Wednesday, April 25, 2012
Anybody and Everybody
I posted on my personal blog, Creo en Dios!, some thoughts about reactions to the CDF's recent action with relating to women religious in the United States in a post titled "Here Comes Everybody." I share them here for MOJ readers who might find them of interest:
There have been a lot of articles and other posts over the course of the last week relating to the decision of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith to appoint a bishop to exercise oversight over reforms of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious. The CDF accuses the LCWR of "radical feminism" and "corporate dissent."
Not surprisingly, given the breadth of views within the Catholic Church, there are some who defend the action of the CDF and others who have expressed vehement criticism of the action.
One reaction caused me to pause longer than others. One of my Facebook friends wrote, "These men are not the Church."
As phrased, that is simply wrong. That is to say, the CDF alone is not the Church, none of us individually is. But a lot of people and groups fall under this large tent that is the Catholic Church. The parish I left at the end of this past year because it no longer spiritually nourished me, as well as the parish I joined. The people who share my vision of what Catholic social teaching says and the people who have a different understanding of what it means. The CDF and the rest of the institutional hierarchy and every individual Catholic - whether they go regularly to Mass or not. The people who say things that make me want to join hands and walk with them and the people who say things that make me want to cringe. We are ALL the Church.
It upsets me when some "conservative" Catholics (for lack of a better description) want to tell me I'm not the Church, suggesting I go elsewhere if I disagree with them. It upsets me equally when those at the opposite end of the spectrum suggest that those with whom they disagree are not the Church.
There is something to James Joyce' description of the Catholic Church as "Here Comes Everybody," an acknowledgement of the variety of people that make up the Church. An essential aspect of Catholicism is precisely that. I think we would all be better off if people were less quick to suggest that anybody is not part of everybody.
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/04/anybody-and-everybody.html
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the
comment feed
for this post.
Could there not have been a more sensitive solution to what seems to me to have been a real problem? It is difficult to look at this situation and not think that "the Church" felt the women were out of control, so they had to put a man in overall charge to whip them back into shape. Yes, I know that this is an obvious task for a bishop, but are there no women of such stature and "orthodoxy" in the Church that there could not have been a committee of men (including a bishop) and women to work with the LCWR?
There is a remarkable, eye-opening comment in a thread over at dotCommonweal which you can find on the page by searching for 04/24/2012 - 12:59 pm.
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/blog/?p=18651
It begins: "I am a feminist Catholic who has worked in the church my entire life. Some of my best friends have been sisters. I’ve been asked repeatedly in the last days what I think of this. Well, here goes . . . ."