If Pope Francis wants to speak genuinely about his concern for the
world's poor, he must also address stark issues of inequality faced by
women globally, Benedictine Sr. Joan Chittister told a crowd of religion
scholars, teachers and clergy last Saturday.
Citing figures that indicate women represent approximately two-thirds
of the world's illiterate population and two-thirds of those suffering
from hunger, Chittister said, "Someone, somewhere has decided that women
need less, women deserve less and women are worthy of less than men."
"Pope Francis has won the heart of the world by being humble, simple
and pastoral -- a warm and caring face of this church, a man like Jesus
who is a man of the poor," she said. "But no one can say that they are
for the poor as Jesus was and do nothing, nothing, nothing for the
equality of women."
Chittister, a well-known author, NCR columnist and former
leader of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, spoke Saturday
at a session at the annual meetings of The American Academy of Religion
and The Society of Biblical Literature.
Held Nov. 22-26 at sites across downtown Baltimore, the meetings saw
approximately 15,000 teachers, scholars, clergy and others gather for
some 1,000 events over the five-day period.
Chittister spoke at one of several events during the meetings focused
on what effect Pope Francis has had globally on Catholicism, religion
and society worldwide since his election to replace Pope Benedict XVI in
March.
At question at several of those sessions was whether the new pontiff
can be seen as standing in line with his predecessor, who did not share
Francis' more friendly public persona and was seen by some as more
doctrinally conservative.
Evincing a sharp contrast among other analysts Saturday was George
Weigel, the well-known biographer of Pope John Paul II who spoke with
Chittister as part of a five-person panel dedicated to "Pope Francis and
the State of Global Catholicism."
Saying that the first months of Francis' papacy have been "a kind of
Rorschach test," Weigel said Catholics have seen in the new pope "their
dreams or their fears with a clarity and conviction that frankly has
little to do" with the pope's actions.
Giving 10 points about Francis' style and preferences -- calling him,
among other things, someone who is a "radically converted Christian
disciple," a person respectful of popular expressions of piety, and a
"man of the arts" -- Weigel said the pope stands in "essential
continuity" with his predecessors, John Paul II and Benedict XVI.
Francis, Weigel said, will be the pope who completes a "dramatic
historic transition" in the church from a focus on the 15th-century
Council of Trent to the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s.
Outlining an arc of history leading to Pope Francis, Weigel said that
transition was a "process of dynamic development" begun by Pope Leo XII
in the 19th century and "accelerated by Vatican II and its
authoritative interpretation by John Paul II and Benedict XVI, whose
pontificates set the stage for Pope Francis and with whom his
pontificate will be in essential continuity."
Richard Gaillardetz, a leading academic who heads the nation's
largest membership society for Catholic theologians, took issue with
Weigel's description of Francis' continuity with his predecessors at
another panel discussion focused on the pope later Saturday.
Gaillardetz, who is the Joseph Professor of Catholic Systematic
Theology at Boston College and serves as president of the Catholic
Theological Society of America, spoke at a panel hosted by the College
Theology Society -- another membership society for theologians -- and
said he had rewritten his remarks after hearing Weigel's description of
the new pope.
Gaillardetz said Francis' approach to the papacy represents a significant change in trajectory.
Since the end of the 19th century, Gaillardetz said, popes have
frequently focused on being the "chief doctrinal czar" of the Catholic
church, responsible for issuing authoritative statements on what
Catholics should and should not do.
Beginning in the 1960s with Pope John XXIII, that role of the papacy
has shifted to where the pope found himself needing to be someone who
can persuade people about the teaching of the church rather than just
handing down doctrine, Gaillardetz said.
"This is why it seems to me we can't simply speak of Pope Francis'
continuing seamlessly what his predecessors have begun," Gaillardetz
said. "Because I think Francis now marks in many ways the end of that
trajectory where we think of papal teaching primarily as normative
pronouncements of the teaching of the church."
Referencing a wide-ranging interview the pope had with an Italian Jesuit priest earlier this year, printed in 16 publications the order run around the world, Gaillardetz said such interviews are a "new form of papal teaching."
"We can certainly see real continuity with his predecessors," he
said. "But I think we have to see also a genuine new development in the
papacy -- I think the latest stage in what I hope will be a continued
trajectory towards a papacy that can serve the unity of faith and
communion in the church by recognizing in the modern world juridical
degrees are going to need to be the exception rather than the rule."
Chittister too mentioned the pope's Jesuit interview, drawing
specific notice to the pope's call in it for the church to "work harder
to develop a profound theology of the woman."
"Who will do this reflecting?" Chittister asked. "The same clerical
patriarchal types who have been doing it for the past 2,000 years?"
"The church has never defined women as fully independent beings, let
alone adults," Chittister said. "Will there be simply another round of
men do this and women do that: a dual anthropology that sees women as
caregivers alone and men as world builders exclusively?"
The sessions about Francis were just a few of dozens at the religion meetings that touched on Catholic issues.
Earlier Saturday, the religion academy's group dedicated to those
studying the Second Vatican Council dedicated two and a half hours to
seven separate papers on the impact on the council's reforms of the
Catholic liturgy.
One of the presenters there was Jonathan Tan, a senior lecturer at
the Australian Catholic University, who focused on struggles communities
in places like the Philippines and India have had in addressing
concerns that the Catholic Mass does not do enough to incorporate local
customs.
Some Catholics in those places, he said, feel an "an alienation with
the church's liturgy which does not align with their hopes and needs."
Other sessions focused on the nature of authority in the global
church since the council, experiences of African-American Catholics, and
the future of Roman Catholic studies at public educational
institutions.