Some readers have enquired as to my long lapse in publishing a blog
article. I have been globetrotting,
including spending three weeks in Africa running a technology camp for girls.
Thus, I’ve had limited time and internet connectivity to write. Thanks for your concern and interest.
I returned to the United States coincidental with the Leadership
Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) convening their annual assembly. This year’s assembly carries a smattering of
drama due to the Vatican’s recent finger-wagging exercises at the sisters. The LCWR’s honoree this year is Sr. Elizabeth
Johnson. Her selection increased the hierarchy’s
vigor tsk-tsking the sisters because the hierarchy doesn’t like one of
Elizabeth’s books. I’d characterize the
hierarchy’s objections to her book as resulting from a willful inability to
understand her…to speak or understand her language.
While in Africa, I experienced a certain amount of language confusion
as well. I worked in Rwanda where the
country is shifting the official language for educational instruction from
French to English. Despite laws that
instruction must occur in English, a fair amount of the camp was translated for
campers…not into French, but into Kinyarwanda – the campers’ native
tongue. There are pros and cons to doing this but the
camp staff preferred to err on the side of understanding and being understood.
Rattling around in my head all the while has been this proud moment in
my family’s history when my grandfather and his brother were officially
excommunicated from the Roman Catholic Church for about a year during the
1920s. Their sin? My great-uncle was part of the leadership
team for a Franco-American journal called “La Sentinelle” and my grandfather
was part of the Sentinellist movement.
The Sentinellists’ sin involved language. They emigrated from Quebec to the U.S. and
spoke French. They had this crazy idea that their church
and school environments should accommodate their language requirements because they
wanted to understand and be understood. They were called extreme radicals for this.
As some background, William Hickey, the Irish-American bishop of
Providence, RI thought American Catholics needed to be more “American.". He
thought English language uniformity would increase unity and reduce the amount of
anti-Catholic sentiment which arose largely from Irish opposition to involvement
in World War I. Though the
Franco-Americans strongly supported America’s participation in the war by
offering over 100,000 soldiers, the Irish-Americans tended to support the Irish’s
stance. Since the Irish-American
Catholics and especially Irish-American Catholic clergy vastly outnumbered the
anything-else-American Catholics, Catholics in America were seen as being
downright “un-American.”
In an effort to make Catholics appear more American, Hickey embarked on
a multi-phase campaign to reroute monies pouring into Franco-American
French-speaking parish schools. He
imposed a “subscription” to build English-speaking diocesan high schools. The subscription was basically a tax upon
parishes. Each parish was apportioned
part of the cost to build Hickey’s schools and if donations did not meet the
allotted cost, then he just took the outstanding balance from the parish coffers. This is much like how Diocesan Services
campaigns work in U.S. dioceses. The
bishop gets what he asks for because he simply takes it if it isn’t freely
given.
The Sentinellists were rightly concerned that losing their language
would dilute the ranks of the faithful.
History showed that in the late 1800s, failure by the hierarchy to
support Catholics’ language requirements resulted in a 10 million person exodus
from the Catholic Church in the U.S. The
Sentinellists were extremely devout Catholics and did not want this to happen
to their families and neighbors.
The Sentellists were also working people who didn’t have a lot of
money. They knew that they could not
support their children’s needs and the bishop’s demands. Therefore, they erred on the side of their
children and boycotted paying their “pew fees” (money paid to reserve a pew for
your family at church) and the “subscription” in order to build a
French-speaking Catholic high school rather than an English-speaking one. This seemed to be their ultimate sin winning
them excommunication…they hit the bishop in the most sacred part of his faith
life…his wallet.
I’m a fan of assimilation but I’m also practical. Assimilation occurs at a pace balancing the
culture into which one is trying to assimilate against the practical realities
of the ones trying to assimilate. Third
party meddling trying to force a faster assimilation pace can have severe
unintended consequences.
We see that with the profound diminishment of Franco-American Catholics
after the aggressive assimilation efforts in the early 1900s. French-heritage Catholics in the U.S., though
some of the most abundant early establishers of Catholicism in North America, are
now rare. Their language was suppressed
and they left the church in droves.
I wonder if the same is occurring with women’s language and the
church. Elizabeth Johnson speaks the
language of women. Despite recent
lip-service given to developing a “theology of women,” those who speak the
theological language of women are sanctioned and censured. Is the hierarchy again making the error of
mistaking “uniformity” as “unity?” I
would say that we can wait to see the possible unintended consequences of
suppressing women’s language in the church except we are already seeing
it. Women are leaving the church and
taking their children with them.
However, there is a bigger question here and that is whether or not
assimilation should occur at all. In the
case of French Canadian emigrants, they chose to move to a land where English
was the primary language. There is a
certain responsibility on their part to assimilate to the culture that they
chose to join, In the case of the
Rwandans, the French-speaking Belgians imposed themselves on their
culture. By the fact the Rwandans opt
for Kinyarwanda rather than French during this time of language transition, we
see that the Rwandans didn’t necessarily feel compelled to assimilate to the
culture of people who inserted themselves upon the Rwandan culture.
But, what about women? On the one
hand the hierarchy screams about how very ontologically different women are
from men. Yet, on the other hand, the
hierarchy seems to want women to assimilate to men’s culture by abandoning
their own language and experiences to adopt those of the men. Is this right or even possible?
If women ontologically differ from men, then trying to force male
voices and thoughts upon women commits one of these pesky “sins against nature”
that the hierarchy abhors. If women do
not differ ontologically from men, then excluding women from the priesthood is
unfounded.
Either women are different and hierarchical leaders owe the LCWR and Elizabeth Johnson not only an apology, they owe them their deep appreciation for letting these differences shine forth via their language of women…or women are not different and hierarchical leaders owe a deep apology and expression of gratitude as well as need to reinstate all the excommunicated female priests because they simply denuded a myth about men’s and women’s ontological differences.
There is a third scenario where the hierarchy both reinstates female priests and apologizes to the LCWR and Elizabeth Johnson which should occur if men’s and women’s differences serve to complement rather than impede clerical ministry. But right now, the hierarchy’s stance seems to just further undermine its credibility. Johnson succinctly expresses the real issue at hand, “In my judgment, and this is difficult to say, but I do believe such carelessness with the truth is unworthy of the teaching office of bishop.”
Either women are different and hierarchical leaders owe the LCWR and Elizabeth Johnson not only an apology, they owe them their deep appreciation for letting these differences shine forth via their language of women…or women are not different and hierarchical leaders owe a deep apology and expression of gratitude as well as need to reinstate all the excommunicated female priests because they simply denuded a myth about men’s and women’s ontological differences.
There is a third scenario where the hierarchy both reinstates female priests and apologizes to the LCWR and Elizabeth Johnson which should occur if men’s and women’s differences serve to complement rather than impede clerical ministry. But right now, the hierarchy’s stance seems to just further undermine its credibility. Johnson succinctly expresses the real issue at hand, “In my judgment, and this is difficult to say, but I do believe such carelessness with the truth is unworthy of the teaching office of bishop.”
