Tag: Misogyny

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Sinead O’Connor Condemned Church Abuse Early. America Didn’t Listen.

— In Ireland, Ms. O’Connor spoke out about abuse and the complicity of religious institutions. When she came to the United States, many were not ready to hear her — yet.

Sinead O’Connor shocked many Americans by tearing up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live, decades before a reckoning over abuse in the American Roman Catholic Church.

By Liam Stack

Americans began to grapple with a nationwide epidemic of child abuse in Catholic parishes and other religious organizations in 2002, after a landmark Boston Globe investigation revealed a pattern of misdeeds and cover-ups in Boston that went back decades.

Ten years earlier, Sinead O’Connor became a pop culture pariah in the United States for an on-air protest intended to raise awareness of the same problem.

The backlash to her actions — tearing up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” and then shouting “Fight the real enemy!” — was swift.

Prominent Americans, including celebrities like Madonna and Joe Pesci, denounced her. Protesters brought a 30-ton steamroller to crush her cassettes in Rockefeller Center. Catholic leaders were outraged, including some who were forced to resign years later for their roles in covering up abuse.

Many people in America derided her as “somebody looking for attention,” said Cahir O’Doherty, the arts editor of The Irish Voice, an Irish diaspora newspaper in New York City. “It never occurred to anyone that maybe she had a point,” he added.

But back in Ms. O’Connor’s native Ireland, a reckoning over abuse in the church was already beginning.

“In America, she was very, very ahead of her time for doing that,” said Mr. O’Doherty. “She said ‘enough’ and the culture caught up with her.”

The death of Ms. O’Connor at 56, which was announced on Wednesday, was met with an outpouring of remembrances from around the world. But in Ireland and its diaspora communities, there was a more pointed grief at the loss of an artist many saw as both a symbol of and catalyst for a long-needed reckoning over abuse within the church.

Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, who resigned in 2002, said at the time that her actions were “a gesture of hate.” A spokesman for Cardinal Roger M. Mahony of Los Angeles, who was removed from public duties in 2013, called her actions “just another example of anti-Catholicism.”

On Wednesday, Catholics for Choice, an American group, called Ms. O’Connor a prophetic heroine “unafraid to demand justice for victims of clerical sexual abuse, challenge patriarchy, and speak truth to power — even when her voice was a lonely one and it cost her dearly to do so.”

In the Ireland of Ms. O’Connor’s youth, politics were dominated by the Catholic Church. For decades, priests at the parish level saw part of their role as protecting the community from sexual promiscuity, homosexuality and unwed mothers and their children.

To do so, they used an unwritten, extralegal power to send women accused of such sins to reform schools, workhouses and other facilities run by Catholic orders.

It was a world with which Ms. O’Connor was intimately familiar, and her experiences in one such facility as a teenager, after enduring years of abuse from her mother, set the stage for the moment on “Saturday Night Live.”

“She had already seen what happened to spirited girls and gay kids in Ireland, and to her it wasn’t an abstraction, it was her biography,” said Mr. O’Doherty, who grew up gay in rural Ireland and moved to the United States in 1996. “She came out of an era of silence that swallowed spirited girls and gay boys, that consumed Irish life, and that you could vanish into. And she nearly did.”

In interviews later in life, and in her 2021 memoir, Ms. O’Connor described her mother pinning her to the floor and pummeling her, while forcing her to say over and over again, “I am nothing.”

She grew into a rebellious teenager, skipping school and stealing. After she was caught shoplifting a pair of gold shoes to wear to a rock concert, a social worker suggested that a “rehabilitation center” might set her straight.

That is how, at the age of 14, Sinead O’Connor was sent to live at An Grianán Training Centre in Dublin, which was run by the Order of Our Lady of Charity. It had formerly been a Magdalene Laundry, a facility where a “fallen woman” might spend her entire life washing the dirty laundry of the surrounding community.

The facilities formed a nucleus of physical and sexual abuse in Ireland. A government report in 2009 said tens of thousands of children were abused in industrial schools alone, a staggering figure in a country with barely more than five million people. At one, the Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, the remains of hundreds of babies and fetuses were found in a septic tank in 2017.

An Grianán also housed older women who had been sent there in their youths. In interviews in later years, Ms. O’Connor, who lived there for two years, spoke of interacting with women who were there because they “had their babies taken off them, or because they were sexually abused and complained and nobody believed them.”

Ms. O’Connor said the younger women were kept separated from the older women, but sometimes as punishment the younger girls were sent to sleep in an infirmary wing. She called it “a secret hospice” where older women were sent before they died.

“There was no staff,” she recalled in a 2021 interview. “These ladies were calling out all night, ‘Nurse! Nurse!,’ and there was nobody to come.”

Ms. O’Connor described nights there as horrifying and panic-inducing, but also said she had come to feel “terribly, terribly lucky that god put me” in An Grianán “because otherwise those women, we would never have heard of them.”

The system of abuse had been normalized, spoken of only in hushed tones, in Ireland for decades, Ms. O’Connor said. “But I met them at their dying moment and saw them every day, the way they were treated.”

It was also at An Grianán, she said, that a nun gave her a guitar for the very first time.

By the time Ms. O’Connor became famous in the United States for her first album in 1987 — at the age of 21, just a few years out of An Grianán — the first rumbles of church accountability in her home country had begun. They would grow louder thanks in part to her willingness to describe her own life experiences.

She was a frequent presence at street protests and charity events for a range of social causes, including abortion rights, a procedure she publicly said she had undergone, and equal rights for people of color, migrants and L.G.B.T.Q. people. (Ms. O’Connor described herself as a lesbian in 2000 and as bisexual in 2005, but did not discuss the topic in later years.)

Ms. O’Connor holds her young daughter, who is cupping her mother’s face, at a protest.
Ms. O’Connor, with her daughter Roisin, during an antiracism demonstration in Dublin.

But she became most associated with efforts to combat abuse within the Catholic Church, decades before the scale of the problem within American religious organizations — from the Catholic Church to the Southern Baptist Convention to the Hasidic dynasties of New York — became common knowledge.

One the church’s most high-profile and influential priests in the United States, Theodore E. McCarrick, was expelled from the church in 2019 and is facing sexual assault charges in two states, the first and only American cardinal to be criminally charged in connection with sex abuse.

A man in his 90s stands stooped over at a courtroom lectern surrounded by lawyers and guards.
Former Roman Catholic Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick at his arraignment on charges that he sexually assaulted a 16-year-old boy.

In her memoir, Ms. O’Connor wrote that the picture she tore in half on TV was not just any picture of the pope. It was a picture of the pope’s Mass in the Irish city of Drogheda in 1979, which he dedicated to “the young people of Ireland” and which had drawn 300,000 worshipers.

That same photograph had been the only decoration on her mother’s wall, she wrote, and had looked down on them both as her mother pinned her to the floor and beat her.

After her mother died in a car accident in 1985, she took the picture, determined to someday destroy it. To her it was an object that “represented lies and liars and abuse,” she wrote.

“The type of people who kept these things were devils like my mother,” she wrote. “I never knew when or where or how I would destroy it, but destroy it I would when the right moment came.”

When she took the stage on Saturday Night Live to perform Bob Marley’s “War,” she meant to start a broader conversation, she later said. She even changed the lyrics to make it about the abuse of children. And she had her mother’s picture with her.

As she began to sing, she knew the moment had come.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Lesbian nuns tell their stories in new book that reflects changing times

“Love Tenderly: Sacred Stories of Lesbian and Queer Religious” is out new this year from New Ways Ministry press.

By Rev. Alexander Santora

I must know at least 1,000 nuns. (Though they are actually called “women religious” or “sisters.”) They taught me. I studied with them. We lived in the seminary with them. I’ve said Mass for several women congregations. We ministered together. I attended retreats given by them. They have been spiritual directors. I’ve written about them.

Yet, not once have I said to myself, “This nun is a lesbian.” And I think it’s because of my respect and reverence for them.

After reading two ground-breaking books about lesbian nuns, though, I think it’s the opposite. I had internalized the historic shame for same-sex feelings. Or, it simply does not matter.

The recently released “Love Tenderly” tells the story of 23 sisters coming to grips with their sexual orientation in the context of religious life. The contemporary work reflects a different milieu than the first ground-breaking, sensational “Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence,” published in 1985, which told 47 nuns’ stories. Jarring, it became an international hit because the words “lesbian” and “nun” had never been uttered in the same sentence in such a public way before. It also gave the curious a peek behind the convent walls that was not always flattering.

“Love Tenderly” oozes with tolerance and sensitivity, not only by the sisters telling their sometimes painful coming-out stories, but also of more accepting religious leadership in their communities.

Religious life in the U.S. has changed dramatically over the last 36 years.

'Lesbian Nuns'
“Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence” was originally published in 1985 and re-issued in 2013.

Years ago, young women entering Catholic orders were warned about “particular friendships,” which could be code for lesbians, and reminded to be friends with all sisters. But many women did bond and some crossed the line into sexual intimacy. When discovered, some were asked to leave the community or go for counseling or they were shamed.

Sister Kathleen Tuite — at 56, one of the youngest in the Dominican Sisters’ Caldwell order — is a product of the new formation. Entering the order at 25, she did her novitiate — or first period of formation — at a collaborative Dominican center in St. Louis with 10 other Dominican novices from all over the country. Unlike the closed environment in Caldwell, her novitiate was more expansive and open, exposing her to newer currents among young religious aspirants. A Dominican sister suggested I speak with her because she has her finger on the pulse of contemporary religious life.

“It was a wonderful experience with people on the same journey,” said Tuite, who later taught at St. Dominic Academy in Jersey City.

Throughout the next two decades, she also attended programs as part of Giving Voice, a program for anywhere between 50 and 80 young sisters, also from all over the country, so they would have support and encouragement to persevere in religious life. They also embodied a new understanding of church “where all God’s people live in pure love, social justice and truth,” she said.

These kinds of insights, she said, enabled sisters identifying as same-sex to remain in religious life, embracing the vow of celibacy with dignity and not shame.

The two anthologies recount the stories of young women who felt their call to enter the convent as sacred. Some described their feelings of attraction to girls since they were young, but not one said she entered because she wanted to fall in love with another nun. Though many described how their coming out was made safe in the confines of the convent in the company of other women, most felt lonely at first until they could confide in other sisters. Many stayed, some left and some returned.

“Sister Petra,” a pseudonym for a former congregational leader locally told me that “sex was never ever discussed” when she entered the convent. The main emphasis was “how to live a celibate life with women.”

She did become aware of “some people who did identify as lesbian and chose to leave.” It was not the lifestyle for them but “it was a safe space for exploration.”

She views the issue of same-sex relations as one of justice and adds that “inclusivity is always an issue” — not only in the matter of treating gays with dignity. Most religious communities of women have advocated for any people being treated unjustly in the church, especially women.

“Women are exiting the church like crazy and it has to come to grips with this exodus,” she said.

Tuite is now the vice president of Student Life at Caldwell University, owned by her religious order.

“My life is around women who have donated their lives as I have grown stronger in my religious life and allowed to develop the gifts I had,” she said.

She could see openly gay and transgender women disposed toward living celibate lives accepted in most religious orders today.

“Sister Petra” agreed, adding “if you have a vocation and feel called to serve.”

Religious communities of women continue to break new ground and lead the church by example.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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At the Catholic Church’s worldwide synod, the deacons are missing

— Many if not most Catholics think women deacons are called for.

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You may have heard that the Catholic Church is holding a worldwide Synod on Synodality, aimed at getting everybody together to talk about church. The object of all the gatherings — all the talking and praying — is for folks to understand the church’s mission. That is, to think about how to spread the Gospel in the most effective manner for their cultures.

The process began in October 2021 at the local level, with dioceses and groups eventually sending reports to Rome. Then, Rome sent a “Document for the Continental Stage” to seven continental assemblies (Africa and Madagascar; Asia; Europe; Latin America and the Caribbean; Oceania; the Middle East; and North America) and synthesized their responses.

In June, the Synod Office published what is called the “Instrumentum Laboris,” or working document for the meeting to be held in the massive Paul VI Audience Hall in Vatican City in October. Soon after, the list of nearly 450 synod participants appeared, some 364 of which are voting members; others are experts or facilitators.

In addition to Pope Francis, among voters and non-voters alike there will be some 273 bishops, 67 priests, 37 non-ordained men and women religious, 70 other lay men and women, and one deacon, Belgian Deacon Geert de Cubber.

You would not know from the list that de Cubber is, in fact, an ordained deacon. He is listed as “Mr.” not “Rev. Mr.” or “Dcn.,” as is the general custom. There are a few other mistakes. San Diego Cardinal Robert McElroy’s name is spelled incorrectly. Two priests, the Rev. Eloy Bueno de la Fuente (Spain) and the Rev. Eamonn Conway (Ireland) are not noted as such. There may be a few other minor errors here and there. There may even be another deacon or two, but most probably not.

There were several deacons in the various synod processes, from parish and diocesan efforts to the national and continental levels, but that there is only one deacon in the entire assembly speaks volumes. After all, carrying the Gospel is a major diaconal task both literally and figuratively.

During Mass, the deacon carries the Gospel book and proclaims the Gospel reading and often preaches. Deacons, too, are most often connected with the church’s charity and social services.

Diaconal ministries are notably undertaken by women, and in 2016 the International Union of Superiors General, the organization of the heads of women’s religious institutes, asked Francis to examine restoring the abandoned tradition of ordaining women as deacons.

Two pontifical commissions prepared private reports for Francis on that question.

Now, according to the Instrumentum Laboris, “Most of the Continental Assemblies and the syntheses of several Episcopal Conferences call for the question of women’s inclusion in the diaconate to be considered.”

About this, it asks, “Is it possible to envisage this, and in what way?”

Many if not most Catholics think ordination is called for. But that battle has been going on for a long time.

The International Theological Commission, which advises the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, prepared reports on women deacons in 1997 and in 2002. The first reportedly determined there was no doctrine against ordaining women as deacons, but it never appeared: The prefect at the time, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI), refused to sign it.

The second report, while it attempted to shut down the discussion with uncited passages from a book by Munich professor, Father Gerhard L. Müller, concluded that ordaining women as deacons was a question for the church’s “ministry of discernment.” Müller followed Ratzinger as CDF prefect.

Discernment is a big word in synodality. But who is discerning what for whom? The people of God agree that the mission of the church is to carry the Gospel to the world. That task is the principal duty of the deacon. And the people of God seem to think ordaining women once again for that task is a good idea.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Why all Christians should support LGBTQ persons

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I recently saw a sponsored social media post by a Catholic that said “Call the LGBTQ community for what they are: sexual degenerates.” A Catholic website garnered over 90,000 signatures in attempts to stop a recent LGBTQ ministry conference at Fordham University — a conference whose modest goal was “to build community, share best practices and worship together.” Meanwhile, a prominent Catholic speaker campaigns to “Reclaim the Month” of June — with t-shirts and everything! — for the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which is apparently threatened by Pride month.

And this is just a mild sample — and all in my limited purview as a Catholic whose experience with LGBTQ support has otherwise been generally positive.

Unsurprisingly, the Christian community at large offers a range of perspectives on LGBTQ issues. Many progressive churches perform same-sex marriages, ordain openly gay ministers, and embrace theologies that allow for a more inclusive sexual anthropology. Many other churches maintain a traditional Christian sexual ethic and understanding of marriage. The Catholic Church itself, while officially upholding its longstanding sexual teaching and ethics, varies largely in its approach to LGBTQ issues and support of LGBTQ persons.

While it may be true that many traditional communities are not openly hostile to the LGBTQ community, one may nevertheless feel unwelcome simply for being gay or trans. Indeed, as the abovementioned examples demonstrate, some Christians go at length to stress that LGBTQ persons aren’t welcome. Moreover, many churches do not offer opportunities for their LGBTQ individuals to flourish and offer their own gifts.

In other words, many churches do not encourage their LGBTQ members to be, well, church. But it shouldn’t be like this. All churches — conservative or progressive, Catholic or otherwise — should welcome, appreciate, and care for LGBTQ persons. Here are seven reasons why.

1. Because LGBTQ above all refers to individual persons and not merely any moral or political issue.

We’re so accustomed to relating LGBTQ to the so-called “hot button” issues of the day — often in the realm of political ideology and activism — that we forget the faces behind the acronym. But to put first things first, LGBTQ individuals are (surprise!) people. Whether gay, lesbian, trans, or straight, all of us are made in the image and likeness of God. Each person is stamped with an intrinsic dignity, no matter one’s experiences, struggles, and weaknesses.

God calls every person into relationship with him. The human person is literally designed for intimate communion with his Creator, and being homosexual, bisexual, or transgender doesn’t change this. The Church’s job is to advance — not obstruct — every person’s relationship with God in its work of evangelization and pastoral care. It’s no secret that the Catholic Church adheres to a traditional Christian understanding of marriage and the family. But consider how Pope Francis nevertheless addresses the need to affirm the dignity of those who are gay:

“We would like before all else to reaffirm that every person, regardless of sexual orientation, ought to be respected in his or her dignity and treated with consideration” (Amoris Laetitia 250).

Affirming the dignity of the LGBTQ person involves an appreciation and engagement with the concrete reality of the individual. The call to accompany the person — in view of her experiences, however complex and messy — is therefore more important than a mere recitation of abstract principles. “Realities are greater than ideas,” as Pope Francis would say. When we consider the Holy Father’s own approach, it makes sense that our reasons for LGBTQ support should begin with this basic call to encounter other persons as persons. Rather than have a ready-made answer from the “realm of pure ideas,” we are called to accompany the person in the specific situations of her life — even if (and especially if) they challenge our usual ways of thinking (Evangelli Gaudium 232).

2. Because the Church is for everyone.

The Church is for everyone. That’s what the word “catholic” means: the Church is universal, encompassing all kinds of people. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female,” as Paul says, for we are “all one in Jesus Christ” (Gal. 3:28). So why does it seem like our churches pick out LGBTQ persons to the extent of making them “other”? There is no other in the Body of Christ. As I once heard a priest say, there is no “them and us” — there’s only “us.”

Because the Church is one big Us, we cannot go about our lives while disregarding the rest of our brothers and sisters, particularly those in need. Paul likens the Church to a body with many parts — a union so intense that “if one part suffers,” then “every part suffers with it” (1 Cor 12:26). Do our churches recognize the suffering endured by many of its LGBTQ children? Do some of our churches actually make the lives of LGBTQ Christians more difficult, whether by simply acting as bystanders or by actively engaging in insensitive rhetoric?

The challenge of the Church is to ever expand its tent, for its mission is to the gather the human family into the Family of God. Many Catholics are shocked by such outreach, but often those we consider “outside” the Church are precisely those who most belong. Then again, this is the way of the Kingdom. In his earthly ministry, Christ initiated the in-gathering of the Kingdom of God by going to — and preferring — those otherwise considered outside the household of God. The Church, says Pope Francis, has to “go forth to everyone without exception” because in the Church “there is a place for everyone, with all their problems” (EG 47-48).

3. Because, well, Jesus.

When it comes to reaching out to LGBTQ persons, then, we have a solid foundation in the example of Christ himself. It sounds cliché, but really, what would Jesus do? If one searches for the Jesus of the Gospels, it’s not hard to find a guy who is compassionately concerned for the outcast and other. Christ preferred the poor, the sick, the sinner. Christ went to the margins — to those otherwise excluded from society. It doesn’t seem like too much of a stretch to imagine a gay man in that category, does it?

Many Christians counter by pointing to a Jesus who “loved in truth” (with a firm emphasis on “truth”), who would “name the sin for what it is.” They will argue that Christ may have reached out to the outcast, but only for the sake of the individual’s salvation. According to this line of thinking, the emphasis is not on accompaniment per se but really about conversion. In this view, the most necessary part of Christ’s outreach involves a demand that the sinner turns away from her sin. But we must realize that first Christ invited those he encountered into a deeper relationship with himself, and this relationship is the seed from which conversion grows. What he did in his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, he does with all of his broken, would-be followers. Jesus calls us into a deeper life founded on himself. And even here, the focus of Christ is not on condemnation but on how an intimate relationship with Christ is the only way to transform our lives and set us on a trajectory for true fulfillment.

The flaw in the approach of some Catholics towards the LGBT community is not that they want to tell the “truth in love” or believe we should take sin seriously. The issue is an inordinate focus on sin in the LGBTQ community, as if being gay or trans or queer was especially sinful. (Be assured: LGBTQ Catholics are quite familiar with what the Church says about them in relation to sin.) The inordinate focus on sin by some Christians comes across as a thinly-veiled desire for control and certainty. In a different context, Pope Francis talks about contemporary Catholic gnostics who want to “force others to submit to their way of thinking.” I would submit that this gnosticism lurks behind many Christians’ constant insistence on emphasizing sin when speaking about the LGBTQ community. Instead of proceeding from Christlike care for gay or trans individuals, such thinking reduces Christ’s teaching to a “cold and harsh logic that seeks to dominate everything” (Gaudete et Exsultate 39). Once again, it’s just another sample of the idea trumping the reality of the person.

4. Because sexuality is more than just sex.

Are LGBTQ persons — as members of the human family — sinners? Of course. Can sexuality be used in sinful ways? Again, definitely! But identifying LGBTQ persons as morally disordered, simply due to their being gay or trans or queer is unwarranted and unjust. Acts can be sinful, and desires towards sinful acts can be morally disordered. But something like sexuality or sexual orientation, which are much broader than desires to commit specific acts, can hardly be reduced to an intrinsically sinful inclination.

A popular slogan among some traditional Christians is “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Oddly, I’ve only ever heard this in reference to homosexuality, which in itself is telling. But if we only focus on sexual activity (as if that’s all it means to be gay or lesbian or trans), then we are doing a grave injustice to the persons involved. To get this, all one has to do is reflect on one’s own sexuality: Think how it affects you in multiple aspects of life. It’s not just about who you want to go to bed with; it also concerns how you relate to others, how you see the world, and how you desire to love and be loved.

Churches can’t start and end with sexual ethics. If our churches want to maintain traditional teaching, they will still need to consider that homosexuality is as much about personality and relationship-making than “sexual acts.”

5. Because LGBTQ persons are made for relationship.

LGBTQ persons want meaningful lives centered on love, relationship, and self-giving. They are like everybody else in that way. It’s a sad fact that, for many traditional churches, the “best” pastoral advice offered to gay persons is simply to “remain celibate.” That’s it. For traditional churches, marriage is not an option. However, in many of these same churches, marriage is the only conceivable path to intimate relationship. This is as much part Western culture’s fault as it is the Church’s. In effect, we’re made to believe that we’ll be forever alone and unfulfilled if we’re never married.

It’s not hard to see, then, why our modern culture has demanded gay marriage. If marriage is the only way to ensure meaningful relationships, then ought it be a right for everyone? Makes sense to me. Yet if traditional churches are to maintain marriage as a man-woman institution — as well as the only legitimate place for sex — they must find other ways to foster vocations of love and relationship for LGBTQ persons in our churches. Thankfully, there are Catholics doing just this. (Anyone who has not read up on Eve Tushnet should do so!) The greater Church must recognize this basic human need for relationship as one that affects the self-understanding of LGBTQ Christians. We don’t want lonely, loveless lives!

All people — regardless of sexual orientation or sexual identity — need intimate, self-giving relationships. The human person is not meant to be alone (Gen 2:18). This is as true of the gay or lesbian or trans person as it is for the heterosexual man or woman. While the Christian is called to carry his or her cross, the LGBTQ person’s embrace of the Christian faith does not change this fundamental anthropology. In our support of LGBTQ persons, can we promote meaningful paths of love and relationship? Can our churches recognize committed partnerships as a locus of Christian love — or are they to be rejected from the get-go as inherently sinful? Such questions cannot be avoided if we are to responsibly listen to the experiences of LGBTQ Christians.

6. Because LGBT persons have gifts to offer the Church.

Should we really be surprised if many LGBTQ persons perceive they have nothing to offer their churches — especially the ones that have routinely called them “objectively disordered” and hell-bound? Should we be surprised that gay persons feel unwanted when openly gay teachers and workers are fired from Catholic schools and businesses?

LGBTQ persons testify to the diversity of God’s creation and the manifold ways of reflecting the divine wisdom. This doesn’t mean the human condition as we now find it entirely reflects God’s will, for we cannot ignore the presence of sin and the present imperfection of a creation still “groaning” for its renewal (Rom 8:22). Still, the LGBTQ community challenges us to expand our understanding of humanity. LGBTQ persons challenge the Church in particular to discern how God is working their lives. “God is present in the life every person,” as Pope Francis says, and “we cannot exclude this by our presumed certainties” (GE 42). When the Church can recognize and embrace the Spirit in gay and trans and queer folk, the Church will live up to its calling as the family of God.

I truly feel a great embarrassment for our Church — a Church that claims to be Christ’s universal family — whenever Catholic leaders and institutions decide to single out LGBTQ persons as particularly scandalous or sinful. It seems to me —informed by the Jesus of the Gospels and pastoral approach of Pope Francis — that it is such Catholic leaders and institutions that really act scandalously and sinfully.

7. Because the Church is called to listen.

Supporting LGBTQ persons is a call to first listen to them. As Church, our posture must always be of listening. The Church first receives God’s revelation; the Church then teaches. The Church must first discern the Word of God before it can proclaim it. Since the Second Vatican Council and especially with Pope Francis, the Catholic Church has sought to posture itself from a position of listening — of listening to non-Catholic traditions, of listening to the surrounding culture, of listening to the experience of the lay faithful. No longer is the Church seen primarily in terms of a downward pyramid, where the hierarchy issues commands to a passive laity. Instead, the entire People of God receives and teaches the Word of God; the pope and bishops are servants first. The Church does not always have a ready answer. Instead, the Church must discern what God may be saying here and now.

Many Christians would claim to be “courageous” in their fight for truth in a secular culture. Many conservative Christians believe their challenge is to be “courageous” by standing up for traditional values and rebuffing the modern way. Many Catholics also want “courageous” priests to preach out strongly against moral evils in society, or “courageous” bishops to speak out against political opponents. In the midst of the many cultural wars — both outside and inside the Church — there is a call for a new crusade to defend a certain approach to traditionalism and orthodoxy. And the stance tends to be one of suspicion and resistance. Instead of openness to what could be, these Christians think they already have the answers.

Responding to LGBTQ issues with suspicion and resistance, these Christians choose the comfort of “settled doctrine.” But this is an easy way out, and it’s anything but courageous. Arguably, fear, not courage, lurks behind this approach. There is a fear of change, a fear of a shaken worldview, or a fear that Christianity is not as neat-and-tidy as otherwise hoped.

Listening is an act of true courage. Becoming vulnerable by opening ourselves to the experiences of another is courageous. Allowing ourselves to be challenged and embracing new questions is how we allow the Holy Spirit to lead us into further truth. Closing ourselves off prevents the Spirit from moving us beyond ourselves. Closing ourselves off is divisive and sinful. It is contrary to the way of Christ, who was self-giving, even unto death.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Hold Your Applause

— Potential Changes to Roles of Catholic Women and LGBTQ+ People May Just Be Vatican Breadcrumbing

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The Southern Baptist Convention stole headlines from the Vatican this season when the nation’s largest Protestant denomination recently finalized the expulsion of two congregations for having women serve as pastors. One of the two is the mega Saddleback Church whose founder and longtime pastor Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, supports women in roles of spiritual leadership. Backlash against women isn’t reserved for the Supreme Court. The Vatican ought to send the SBC a thank-you note for distracting attention from its actions, or lack thereof, regarding women.

Catholicism has neither an assembly to vote congregations out, nor any women in approved priestly leadership to expel. Parishes are simply closed by bishops, often related to bankruptcy proceedings to minimize payments to settle abuse cases. Moreover, while the SBC discriminates against women pastors, Roman Catholic women priests of various stripes are excommunicated upon ordination, so that’s that.

Meanwhile, the Catholics who remain keep mucking their way in what’s called a “synodal process,” a kind of worldwide, general conversation about church topics, including the sticky wickets of women’s ordination and LGBTQIA+ full participation. Local and continental consultations will culminate in a Synod of Bishops in October of 2023 and another session in October of 2024. Several hundred bishops and a few lay people will develop suggestions to “submit to the Holy Father,” (IL par.10) who, unsurprisingly, has the final say on what comes next.

In plain English, what’s called the Synod on Synodality, an infelicitous phrase if ever one were hatched, is an ecclesial effort that retrains sights on Rome as the locus of decision-making, albeit with flowery rhetoric about the Holy Spirit and some claim to local input. The process maintains a clear distinction between lay people and clerics, reinforces the myth that persons in religious congregations are not lay people, and leaves all the final decisions in papal hands.

Some people have found it a useful framework for raising important questions—notably some Germans who have progressive views and the money to make them stick. However, many bishops around the world took a pass on the whole thing. The Synod budget is minuscule if existent at all; apparently the Holy Spirit’s isn’t a union shop.

The Synod texts, including the recently released Instrumentum Laboris or “working instrument,” read as if written by committees, which they were. The IL isn’t a working draft to be refined by the end of the process. That would grant issues like women’s ordination to the diaconate and presbyterate, and the full rights (not only the recognition) of LGBTQIA+ persons subject to change. Rather, the Synod seems designed to simply acknowledge the hot-button issues, a minimalist result at best, with no clear mechanism and less promise to do anything about them. The exception proves the rule.

Cue the brass band to herald the papally approved decision to include 70 non-bishops, half of whom are to be women, as voting members of the Synod. This is the first substantive structural change for women in Roman Catholicism perhaps since Mary gave birth to Jesus. Leaders of many progressive groups understandably praised the move. There’s also a provision to change the usual number of 10 men from religious congregations who can vote in synods to five women religious and five men religious. Why they’re somehow in a different category than other lay people remains unclear, but this counts as progress.

Nathalie Becquart, a French woman and a member of the Congregation of Xavières, was named an undersecretary of the Synod of Bishops making her the first woman eligible to vote in a Synod of Bishops. This is in stark contrast to Vatican II when women were “auditors”—listeners without vote—a term which now has gone the way of all flesh. There’s undeniable progress in the metrics even if there’s no significant change in structure.

Oddly, the name “Synod of Bishops” is preserved despite the fact that other people are now voting. Apparently, there’s some Alice in Wonderland-reasoning involved (lest anyone suggest the bishops are not still in charge). Or maybe they plan to name those who vote as bishops. Doubtful. Or, maybe this is a one-off thing that opponents will be sure doesn’t happen again after Francis is out of the picture. What’s gained by such a misnomer remains obscure.

Despite the enthusiasm of many of my progressive colleagues, I’ve had an uneasy feeling about the whole synod process. Enthusiasm is a polite reinforcer, a way to encourage more such changes. But I fear praise may be a bit premature for living generations. Incrementalism in Catholicism is measured in centuries. Most of us live less than a hundred years. The damage to women and queer people is going on right now.

I shared my unease with my Australian colleague in the study of religion, Tracy McEwan, who gave words to my concerns. McEwan, along with Kathleen McPhillips and Miriam Pepper, co-authored the landmark study of 17,200 plus Catholic women that was fed into the Synod conversation. The International Survey of Catholic Women: Analysis and Report of Key Findings is an important read. Results highlight that even women who are very critical of the church value their Catholic identity; there’s general consensus around the need for reform; the centrality of abuse in its many forms is a major concern; and that there is a stark rejection of clericalism in every form, with an expectation of transparency and accountability of those in leadership.

Tracy clued me in to the term “breadcrumbing” as a way to see the dynamics at play in a patriarchal church largely resistant to change. Breadcrumbing means giving just enough affirmation to keep people involved while suggesting more interest than is really there. It’s used mostly in personal situations but it feels like what’s going on with the Synod.

The term refers specifically to hookups, or what we called dating in my youth. Breadcrumbing is a cousin of ghosting. Let’s say someone asks you out. You have a nice dinner and whatever you decide to do afterwards, then you part on good terms until the next time. You had fun and want some more. Your efforts to prompt another get-together are ignored or rebuffed. The other person doesn’t respond immediately. When they do, it’s without much enthusiasm or commitment. You eventually go out again. Same deal—a good time is had but it’s all quite minimal and on their terms. You hope you can change that. But the pattern repeats a few times, maybe with a little longer between meetings. Still, you harbor hope and interest. You are being breadcrumbed.

Breadcrumbing is what the Vatican does to people whom it marginalizes. For example, at first a single nun, Natalie Becquart, was made a part of the Synod staff with voting privileges. That gave hope to many. Now, once they’re approved by Francis, at least 35 women (non-binary people are far from Vatican radar) will vote along with several hundred bishops. Again, more enthusiasm. These crumbs, like the mere mention of marginalized people in the documents, feed the hunger of those who want to be involved. Women’s ordination and LGBTQIA+ work in Catholic circles each has a 50 year history of struggle and then some.

Consider this framing of the matter of co-responsibility in the IL: Under consideration is not full and equal membership of all persons, but “the promotion of the baptismal dignity of women, the role of the ordained Ministry and in particular the ministry of the Bishop within the missionary synodal Church” (par. 55). A simple gender analysis would quickly reveal that women are consigned to the service sector (by baptism), not the sacramental or decision-making ranks that are for men only. In other words, women can serve but men preside, decide, and proscribe.

Or, try this false juxtaposition in the IL: “In particular, does authority arise as a form of power derived from the models offered by the world, or is it rooted in service?” (par. 57). It’s as if the Church were without power struggles and as if no social models were rooted in service. Wrong on both counts. A path to women deacons is hinted at here but not women priests. I’m reminded that Hansel left a few breadcrumbs but that he and Gretel were foiled by hungry birds. So it goes.

Breadcrumbing works like other forms of intermittent reinforcement, and it works quite well. While some people still think the diaconate is a step toward priesthood because it has been for some time, others are persuaded that it’s a separate thing altogether—especially now that women are involved. Whoever turns out to be right (history suggests it can be both), the mere hint of women as deacons is enough to keep some people “wishin’ and hopin’” as the song goes.

Another example: there are two paltry mentions of LGBTQ+ people in the IL that have given hope to many. Two is more than zero, but not by much. Also to the good is that finally the Vatican has cleaned up its language, referring to people by the terms they choose for themselves rather than persisting in dated words like ‘homosexual.’ This seems to be a bar so low it’s hardly a bar at all. But it is something.

The first mention, “The desire to offer genuine welcome is a sentiment expressed by synod participants across diverse contexts” (B1.2), refers in part to LGBTQ+ people who’ve been marginalized. But there’s no suggestion that teachings, practices, or injustices will change. In other words, come and be welcome on the institution’s terms but do not expect your relationships to be blessed, much less sacramentalized, and prepare that your children will probably be stigmatized.

Likewise, the second LGBTQ+ mention is in the form of a question about what “concrete next steps are needed to welcome those who feel excluded from the Church because of their status or sexuality?” (B1.2). Eliminating the theology about queer sex as “morally disordered,” affirming same-sex marriage, and supporting (not thwarting) trans people in their quest for wholeness would be a modest but credible start. No breath-holding here.

The Vatican is going to have to up its game to claim any credibility given its clergy sexual abuse and legal wranglings. The Synod is an attempt to do that. 2022 ended with the death of Pope Benedict XVI, two days after the demise of Brazilian soccer great Pelé. Four times the number of people attended Pelé’s funeral as showed in St. Peter’s Square for the former Cardinal Ratzinger. His influence spanned three pontificates—the later years of John Paul II’s tenure under whom Benedict was in charge of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and later Dean of the College of Cardinals, his own pontificate from 2005-2013, and the first decade of Francis’ pontificate when Benedict resigned, became emeritus, and cast a large and often influential shadow.

Francis has had his own health challenges of late. Rumors of his retirement persist. The whole synod process could end with him if his successor chooses. That’s how shaky this process is unless there’s structural change. A more democratic process would help, but note that the Southern Baptist Convention did its dastardly deeds at a meeting of 10,000 delegates. Oy vey, religion.

The Synod is considered the most significant global Catholic event since Vatican II. I predict, with the fervent hope that I am wrong, that come 2025, when all of this is over, many women and queer people may wonder why they bothered. Some may decide not to take the breadcrumbs anymore and instead bake and share their own loaves. People are hungry now.

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