings and consultations, publishing theological and
ministerial resources, and working with women on a range of ministerial
options.
The Vatican issued various documents against the ordination of
women, each one successively more defensive than the other.
Bishops’
committees met to ponder these matters and blow off steam about how
scandalous the whole idea of women priests really was.
Women simply went
ahead with their ministries.
Feminist theologians laid out the
intellectual contours of a renewed church.
Women’s Ordination Worldwide (WOW) emerged as national and regional movements sprang up in many places.
I found it odd that almost none of this history — especially the work
of WOC, and very little of the theological spadework — was included in
the documentary.
Granted it may not make great video, but it is an
integral part of the story.
And there is more.
Thinking beyond ordination
Some Catholic women were so scandalized by the institutional church’s
rejection that they got ordained in other traditions.
I like to think
of them as Catholic priests too. Still others simply left the Catholic
Church disgusted.
Lots of Catholic women went to seminary and completed
graduate programs in theology, discovering along the way that ordination
was not a magic bullet, that ministry takes many challenging forms, and
that a hierarchical model contradicts Christian claims to equality and
mutuality.
For many women in canonical religious communities, nuns or
sisters, the questions became even more complicated as the
contradictions piled up—how to be a member of a group that is connected
with a structure that relegates women to inferior status, how to value
the Eucharist knowing women cannot decide where and when to celebrate it
licitly, how to feel any allegiance to an institution that shows
blatant disdain for women, their talents, insights, and decision-making.
Many women, myself included, began to think beyond ordination to new forms of church that approximated what theologian Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza
so aptly named “a discipleship of equals.”
These women-church groups,
as they are known, form loose networks of small base communities (in the
U.S., the Women-Church Convergence).
They function quite nicely without benefit of clergy and with broad
participation by their members.
There are many other house churches,
unaffiliated parishes, even the occasional creative affiliated parish
that are gathering places for postmodern Catholics.
Many see ourselves
as much in “catholic,” small ‘c’ terms, as part of widespread
religiously motivated efforts to love and do justice, as we do in
“Catholic” terms. Catholicism is changing.
There are many issue-specific Catholic groups.
The coalition that is
called the Catholic Organizations for Renewal (COR) includes Dignity
(with a focus on LGBTIQ people), Catholics for Choice (reproductive
justice workers), Call to Action (working for justice and equality),
WOC, Women-Church Convergence, among others.
No doubt the Vatican has
cause to be worried by more than women priests.
The whole Roman house of
cards is collapsing as the extent of sexual abuses becomes clear, with
fingers pointing upward to the top officials who were complicit.
There
is another movie to be made here in which the Survivors Network of those
Abused by Priests (SNAP) will play a starring role.
Ministry as community challenge
It is important to see women priests in the company of these many
colleagues who love the Catholic community enough to challenge and
change it.
Otherwise, despite their admirable intentions and their
determination to change a sexist system, I worry that women priests risk
being reduced to the 21st century answer to a shortage of male priests
(as their fore-sister was in Czechoslovakia).
I fear they will be
co-opted by the same officials who now denounce them.
Already the
churchmen use them. Instead of ignoring the women and letting the chips
call where they may, Roman officials have found that by excommunicating
women priests they have a convenient way to distract from the criminal
activity of priest pedophiles and bishops who covered up their crimes.
Note that while every woman priest has been excommunicated, not one of those men has been.
Contemporary understandings of priesthood are changing.
Outmoded
biologistic understandings of apostolic succession—the hands that laid
the hands that laid the hands—are giving way to fuller understandings of
the whole community following in the spirit of the Jesus movement.
Eucharist belongs to everyone, not just to the priests who confect the
sacred mysteries.
Liturgical leadership is but one component of
ministry.
Teaching, preaching, organizing, even lobbying and social
change work are part of the job description.
No one person can do it
all; ministry is a community challenge.
Symbols are changing too.
Individual ordinands prostrating themselves
are hard to square with this new theology.
Priesthood in the old model —
with vestments, clerical collars, and claims to special status — is
rapidly going the way of the dodo. Women do not need to resurrect or
reinforce it.
The crying needs of a multi-religious world, not the narrow needs of
any one religious group, now set the agenda for ministers.
Many
feminists work as chaplains for more than Catholics in hospitals and
hospices.
They minister in universities and prisons with all who need
their attention.
This is the new “priesthood of all believers” that has a
far broader mission than ever before.
A lot of the same people involved in the struggle for Catholic
women’s equality are also part of other movements for justice and peace.
School of the Americas Watch,
reproductive justice, LGBTIQ issues, anti-poverty and anti-war efforts
count on their leadership.
Shelters for the homeless, safe houses for
abused women and children, and meal programs are just a few of the
places where these people work.
This is the new face of Catholicism— it
is not ringed by a clerical collar.
So do enjoy the movie — but please stay tuned for the sequels.