Emmaus Soup Kitchen run by Benedictine nuns in Eire,PA When I first heard of the Vaticans recent crackdown on the Leadership Council of Women Religious I was angry but not particularly surprised. Brought to us by the same men who brought us the sexual abuse scandal and who still are unable to accept their culpability in it or deal with it responsibly, this document takes the women religious to task for daring to publicly disagree with some Catholic Church teachings and encouraging dialogue. The sisters spend too much time working with the marginalized and being involved in work for social justice. They spend too little time speaking out against abortion, same sex marriage, and other issues of human sexuality.
As if that were not enough, according to the Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, some of the sisters have the audacity to suggest that their dissent from some RCC teaching is prophetic. Impossible, the document says. True prophecy is a grace which accompanies the exercise of the responsibilities of the Christian life and ministries within the Church, regulated and verified by the Churchs faith and teaching office.
Might that have been a surprise to prophets of old? To Jesus himself? It seems to me that many utterances of biblical prophets were not in accord with the thought of existing religious officials. In fact, some recognized religious officials had problems with Jesus teachings and how he lived his life. He shouldnt heal on the Sabbath, or pick grain to munch on while he and his disciples were walking about on the holy day. And the people he hung around with, the food he ate hardly in keeping with the teachings of those ancient religious leaders. Jesus challenged the status quo.
Still, the Vatican and the magisterium are sure the claim to prophetic action must be wrong: it justifies dissent by positing the possibility of divergence between the Churchs magisterium and a legitimate theological intuition of some of the faithful.”
Could it be that the faithful might have a theological intuition that diverges from the Churchs teaching and that they might be right? It wouldnt be the first time. Blessed John Henry Newman thought so. He had studied the history of the Arians and used some of that history in his article, On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine. Newman pointed out that the Arian heresy was defeated not by bishops or popes, most of whom supported the Arian position. The faithful, mostly the laity, were the ones who steadfastly held to the truth of the divinity of Jesus, sometimes at the cost of their lives. It was the consensus fidelium or consent of the faithful that saved the day.
Newman said that church authority cannot come from the top down. The hierarchy, the magisterium, the pope, must listen to the faithful before declaring doctrine.
Newman again: I think I am right in saying that the tradition of the Apostles, committed to the whole Church manifests itself variously at various times: sometimes by the mouth of the episcopacy, sometimes by the doctors, sometimes by the people, sometimes by liturgies customs, disputes, movements, and all those other phenomena which are comprised under the name of history. It follows that none of these channels of tradition may be treated with disrespect I am accustomed to lay stress on the consensus fidelium.
Benedict XVI and the magesterium do not seem to be willing to listen and enter into dialogue with women religious. Instead they want to get them back in line. I, for one, hope they fail. I hope they are forced to listen by a groundswell of support for these members of the church who spend their lives being with the poor, serving the marginalized, and daring to give voice to the sensum fidelium or sense of the faithful.
As Fr. Michael Himes, professor of theology at Boston University, said in a video on sensus fidelium, if the majority of the faithful do not agree with a doctrine or chose not to incorporate it as they live their lives, one of two things can be true. Either the magisterium have not articulated the doctrine in a way that makes sense to the faithful, or the doctrine is wrong.
I once handed a long letter to a cardinal that told the story of my experience with my transsexual daughter. In the letter I wrote that the Vatican needed to trust the Spirit dwelling in ordinary people. It needed to listen to their stories and hear the truth that they had to say. The cardinal said he would read it, but his secretary whisked it out of the cardinals hands.
I always read his mail first.
I never heard from the cardinal. Probably never will. I dont know if he ever read the letter or if his secretary deemed it unfit for his eyes.
Someone has to speak the truth to power. In this case, it may be the women religious and members of the Catholic Church who support them. My prayer is that power will listen.
related sites:
Newman: the sense and consent of the faithful by Denis Coday
We Are All Nuns by Nicolas D. Kristof
Bishops Play Church Queens as Pawns by Maureen Dowd
Doctrinal Assessment of the Leadership Conference of Catholic Women
© 2012 Mary van Balen
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