Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was widely seen as being behind the March 2021 document that outraged the gay community, which Francis has made pains to welcome into the church fold.
Pope Francis delivers the Angelus noon prayer in St.Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022.
Pope Francis took the first step Monday to reorganize the Vatican’s powerful doctrine office, removing the No. 2 official widely believed responsible for a controversial document barring blessings for same-sex couples because God “cannot bless sin.”
Archbishop Giacomo Morandi “Bye Felicia”
Francis named Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, currently the secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, bishop of the Italian diocese of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla. The move amounts to a demotion since Morandi currently has the title of archbishop, yet is heading to a small diocese, not an archdiocese.
The Vatican said Morandi would nevertheless retain the title of archbishop “ad personam.”
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, or CDF, is one of the most important Vatican offices, interpreting doctrine for the universal Catholic Church, sanctioning dissenters and handling cases of clergy sexual abuse of minors. Morandi joined the CDF as an under-secretary in 2015 and was promoted to secretary, or the No. 2, in 2017.
He was widely seen as being behind the March 2021 document that outraged the gay community, which Francis has made pains to welcome into the church fold.
The document declared that the Catholic Church won’t bless same-sex unions because God “cannot bless sin.” The document said Francis had been informed of the document and “gave his assent” to its publication, but Francis was apparently taken by surprise by its impact.
Francis has since made several gestures of outreach to the gay Catholic community and their advocates, including a recent letter congratulating an American nun once sanctioned by the CDF, Sister Jeannine Gramick, on her 50 years of LGBTQ ministry.
The CDF is currently headed by the Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, but he is expected to retire relatively soon since he turns 78 in April, three years beyond the normal retirement age for bishops.
Aside from Morandi, there are two “additional secretaries” in the CDF, including the American Archbishop Joseph Di Noia, who also is due to retire soon since he turns 79 in July. The other is Archbishop Charles Scicluna, but he has a full-time job as archbishop of Malta.
The impending retirements and transfer of Morandi thus suggests some management changes at the office, though they probably won’t be announced until Francis releases the blueprint of his reform of the Vatican’s overall bureaucracy, expected sometime this year.
From opposition to abortion to a reductive view of women’s roles, the Catholic Church should consider its own role in perpetuating a culture of misogyny.
The Pope, it seems, is having a bad few days. This week he made a quite extraordinarily insensitive and crass comment, claiming that couples choosing to have pets instead of children are selfish, and their decision leads to a loss of “humanity” and is a detriment to civilization. Aside from the sweeping generalization and failure, ironically, to grasp the humanity involved, he is a celibate man named after the patron saint on animals!
The statement garnered international coverage, but something he said on New Year’s Day was much more significant. Pope Francis delivered a sermon in which he condemned violence against women as “an insult to God.” Addressing the issue with evident passion he argued: “Since mothers bestow life, and women keep the world together, let us all make greater efforts to promote mothers and to protect women.”
It’s not the first time the 85-year-old leader of more than 1.3 billion Roman Catholics has spoken out about the subject, and many across the world took this as another example of the pontiff as an enlightened progressive. Which to an extent he is: on several themes, such as the importance of tackling climate change, he has shown himself to be forward-thinking, sometimes more so than ostensibly liberal secular leaders. But as is often the case, there’s more to the story.
While Francis has seemed to be supportive of LGBTQ rights, for example, it’s actually more difficult for a gay man to enter a Catholic seminary now than it was under previous Popes, including John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The church’s catechism still regards “homosexual acts” as being of “grave depravity” and “contrary to natural law”, insisting that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered”.
Regarding gender-based violence, while it may be that on a visceral, personal level the Pope is appalled, even his language during his sermon reveals an inherent difficulty in the Catholic church’s attitude to women. “Since mothers bestow life… let us all make greater efforts to promote mothers and to protect women,” he said. Opposing violence against women on the basis that womanhood is intrinsically linked to motherhood is an abhorrent argument, but this model is at the epicentre of Catholic teaching: women as mothers, as spiritual heirs of the Virgin Mary, to be protected not because of humanity and equality but due to their fertility and piety.
That reductive view of women as virtual icons is part of the problem, rather than the solution. And it leads directly to the struggle for women’s reproductive rights.
Abortion is criminalised in many Catholic countries, causing widespread suffering, particularly for poor women. In El Salvador, three women who spent between six and 13 years in prison under draconian anti-abortion laws after suffering miscarriages have just this week been released. Even in the US, where church and state are allegedly separated, in Oklahoma last year a 21-year-old Native American woman was convicted of manslaughter after having a miscarriage. These are shocking but not unusual examples. With conservative Catholic justices so dominant on the US Supreme Court, abortion rights are under constant attack and the crucial Roe V Wade ruling may well be overturned this year.
The Catholic church teaches that abortion “is gravely contrary to the moral law” and the taking of innocent life, and many Catholic anti-abortion activists routinely make comparisons between women’s choice and the Holocaust. Francis may not be so irresponsible in his language, but he does describe abortion as “murder”. While seeming to be relatively understanding of Catholic politicians such as President Joe Biden who vote for women’s reproductive rights, the Pope has still said that “Those who carry out abortions kill.”
There are, of course, no women in position of power within the Catholic church. Christianity historically downplayed the central role of women in the ministry of Jesus and the life of the early church. The story of Mary Magdalene is indicative. She is referred to by name a dozen times in the four gospels, more than most of the male apostles, and she’s also present at Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. In 591, however, Pope Gregory I described her as a prostitute, likely confusing her with the maligned Mary of Bethany, and the ugly cliché of the saved “fallen women” has persisted in modern times. Rather than being a central figure in the story of Christ, Mary Magdalene became a passive example of restored brokenness, a sexual caricature.
1,500 years later women may be extremely active in the Catholic church, and in many cases keep it alive, but only men can be ordained and become leaders. The church’s catechism states: “The Lord Jesus chose men to form the college of the twelve apostles. The Church recognizes herself to be bound by this choice made by the Lord himself. For this reason the ordination of women is not possible.” In Roman Catholic terms, a priest celebrates the Mass “in persona Christi” – in the person of Christ – and Jesus was a man. (He was also Jewish and circumcised but this doesn’t appear to be an impediment.)
The Catholic church has a right to hold to this position, and other Christian denominations are similarly, if less rigidly, male-dominated. But the point holds that in spite of Catholic protestations of equality, it is only “Father” who represents Jesus, has the power and authority to turn bread and wine into body and blood, and to hear confessions. That matters. Contrary to what some people might assume, Francis has said, “the door is closed” on the issue. “On the ordination of women in the Catholic Church” he stressed, “the final word is clear, it was said by St. John Paul II and this remains.”
None of this should be compared directly the filth of gender-based violence, which is a plague that goes far beyond religion. But there’s context, culture, and cause involved in what Francis said, along with perceptions of power, the place and freedom of women in society, and real and absolute equality are central. The daily experience of women in the church varies, but there are numerous stories, many of them contemporary, of women being told by priests to return to abusive husbands due to the “sanctity of marriage”. The commonality of that theme, and its roots, are deeply troubling – as are the cases of mothers reporting of their children being abused by priests yet being dismissed by the church, always men, as dishonest or hysterical.
Pope Francis has often been startlingly impressive when speaking out on climate change, the dignity of refugees, and economic justice, but closer to home and Rome he can be inconsistent, and even in denial. Women face oppression and violence in all sorts of places, caused by all sorts of reasons, and it’s time that organized religion admitted its own part – its own sins – and put its house in order.
LGBTQ Catholics are more than welcome to participate in the prayer, discernment and discussion process leading up to the celebration of the assembly of the world Synod of Bishops in 2023, a synod official said.
Thierry Bonaventura, communication manager of the synod’s general secretariat, formally apologized for his decision in early December to remove from a website of synod resources a video of an October seminar on the synod prepared by New Ways Ministry, an unofficial Catholic group that advocates for LGBTQ Catholics.
In an article in the December newsletter of the Synod of Bishops, Bonaventura published his apology under the title, “Children of a Lesser God?”
“Walking together also means knowing how to apologize,” he wrote.
“In recent days, I have personally taken the initiative to de-publish a post” by New Ways Ministry “for internal procedural reasons,” he said, without further explanation. “This brought pain to the entire LGBTQ community, who once again felt left out.”
The link to the New Ways video was restored to the synod resources page Dec. 12 and a letter from an Italian LGBTQ group encouraging participation in the synod process was added.
In posting the materials, Bonaventura said, “I feel that I must apologize to all LGBTQ people and to the members of New Ways Ministry for the pain caused.”
The restoration of the video and the posting of the Italian letter, he said, shows “the firm will — not only mine but of the entire general secretariat of the synod — not to exclude those who wish to carry out this synodal process with a sincere heart and a spirit of dialogue and real discernment.”
“LGBTQ groups and those groups who feel they live on the ‘margins’ of the church can direct their contributions, resources or what they want to share with the whole people of God to webmaster@synodresources.org,” he said.
The EWTN-owned Catholic News Agency had reported Dec. 7 that Bonaventura had removed the video link.
“Even if we are open to receiving any useful resources without a particular censoring of the material, it is our desire to welcome inputs from officially recognized organizations by the Catholic Church,” Bonaventura had told CNA. “In this case, my team was not aware of the situation of the New Ways organization and of the clarification given by the USCCB president in 2010.”
Bonaventura was referring to a statement by the late Cardinal Francis E. George of Chicago, then president of the U.S. bishops conference, saying that, “like other groups that claim to be Catholic but deny central aspects of church teaching, New Ways Ministry has no approval or recognition from the Catholic Church and that they cannot speak on behalf of the Catholic faithful in the United States.”
The occasion of the statement, the cardinal had said, was that “New Ways Ministry has recently criticized efforts by the church to defend the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman and has urged Catholics to support electoral initiatives to establish same-sex ‘marriage.’”
The National Catholic Reporter reported Dec. 8 that in May and again in June, New Ways Ministry received letters from Pope Francis thanking them for their outreach.
A United Methodist Church pastor in Indiana stepped down after performing in drag and speaking about inclusion on the show “We’re Here.”
Pastor Craig Duke at the start of his drag performance in an episode of the unscripted HBO show “We’re Here.” The show’s second season premiered in October.
When Pastor Craig Duke stepped onstage in a small town in southern Indiana, wearing a cotton-candy-pink wig and a sparkly dress under his white robe, he knew his performance would rile some members of his congregation.
He did not, however, expect his drag debut to bring an end to his role leading Newburgh United Methodist Church in a suburb of Evansville.
Mr. Duke’s performance was part of the unscripted HBO show “We’re Here,” which documents L.G.B.T.Q. people and their allies in small towns who put together a drag show, led by three drag all-stars.
The episode that featured the pastor premiered in early November and in it, he explained that he appeared on the show so he could be “empathetic, not just sympathetic” to the community’s gay members. Three weeks later, the church announced that he had been “relieved from pastoral duties.”
In an interview this week, Mr. Duke said he had received enough critical feedback since the show aired to convince him he could not continue leading the church, which he said had about 400 congregants. He said that he was hurt by the negative responses but that he had also received hundreds of messages of support.
“I experienced as much love and acceptance, and dare I say more, within the drag culture and the L.G.B.T.Q. community than most people would experience within the settings of the church,” Mr. Duke said. “Not one person questioned what I was doing there; it was complete acceptance.”
Mr. Duke last preached on Nov. 14, a week after his episode aired. A local church leader said in a letter to the congregation dated Nov. 26 that Mr. Duke would be relieved from his duties on Dec. 1.
The superintendent of the south and southwest district of the Indiana United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mitch Gieselman, wrote in the letter that he had received numerous messages both supporting and criticizing Mr. Duke’s actions.
Mr. Gieselman said that the pastor had not resigned or been fired, but that his salary had been significantly reduced and he and his family would have to move out of the parsonage by Feb. 28.
“While there is a diversity of opinion regarding the moral implications of Rev. Duke’s actions, he has not been found to have committed any chargeable offense or other violation of the United Methodist Book of Discipline,” Mr. Gieselman wrote.
The pastor’s supporters created an online fund-raiser, which had raised more than $56,000 as of Wednesday morning. He said any money raised over the $30,000 goal set to help his family would go toward creating a new faith community in town that he hopes is more inclusive.
Pastor Craig Duke, middle left, and the drag queen Eureka O’Hara, middle right, performed at an event after Mr. Duke’s drag transformation on the HBO series.Credit…
The public split in this congregation came during a stalemate about rights for L.G.B.T.Q. members of the United Methodist Church, which has nearly 13 million members worldwide. Roughly half of them are in the United States.
Ahead of a 2020 meeting of global delegates, a group of church leaders introduced a proposal to split the church, citing “fundamental differences” over same-sex marriage. The traditionalists signed a letter declaring that “the practice of homosexuality is incompatible with Christian teaching.” But the debate on the proposal has been delayed for nearly two years because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The proposal, which would create a denomination that continues to ban same-sex marriage and the ordination of gay and lesbian clergy, is scheduled to be debated at the church’s general conference in August 2022.
The interim pastor at Newburgh United Methodist Church, the Rev. Mark Dicken, said the Methodist church had “regrettably” been fighting over this issue for more than 40 years.
“Very regrettably, the extremely conservative wing of the United Methodist Church has crammed through rather draconian provisions in their attempt to control clergy and their ministry to L.G.B.T.Q. people,” Mr. Dicken said.
Mr. Dicken worked at the church in Newburgh from 2004 to 2011 and came out of retirement to lead the congregation again.
“The tribalism and polarization that’s going on in our culture, particularly in our political culture, has filtered down into the church,” he said.
In the HBO show, which was nominated for an Emmy in 2020, three drag stars, Shangela, Bob the Drag Queen and Eureka O’Hara, confront these divisions while mentoring people for the show-ending drag performance. All three posted messages of support for Mr. Duke after the news about him leaving his position became public.
O’Hara, who was the pastor’s drag mother or mentor, said on Twitter: “Craig is an amazing person and deserves the same love that he shares with everyone around him.”
The pastor, who is straight and described himself as “heteronormative,” was nominated to be featured in the show by the Evansville Pride group. He said he had never heard of the show but decided to participate to share a message of God’s unconditional love and to support his daughter, who identifies as pansexual. He used Joan of Arc O’Hara as his drag name.
He said the negative response from some members of the congregation was especially painful because of the way it hurt his daughter. But his wife and the rest of his family are “sticking together,” he said, and they have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of support.
He said he was grateful for his experience in drag.
“It was real, it wasn’t vaudeville, it was powerful, as the words they taught me, it was fierce, it was authentic,” Mr. Duke said.
When young nuns at a convent in Eastern Europe told their Mother Superior that a priest had tried to molest them, she retorted that it was probably their fault for “provoking him.”
When African nuns in Minnesota asked why it was always they who had to shovel snow they were told it was because they were young and strong, even though white sisters of the same age lived there too.
As the Roman Catholic Church pays more attention to the closed world of convents, where women spend much of their time in prayer and household work, more episodes of psychological, emotional and physical abuse are coming to light.
A new book, “Veil of Silence” by Salvatore Cernuzio, a journalist for the Vatican’s online outlet, Vatican News, is the latest expose to come from within and approved by authorities.
Cernuzio recounts experiences of 11 women and their struggles with an age-old system where the Mother Superior and older nuns demand total obedience, in some cases resulting in acts of cruelty and humiliation.
Marcela, a South American woman who joined an order of cloistered nuns in Italy 20 years ago when she was 19, recounts how the indoctrination was so strict that younger sisters needed permission to go to the bathroom and ask for sanitary products during their menstrual periods.
“You are always complaining! Do you want to be a saint or not?” Marcela, who later left the convent, quotes the Mother Superior as shouting when she suggested changes in the daily routine.
Therese, a French woman, was told “you have to suffer for Jesus” when she asked to be spared physically demanding chores because of a back condition.
“I understood that we were all like dogs,” recounted Elizabeth, an Australian. “They tell us to sit and we sit, to get up and we get up, to roll over and we roll over.”
BURNOUT SYNDROME
Last year, Father Giovanni Cucci wrote a landmark article about abuse in convents in the Jesuit journal Civilta Cattolica, whose texts are approved by the Vatican.
He found that most of it was abuse of power, including episodes of racism such as in the Minnesota convent. Cucci said the problem needed more attention because it had been overshadowed by the sexual abuse of children by priests.
In 2018, the Vatican newspaper Osservatore Romano exposed the plight of foreign nuns sent by their orders to work as housekeepers for cardinals and bishops in Rome with little or no remuneration.
It later chronicled a “burnout” syndrome, where younger women with good educations were held back by older superiors reluctant to relinquish a boot camp-style tradition of assigning them menial tasks, ostensibly to instill discipline and obedience.
“Whatever may have worked in a pyramidal, authoritarian context of relationships before is no longer desirable or liveable,” wrote Sister Nathalie Becquart, a French member of the Xaviere Missionary Sisters and one of the highest-ranking women in the Vatican.
Becquart wrote in the book’s preface of the “cries and sufferings” of women who entered convents because they felt a calling from God but later left because their complaints too often fell on deaf ears.
Some were stigmatized as “traitors” by their orders and had great difficultly getting jobs in the outside world.
Last year, Cardinal Joao Braz de Aviz, who heads the Vatican department that oversees religious congregations, revealed that Pope Francis had opened a home in Rome for former nuns abandoned by their orders.
The cardinal, who has launched investigations into a number of convents, told the Vatican newspaper he was shocked to discover that there were a few cases where former nuns had to resort to prostitution to live.
