What you are asking me to do in your letter is not possible without betraying my conscience. In essence, you are telling me to lie and say I do not believe that God calls both men and women to the priesthood. This I cannot do, therefore I will not recant.As anyone who follows Roman Catholic news learned a little over a year ago, that while the Vatican does claim to deem the rape of a child by a priest a grievous sin, incidences of child rape do not in all cases call for the offending priest be laicized or excommunicated. Not so in the case of a priest who publicly supports the ordination of women, for such a priest is seen by the hierarchs as a peril to the very church itself.
And the Vatican is half-right about this. Father Bourgeois is a threat. Not to the church. To the Vatican. Priests like Bourgeois make the guys in lace and tall hats look like self-serving, meglomaniac bigots.
Roman Catholics who favor the ordination of women will never convince those who feel otherwise that women should serve as priests. Male-only priesthood proponents -- who often employ the misnomer "the Church," when what they really mean is "the Vatican"-- feel that Jesus was clear on this matter. Their argument tends to hinge on the notion that Jesus did not call women "apostles," per se, and is predicated on the 'that's-how-Jesus-wants- it/that's-how-we-have-always-done-it' rationale outlined in John Paul II's "Ordinatio Sacredotalis," which is considered by many to be the "final word" on women's ordination:
...it is not admissible to ordain women to the priesthood, for very fundamental reasons. These reasons include: the example recorded in the Sacred Scriptures of Christ choosing his Apostles only from among men; the constant practice of the Church, which has imitated Christ in choosing only men; and her living teaching authority which has consistently held that the exclusion of women from the priesthood is in accordance with God's plan for his Church.The church can not, in other words, ordain women for these reasons: men who interpret the sacred scriptures find that Jesus did not call the women in his ministry "apostles"; the tradition of the church is to ordain only men; and the church hierarchs teach is that only men should be ordained. No circuitous logic in that, eh?
And the anti-women's ordination set likes to think of the Roman Catholic Church as a club. ("Don't like the rules? Then find another club. Try that Episcopal Church down the block. They'll ordain anybody.") Clearly the many Catholics who have no trouble at all summarily nullifying the baptisms of those they deem not quite Catholic enough -- lack faith themselves in the power of the Sacrament of Baptism. Yet these lockstep Roman Catholic chauvinists are legion, and they insist they have the inside line on Jesus's every preference. They don't feel any urgency to prevail in the debate because it's their ball, it's their home field. Their dad, il Papa is the coach. His might (authority) makes them right.
Sometimes anti-women's ordination Catholics like to note that the church simply lacks the authority to ordain women. This, I call the 'gee,-girls,-we'd-love-to-ordain-you-but--' line of non-reasoning. Some like to remind us (Catholic women) that we have our place of reverence in the church. In "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" John Paul II (Many Vatican experts believe that the pope's Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Joseph Ratzinger, may have ghostwritten much of John Paul II's papal copy.) spells out this role. We are:
.... holy martyrs, virgins and mothers of families, who bravely bore witness to their faith and passed on the Church's faith and tradition by bringing up their children in the spirit of the Gospel.No surprises there. Hence, the role holy economics plays. As the mother of three smart, spirited teenagers, I confess a soft spot for 'because-I-said-so' governance, but many practicing Roman Catholics are not children. Proponents of an all-male Roman Catholic priesthood may find strange comfort in its clean lines and infantilizing, parental spirit -- but what possible use might any Catholic have for primacy of conscience or discernment in the face of 'because-I-said-so' reasoning?
Still, the pro and con Roman Catholic women's ordination factions are not always so far apart. All Roman Catholics seem to agree that laws applying to ordination were enshrined and upheld through the ages by popes, some of whom who pillaged, stole, mass-murdered, raped; and persecuted thinkers, scientists and scholars. We all agree that the first few hundred years of the church were characterized by turmoil, schism and upheaval. We all agree that Jesus did not leave explicit instructions for the priesthood. We all agree that our sacred scriptures are translated, retranslated and mistranslated texts from second and third-hand accounts the teaching of Jesus which men driven by both divine inspiration and political power interpreted. We all agree that some accounts of the life of Jesus made it into the Roman Catholic canon while others failed to make the cut, and that men motivated by both worldy and ethereal concerns presided over the culling. We all seem to agree women have served in the Roman Catholic diaconate.
The author of "Ordinatio Sacredotalis" (whoever he was) anticipates, and refutes -- with disturbing certitude -- the argument that the rules applying to ordination could have been shaped, in part, by the politics and religion of Jesus's day:
In the Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, I {?} myself wrote in this regard: "In calling only men as his Apostles, Christ acted in a completely free and sovereign manner... without conforming to the prevailing customs and to the traditions sanctioned by the legislation of the time."It's hard to know what to make of the insistence that political and religious perspectives on gender had little or no bearing on the interpretation of scripture that led to the development of canon law as it relates to ordination. The origins of all religions reflect the times from which they emerge. If Roman Catholicism is the exception -- that aspect ought to be considered one of its "sacred mysteries."
John Paul II's "Ordinatio Sacredotalis" is considered by many to be the "final word" on women's ordination. And "final word" it strives to be, for it lays the groundwork for the "no backtalk" rule, whereby dialogue about women's ordination, a discussion that bishops had been having out in the open since Vatican II, became a grave violation. I keep coming back to what one priest said to me at a party recently. "They {the Vatican} don't even want to talk about it {ordination of women}."
We all know from personal experience with friends and family what it means when one party declares an unfinished dispute over and walks away. The full reliance on "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis" resolution (inspired, we have to infer, by "Ordinatio Sacerdotalis") to shut down the talk suggests the Vatican's insecurity -- and a lack of faith in its own argument:
... Although the teaching that priestly ordination is to be reserved to men alone has been preserved by the constant and universal Tradition of the Church and firmly taught by the Magisterium in its more recent documents, at the present time in some places it is nonetheless considered still open to debate ...
Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance... I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.These words reveal not only Ratzinger's wish to reaffirm the Magisterium's position on the ordination of women, but also his desperation to silence Roman Catholic priests. Let us say for the sake of the argument it is true that "the church" lacks the authority to ordain women -- does "the church" also lack the authority to allow for discussion?
Because Father Bourgeois is not being punished for ordaining women. He is being punished for talking about ordaining women.
I'm reading the recently issued Secrecy, Sophistry and Gay Sex In The Catholic Church: The Systematic Destruction of an Oblate Priest, by Richard Wagner. Wagner, who was a Roman Catholic priest, offers an eloquent examination at the Roman Catholic hierarchy's commitment to silence and secrecy. Wagner, who is gay, was "out" when he entered the seminary and was later ousted (in what strikes me as a particularly protracted, dishonest and sadistic manner) not for being a gay priest who violated his promises or vows -- but for speaking out about gay priests, some of whom, it seemed, may have violated their promises or vows.
The Vatican's fervor for muzzling priests is a direct response to its fear of the kind of transparency that might expose bishops and cardinals to criminal prosecution in child rape cases and possibly, down the line, bankrupt the church. Today's vatican wants Catholics to know that "backtalk" is not allowed, that "because-we-said-so" is inalienable Catholic doctrine. The dumbed-down, muted strain of Roman Catholicism for which the current pontificate longs will, or so it hopes, play well in the developing world, but shames a religion such as ours which pulses with so much imaginative force and potential and which has a rich intellectual tradition into which is built the expectation that it would evolve.
But there's a piece of the power and the glory he can't touch. Conscientious dissent is alive and well within in the Roman Catholic Church. It is not just radical yahoos who attend masses celebrated by women. It's the rosary-saying church lady next door, her husband, her Roman Catholic gay son and the nun who teaches his 2nd grade daughter Catechism and math at a school whose name starts with the word "Our Lady of..."
The awareness that Catholics can become the change for which they wait it is ramifying and flourishing under the pontifical radar. The women's ordination movement is taking root. Its plain truths are sprouting in plain sight. Our church got its start in this very way.
It's very sad that Bourgeois will be defrocked, and sad that Maryknoll Order should be muscled into serving as Ratzinger's button man.
Father Bourgeois is an expert at fighting bullies. He will remain a "father" long after the Vatican has finished working him over. Furthermore, who knows to what liberties the persecution and prosecution of this good priest will give way? For the Communion of Saints is filled with the commotion of trouble-makers who listen to God, not power-mad men. How ironic that a cabal of self-serving boys in miters and lace should so well illustrate -- as they contrive and prepare to strip a fine priest of his frock -- what separates the (ordained) men from the (ordained) boys.
This, as our nervous pontiff cowers under the skirts of the Mother Church, throwing "the Glory" under the bus in order to hang on to "the Power."
Support Father Roy Bourgeois as he plays David to the Vatican's Goliath? Contribute to SOA Watch (As a punitive measure, it appears, essential funding the Maryknoll order once provided to SOA Watch has been withdrawn.), sign the petition, and attend the 9:30 a.m. vigil on Aug. 14 at the Maryknoll Headquarters in Ossining, N.Y.
