I groaned when I saw last week’s Newsweek. How Women Can Save The Catholic Church From Its Sins, reads the cover slug.
My initial response was: WTF? That’s now our job? It’s up to women to save the Roman Catholic Patriarchy from the sick mess it created? Fuck that.
The article‘s headline phrased things a little better, though, saying: A Woman’s Place Is In the Church: The cause of the Catholic clergy’s sex abuse scandal is no mystery: insular groups of men often do bad things. So why not break up the all-male club?
Well, yeah. That would be a good start. And despite the Vatican’s unrelenting opposition to ordaining women, there are renegade Catholics doing just that. Commenter JDRegent sent me this Chicago Tribune article about Janine Denomme, a woman about to be ordained by a group of Catholic women known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests, whose mission is: to spiritually prepare, ordain, and support women and men from all states of life, who are theologically qualified, who are committed to an inclusive model of Church, and who are called by the Holy Spirit and their communities to minister within the Roman Catholic Church.
Roman Catholic Womenpriests have doing just that since 2002, when they ordained seven women on the banks of the Danube River. Because the Roman Catholic Church (and the Orthodox and most Protestant ones as well) believes in apostolic succession, these women draw their ecclesiastical power directly from the unbroken chain that began when Christ laid hands upon St. Peter. Apostolic succession bestows these women with the same priestly authority in matters of faith, morals, and the valid administration of sacraments. Or at least, that’s how they see it. The Vatican’s Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith does not; they excommunicated the Womenpriests in 2008, and threatened excommunication for any other women or bishops who participate in their ordaination. To which the Womenpriests replied:
Roman Catholic Womenpriests are loyal members of the church who stand in the prophetic tradition of holy obedience to the Spirit’s call to change an unjust law that discriminates against women. Our movement is receiving enthusiastic responses on the local, national and international level. We will continue to serve our beloved church in a renewed priestly ministry that welcomes all to celebrate the sacraments in inclusive, Christ-centered, Spirit-empowered communities wherever we are called.
Pretty fucking awesome, right? If they’re looking to put some Jews in their pews, I’d happily worship with them.
Janine Denomme, the soon-to-be priest the Chicago Tribune profiles, is fighting advanced cancer. But she feels that no matter how much longer she has to live, is her destiny to be a Catholic priest:
Her path to priesthood began in Detroit, where she grew up two blocks from church in an active Catholic household and attended the parish’s grade school. While the other children goofed around during mass, she was paying attention and enjoying it.
“I was kind of a weird kid, I guess,” she said.
After graduating from the University of Detroit Mercy, Denomme moved to Chicago with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps and worked with homeless women. The church “pulled the veil” from her eyes to social injustice.
But Denomme, a lesbian, encountered what she thought were injustices within the church: the lack of opportunities for women and its stance on homosexuality. She tried preaching and ministry in other denominations but kept coming back to her religious roots.
“There’s something about the ritual that’s culturally in my blood,” she said. “I cannot not be a Catholic.”
Maybe the current surge of disillusionment with the Vatican will drive more Catholics to the Womenpriests’ parishes, or to other forms of non-cannonically-approved Catholic worship. It may not be women’s duty to save the Catholic Church—but the ones who want to offer a legitimate alternative may find a more receptive audience these days.
When you think about it, it makes no sense to ignore 51% of the population, especially when it is getting harder and harder to recruit men to be priests. The average age of the clergy is getting up there, and without a lot of fresh blood, the Catholic Church will be overwhelmed by Protestant religions.
Newt, there is definitely a faction within the Church—particularly among American Catholics—that believes female ordaination is inevitable for exactly that reason.
I dunno. I think it’s more likely that they’ll deal with the problem by doing away with the celibacy requirement. Already the Church is quietly allowing married Lutheran, Episcopal and Orthodox men to become Catholic priests—without repudiating their wives.
Yay ordination for women! My awesome third grade teacher/former nun Anna Shankey was ordained some years ago already!
Here’s a Catholic feminist newsletter for those who live near Philly, that describes it. http://www.sepawoc.org/WOC%20PAGES%2011_05.pdf
P.S. I can’t read Lisa Miller any more. I liked her thoughts on arguments for gay marriage from biblical texts, but generally she’s not hard-nosed enough for me.
Y’all, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a priest. I knew mass by heart, I read the Bible for fun, I read countless saints’ lives books, and I remember my First Holy Communion very vividly as one of the most exciting days of my life.
I wanted to be an “altar boy” so much. My brother became one, and in 4th grade, which was the age requirement, I was all, “Ok! Altar boy! Me!” And Father Matt was like, “no girls allowed!” So I thought, well, maybe I’ll be a reader, and do the first and second readings during mass. But you had to be 13 to do it. I was like, “Ok… hmmm.” And then I quickly stopped believing in god.
Can you fucking imagine? If I had put all this fucking energy that I had hating the patriarchy into being a priest? Holy shit I even took Latin in school. I would have seriously been working at the Vatican right now, I have no doubt. I wanted to meet the pope. I never wanted to be the pope, but I wanted to be part of the pope’s posse of priests. And they wouldn’t even let me be an altar server. They really missed out on my obsession with social justice and righteous anger and fascination with medieval rituals.
And a few months ago I told all this to my grandmother’s cousin, who is super super religious. Somehow she is a honorary monk, or something, because apparently she’s going to be buried like a monk when she dies. And she is friends with a bunch of nuns (she’s married and has kids though), and she told me that the nuns say that there’s a reason that women can’t be priests, but that women are really important to the church anyway–that’s why it was women who found Jesus’ grave empty, and why he had so many female friends (I also disabused her of the notion that Mary Magdalene was a prostitute). I was like, “Yes, and that’s what I’m talking about! Jesus was cool with women! So why can’t women be priests!” I totally fucking blew my grandmother’s mind when I started talking about all this shit and knew what I was talking about, since my whole family thinks that I just decided to hate god and the catholic church to rebel against them, when I decided to be a democrat. I’m very interested to see what happens next time I run into my grandmother’s cousin, because she was like, “You’ve given me a lot to think about. I’m going to go home and read the bible and think about this stuff.”
Anyway, I think that if they let priests marry, they’ll probably let women be priests at the same time. Since those are the two most significant changes to the doctrine about priests, then if they ever get to the point of changing one, they’ll just end up changing both, because it won’t happen until the church has changed a lot. I’m also curious as to how this all relates to several other things:
1. The investigation into American nuns, and their supposedly un-nunlike behavior
2. The difference in the church in North America (or, well, Canada and the US) and in the rest of the world–specifically Africa, which I think has the fastest growing population of Catholics in the world. I vaguely remember hearing talk about the possibility of electing an African pope, and less so a Latin American one, after JPII died, rather than a European one. But I don’t remember hearing about any potential American popes–but I could just have selective memory, because my family was totally shocked at the idea of African Catholics, and pleased, but wanted another Polish pope.
Are the issues of women priests in Europe and America, in which the population of Catholics is shrinking and the population of priests is really shrinking, different from other continents, where Catholicism is either steady or growing? (I don’t know anything about Catholicism in Asia.)
I suspect that this is overly optimistic of me, but I truly hope that the epic amount of scandal the church has embroiled itself in forces the institution to another far less bloody and divisive reformation where nuns have equal status with priest, where hatred of women and intolerance are not institutional staples, where groups like Womenpriests are showcased by the church as representatives of the kind of loving, accepting institution the church professes itself to be. Alas, even as I write this I feel like I’m drifting off to fantasyland.
whoo-hoo UofD Mercy. I attended Mercy High School (the girls school associated with the University, there is a boys school UofD) and I know I have said this before, but there was/is such a tradition in that order (The Sisters of Mercy) of progressiveness and social justice. Every nun who taught me save on (a nutjob) was a total avowed feminist.
Um…but seriously? Call me a pessimist but this will change nothing as relates to the Catholic Church as a whole.
@cimorene OMG you are not joking about your energy and enthusiasm! The African pope would have been Francis Arinze, the cardinal of Nigeria. There were some really good reasons for the RCC to elect him, mainly relating to expansion in Africa.
I half hoped they would elect him. It would bring many people in the RCC into this century. But, I think I might have heard that he is a very hard liner.
Thanks for this Becky. Personally I think the Church will endure yet another schism before it allows women to become priests. There are actually already some married male priests, mainly Anglican converts. The fact that there is even a backdoor into being a married male priest when none such exists for women tells me exactly which reform is likelier to happen first.
When I think about who in the Church has given the most human comfort to my family, it is usually deacons. Who can be married, and in my experience are thus more acquainted with the pains of most people’s familial and sexual existences. Most priests are just too fucking weird in one way or another to be of real comfort, even though I occasionally like or trust one personally.
I mean, I have no problem with there being voluntary celibate orders or religious practices. Maybe the priesthood should just shrink to being a small religious order and the laity, like deacons, can gradually take over more and more roles. I feel like they could and would let women be deacons. This has been a secret fantasy I’ve been nursing for a while. The biggest thing (in my fantasy) to accelerate this change is the priest shortage. Some parishes that don’t have access to a priest are forced and allowed by church law to allow lay people to assume priestly functions. I read an article about it a couple of years ago and will try to find it. Anyway realistically I think advocating for a diminished role for priests and an increased role for the laity, including the married and the wimminz, is the most pragmatic route to reform.
Here’s the article about priestless liturgies. I’d love a priestless Catholic church. http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3799&comments=1
Another side of the lack of people joining Catholic religious life is the loss of nuns. I was just speaking with the parish nun from my home church and she was saying off handedly that she had been trying to get the priests to go to these workshops at nearby universities to improve their homilies and counseling skills. As you saw in the play and film Doubt, women religious have historically had a major role in mitigating and supervising priests. With fewer sisters, the men have even less contact with women. The misogyny of the contemporary church I think is worse than it has ever been in history.
Rodriguez, Arrize is a total homophobic maniac. Not that there are many otherwise in a position to become pope.
@JD so true re: choices for the pope.
Didn’t it seem like a really good choice on paper, from the inside, from a political pov? hardliner, experience with Muslims, leader from Africa, history-making, following another history maker. From inside the church homophobia is hardly a disadvantage.
Yet they did not go that route. Let’s speculate about why.
Really, the only person I could have preferred less would have been Cardinal Law. I mean, a fucking former Nazi youth party member? Who is fucking kidding me up in the Vatican PR Office? I don’t care if he had a gun to his head, it just shows how completely fucking out of touch these people are. The man is terrifying on every level.
@JD Also, very interesting point about a preist-less church and a potential back door for deaconesses. That is just … a great great thought.
I miss the nuns, I do believe they are an important ground stone to the church. They are one of the few woman voices to be heard.
I personally am done with the roman catholic church. I can’t find it in my heart to stand with a group that hides and shelters sick abuse, or discriminates againts genders and peoples or murders in the name of a god. That’s just how I see it. I still believe what I believe but I don’t believe in the “institution”.
Other than that, I think; who are we to judge? If your trying to spread the respect and goodness of the weak, sick, and hurting who cares what gender you are?
Cimorene said…
“Jesus was cool with women! So why can’t women be priests!”
Because He never ordained them. He was cool with women but refused to ordain them…we can do the same. In fact, we must, because we can’t introduce anything that He and the Apostles didn’t make. Jesus built His Church’s leaders out of priests, not out of priestesses. He ordained only priests, not any priestesses. We cannot change the norm He established.
Cimorene said…
“I think that if they let priests marry, they’ll probably let women be priests at the same time. Since those are the two most significant changes to the doctrine about priests, then if they ever get to the point of changing one, they’ll just end up changing both”
Actually, celibacy is not a doctrine but just a common practice, and married priests have been more and less common at various parts in Church history. Besides the Anglican-convert-married-priests, there are countries where married priests are as allowable as single priests. As far as I know, it’s up to individual bishops to decide whether their priests can be married.
As to ordaining priestesses, however, that is dogmatically rejected on several grounds. You can read more about that in the document “Ordinatio Sacerdotalis” by Pope John Paul II, which you can find by a simple Google search.
As an update to this story, I thought you might like to know that Janine Denomme died this week, Monday, May 17, after her year-long battle with cancer. As a result of her ordination, the Catholic archdiocese in Chicago has rejected her request to have a funeral mass at her home parish, St. Gertrude’s, in Chicago, IL. NPR and a few local news outlets have covered the story: http://www.windycitymediagroup.com/gay/lesbian/news/ARTICLE.php?AID=26588
It reminds me of the Psalm: “The stone the builders rejected, will become the cornerstone.” Janine was a “cornerstone” to our parish — a true minister in every way. The Church shrouds itself in shame, while we bury one of its saints in a Methodist church….