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| Sr. Joan Chittister |
It happened like this:
About 15 to 20 minutes ago we were sitting around in our Alaska abode in the dark misty morning reading news, twitter, and eating a bit of breakfast.
We love Alaska, it is a free and wild place. Men are Men, and Women rival them in their amazing awesomeness. Maybe it is the fact that women are generally better hunters and fishers than men, but let's not admit that out loud :) But there is something about an Alaskan girl. Whatever.
While reading Twitter I came across an article about "Women's Issues" and decided to read it to my wife. While she is running our household, making food, and caring for our daughter, she likes me to talk to her or discuss what I am reading and writing about. She is a woman in charge, she is the boss, the leader, and is a true feminist.
That is why it came as a shock to me. I was shocked at the nature of her response. Not because it was shockingly accurate, but because it came so simply and succinctly. It wasn't the take on the article, but the fact that she has that take after surviving the '80s, '90s, and a Jesuit college.
I mean, it isn't like she came from a home-schooled household. No, in fact, her mother is a teacher and a rather outspoken woman. She has more aunts than uncles by a 3:1 margin. She has a degree, worked in corporate America at a very high level, and has made more money than I have in our lifetimes. She handles our finances, and has always believe she can do whatever she wants. So we aren't talking about a sheltered girl here, she was groomed to be a working american woman, she was made to roar.
So what shocked me was that her response was heartfelt. What blew me away was that somewhere inside her she truly believes her take on this article that I read from the NCR's Sister Joan Chittister. What hit me like a ton of bricks was that she must have found this answer somewhere in the space between her gut and her mind, a place that some doctors have called "The Heart."
As I finished reading the piece, it happened. It cut like a knife when I heard these words, almost instantaneously after finishing:
"Why did a sister write this? I can't believe she is so ungrateful in her role and her ability to serve God in the way a sister should."How could this happen? How could this girl, raised in the world where women are supposed to support other women betray her kindred spirit, Sr. Joan.
For the love of God, we had a daughter sitting in the room with us.
How could my wife betray all of womanhood with her answer? And then it got worse.
She then made this point:
"Why does she stay Catholic, why doesn't she go practice some other faith that allows for these things?"I can't answer that. I don't know what makes people remain Catholic when they don't believe the teachings of the faith. I also can't answer what sort of horror will befall our daughter with a mother like this.
As we try and raise our children in a parish where sometimes the only man "actively participating" in Mass is the priest, we seem to be in a place that Sr. Joan would call "on the right path." So I wonder how my daughter(s) will grow up with a mother that thinks the way she does. What if she suggests they become a sister or nun in an order that wears those demeaning habits?
What if she suggests that they become stay at home moms and raise their children? What if she explains to them that only her sons can serve at the Altar but that they can be sacristans, or Sunday school teachers, or bring up the gifts, or lead the Rosary guild, or keep a Holy Hour, or some other demeaning task?
How is my daughter going to learn to cut her hair short and wear pant suits to Mass if all she is accustomed to is dresses and skirts? My daughter has spent more time in a kitchen than most girls born in the 80's have in the entire lives! My daughter has witnessed canning, sewing, cooking, baking, and other abusive activities. What sort of mother does she have?
Sr. Joan must be on to something, and I need to convey this to my wife. You see, at parishes around me more and more people are leaving the Church and it must be because we don't have female priests. Since every other position is held by a woman, and the Church still won't let them be priests people must be fed up and going somewhere else.
Yet, while the parishes that are flourishing are doing so only because the men are dragging women like my wife to Mass. They force them to wear dresses and chapel veils. They force their daughters to learn to sing. They fills the Churches through oppression and trickery. Their choirs only sound beautiful because the girls are made to learn to sing, such a silly sentimental archaic activity. The altar linens are crisp and pressed because the mean men make the women toil and use an iron. The word itself, IRON, is emblematic of torture and pain. The smile on the faces of these women, even though they have 4, 5, 6, and even more children isn't real, it is demanded by evil men.
So, I am left with a wife that thinks women have beauty and worth. Sr. Joan would be so disappointed in me. I am left with a Church that tells women they are brides of Christ, the essence of beauty, and the embodiment of love. I don't know how I will explain to my daughter than only women can bear children, I dread that day. All that talk about nurturing, loving, feeding, caring. All the smiles she will have to endure as her children are happy at a world such as ours. How I dread that day. But even worse is how can I ever explain to her that our faith teaches that women, sisters, nuns are seen as brides of Christ, the same way God describes His Church. How will I let her in on the horror that women are the backbone of the domestic Church and the Church militant? Oh the horrors.
Finally, I want to leave you with the void that Sr. Joan talks about. Look at the anguish. The Pain. The Suffering. The Oppression. If only... they could have a role in the Church...
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| Young Aspirants... so few of them. |
If only this young women had been given a role, but instead her Church and Her God gave her this way of life. And so listen to the oppression and pain she feels - Sr. Hannah (h/t By Love Alone):
“I came to understand in a very real way that God loved me more than I had ever comprehended. In realizing that, I recognized my call to a vocation of love. I longed to give my all to live for God, who so willingly gave all of Himself in the desire for my love. My fears and self-doubt have been replaced by peace and the desire to serve Him with all that I am.”What an ugly way to live. Sr. Joan is right:
From where I stand, it is clear that the church already lost a good proportion of one generation of women in the last 25 years and is now willing to lose the next one to reassert its maleness. The question rises again with new and demanding urgency for many: Why do we go there?The girls in that picture are the lost that Sr. Joan speaks of. So are these:
The answer to it will not only affect the women and their children for generations to come.
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(*UPDATE*):
After having my post linked on a Google+ feed by someone two comments were left that said similar things. Here are excerpts:
...The condescension, distancing, grumbling, ranting, and complaining in this article is more than snarky; I would challenge that it is in direct opposition to the beauty and dignity of woman religious and of Christ. And that's blunt, but said in love....Another said:
When you respond in the same tone as Sr Joan you are being Sr Joan like - not Christ Like. Snarky ness belies some sort of anger at the one it is directed towards .. and yes Sr Joan does make some of us just plain angry - but we as Christians must not retailate in kind - we must love our neighbors - even when correcting them - you are (perhaps) right to correct Sr Joan - but to be truly Christlike you should try to say these things in a way that lifts women up without being hurtful to the poor wayward sister. I value the things you had to say - I wish you would try your hand at rewriting this minus the snarkcasm...So I am going to attempt to write my post, making the same point, without the snark. This is a self-exploration and we will see, maybe I can make this same point, without snark. Maybe it will send the message that these ladies think it will, and maybe it won't. Let us see:
Sr. Joan Chittister wrote an article in the NCR today that isn't a far cry from much of what she has been saying for the last few decades. She is no stranger to controversy or dissent. In fact, she is seen in some circles as a hero, as a leader of "progressive feminist Catholicism". She is the poster child for those that saw the reforms of the 1970s not as some anomaly in the history of the Church but who live within the hermeneutic of rupture.
Sr. Joan though is hard to take serious in an article like this. Not because I dismiss her thoughts due to her previous body of work, but because she makes claims in this piece that simply fly in the face of reality. Throughout the article and especially at the end, it seems like Sr. Joan fails to see the world in the way it actually exists, and instead sees it in the way she desires it to exist.
Now I don't doubt that her feelings are sincere, oh no, I believe that they are and that is what makes this article so problematic. You see, I read it aloud to my wife and she had two things to say about it. First my wife commented that she was shocked to hear a woman, a religious sister at that, seem so ungrateful at the vocation God called her to. We have quite an affinity in our household for women's religious, and I in fact have started a Blog Project/apostolate to promote and support them [See the Society of St. Scholastica]. So when my wife's reaction came so quickly and honestly at the conclusion of the article, I knew she was heartfelt.
Now don't get me wrong. My wife is no uptight sheltered woman. It isn't as if she was sheltered from progressive feminism. In fact, I would argue that if anyone has a right to make a comment about Sr. Joan and her role, the appropriateness of her position on this issue, and women in general - it is my wife. She has been on both sides of the fence. She is highly educated, worked at a fairly high level in BIG corporate America, and comes from a stock of pretty outspoken and intelligent women. So when she comments on the proper role of women, she speaks with intelligence, authority, and clarity.
As we discussed the article more, and who Sr. Joan was, since my wife didn't really know, she made a further comment. She asked why Sr. Joan would remain Catholic, or why anyone (there is more to this, by anyone we mean specifically those that preach heterodoxy or heresy) would remain Catholic if they didn't accept the full teachings of the Faith. I didn't really have an answer, and don't think there is one that applies across the board. I think this is the biggest mystery to people like Sr. Joan - when they are so openly opposed to certain teachings what is it that keeps them Catholic? Is it aspirational hope? Is it that the 90% they agree with is worth the struggle? Is it pride? What is it?
When I got to the bottom of Sr. Joan's article, past the whole sentimental story, I realized what point she was trying to make. That somehow we were losing not only women but the Church. She was essentially arguing that not having women priests was leading to an exodus by women, and in doing so an evaporation of the Catholic Church. When I realized that was her point... one thing came to mind: The Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist. A traditional and orthodox order that is so full they have had to literally build new convents around the country. Were they lost?
So where is the disconnect with Sr. Joan? How has she lost the vision of women's religious as the proper role for women in the Church? Is she bitter? Was she some how prevented from fulfilling God's call because she was a woman? Doesn't that fly in the face of vocation - prima facie? When she dramatically "cut back" to the little girl, now in her 20's I couldn't help but think - what did her parents tell her about the role of women in the Church, in a religious sense? Does Sr. Joan encourage girls to seek a religious vocation? What does she think about CMWSR orders?
To me, it seemed she was saying girls like the ones I posted above are part of the lost. She also makes reference to the last 25 years as a time of exodus for women, and I see the opposite. Not only that, but I see the last 10 years as a time where young women have finally stepped up and reclaimed the role that they see as appropriate. When I look around my parish for example, and we are not talking about a bastion of orthodoxy or traditionalism, the ones I see wearing more traditional things such as dresses and veils to Mass are the young women.
Sr. Joan isn't wrong because I disagree with her. She is wrong because the women that have left the Church have left because of reasons aside from their inability to be priests. They haven't left because the Church has erased them, they have left the Church because they no longer believe in the Church. Women are not in danger of the Church becoming more male, we are in danger of a Church without any males. The priesthood will be fine, I am worried about the lecterns, classrooms, and pews.
What Sr. Joan fails to realize is that women have a beautiful role in the Church prescribed by God himself. What about Mary? What about all the Sisters and Nuns around the world? Are they nothing, meaningless, less than? We don't risk losing our girls and our Church to maleness we risk losing our women to a false understanding of beauty. Women are the beauty of God in personified. They are beauty, love, grace, and compassion. If we remove that from them, if we take them out of their natural order and try and make them more like men to level out the maleness, we will lose the feminine.
If we really want to preserve women in the Church we must preserve their place as women, as feminine, as something different than men. We must preserve them as beauty. We must preserve women's religious as brides of Christ. We must preserve women as the embodiment of love... not power or authority.
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