Women Ordained: a Dance of Resistance, by Sharon Henderson Callahan, EdD

Women Ordained:

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BY SHARON HENDERSON CALLAHAN, EDD

have walked my dog along Alki Beach most days this summer. We’ve seen some very low tides and some special high tides as the ebb and flow of water reaches our shore. The tides remind me of a faith dance attributed to Slovakian celebrations of Holy Week. The movement is slow starting with three steps forward followed by two steps back. The increased number of forward steps symbolizes the inevitable movement toward something, in spite of the equally predictable setbacks. The words that accompany this dance, teach me and sustain me as I ponder the state of women in the United States, the world, and the Catholic Church. As we move forward, we progress in faith, hope, and love. Pain and suffering cause retreat. Note how the resurrection-related actions— faith, hope, and love—require our belief and practice, while the movement backwards is action imposed on us, often through no fault of our own. Just as ebb and flow of the tide relentlessly changes the topography of the earth, so does the dance slowly promise change toward the new life of resurrection. As a teacher and coach for organizational and ministerial change, I find these insights guide my ongoing practices of work, celebration and lament.

Faith

Photo © Dan Grinwis, unsplash

Faith Love Hope Pain Sufferng

a Dance of Resistance

The Christian Church lived this ebb and flow in relation to women in leadership for the 56 years since the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965). Theologians of several Christian ecclesial traditions consider Vatican II as the most important theological event of the 20th century. It gathered over 2,500 bishops from every part of the world and offered a visual sign of the expansiveness of the Christian tradition. Saint Pope John XXIII exhorted theologians, bishops, priests, observers, and laity to study the Christian tradition and to come together so they could live the Gospel in the post-world war era. In his own encyclical, Pacem in Terris (1963), he envisioned a world of peace and justice rooted in a renewed Catholic Christian tradition. He recognized that “women are becoming ever more conscious of their human dignity; they will not tolerate being treated as mere material instruments, but demand rights befitting a person both in domestic and public life.” Nevertheless, only twenty-five women participated as observers during the last two sessions.

One woman from the United States, Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, SL assisted other women as together they strategized how to influence the bishops during coffee breaks, meals, and other times of potential relaxed interaction. Their influence testified that a new dawn was rising.

Hope Indeed, women religious reacted immediately to the call to revitalize their communities and their ministries. Fully embodying the two words Saint Pope John XXIII used to describe the moment, these women religious communities sought to open their orders to the work of the Spirit (aggiornamento) 1 and their people to the work of Tradition (ressourcement) .

Within a few years, most vowed religious communities were sending sisters for theological education. The aggiornamento led to new ideas about how vowed religious might adapt to a changing world. Ressourcement grounded these women in deep theological reflection on scripture texts and sparked eventual expertise in interpreting ancient texts. Quickly, these leaders facilitated a lay movement that invited and supported lay ecclesial ministries throughout the parishes, schools, hospitals, and social justice organizations identified as Roman Catholic. Even the Pontifical Biblical Commission appointed scripture scholars such as Sandra Schneiders and Elizabeth Schussler-Fiorenza to examine the possibility of full ecclesial leadership for women in the Catholic Church.

Pain

A new hope for women joining in ordained ministry spread.

By 1971 people across Western European and North American dioceses called for ordination of women (aggiornamento).

They were encouraged by other Christian ecclesial communities who embraced the practice. The permanent diaconate was reintroduced and men flocked to answer the opportunity to serve.

Their wives accompanied most of them as together they were educated, spiritually enriched, and assigned to diaconal service of the community. At the altar the women were denied the sacrament their husbands readily received.

Suffering Sr. Mary Luke Tobin, SL stated in 1992 that the concept of women’s full equality with men had still not been fully realized.

At the time, the U.S. bishops attempted to write a document on women. After four attempts that were each critiqued for their lack of understanding, the bishops tabled the attempt and it has not returned to the forefront of conversation since. In Inter Insigniores (1974) Pope Paul VI left the window slightly open, so by 1980 over 800 articles, chapters and books appeared supporting women’s ordination. The hope for movement was so profound that by 1994, Saint Pope John Paul II attempted to permanently close the door on the discussion through his apostolic letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis.

Faith The years 1960 through 1990 also saw the second women’s rights movements, the progression of ordaining women to 1

Aggiornamento, meaning “bringing up to date,” and Ressourcement, referring to “renewal” and “revival” were two key terms of the Second Vatican Council of bishops and clergy in attendance.

leadership in other Christian traditions which culminated in the 1992 Beijing women’s convocation. From 1970, other ecclesial communities ordained women to both diaconate and presbyteral ministries. Since 1966, the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA), a research service at Georgetown University, tracked the growth of ministries. Prior to 1966 no lay ministers appear on CARA-generated charts of people fulfilling roles of ecclesial leadership. By 2020, however, almost 40,000 lay ecclesial ministers served in almost every one of the 17,000 parishes and missions in the United States. Defined as paid lay people who work at least 20 hours a week in the parish, they do not include those who teach or administrate in schools, hospitals, or social justice organizations. From the beginning, women have overwhelmingly dominated these positions as lay ministers, comprising between 70–80 percent of the lay ministers recorded since 1966, and this number is more than double the number of active diocesan priests serving parish communities.

Love In the 1990s, Ludmila Javarova revealed she had been ordained a priest under the Communist oppression in former Czechoslovakia. She served for almost 20 years, celebrating daily Mass and ministering to other priests as well as women incarcerated by the Communists. Each day she risked her life in the face of death. Moreover, in 2002 seven women chanced excommunication by accepting ordination at the hands of three bishops on the Danube River. Shortly after, two were ordained bishops. Since then, over 350 women have entered ordained ministry with apostolic succession in the Roman Catholic Church. They serve communities throughout the world including Western Europe, South Africa, Colombia, Canada, Great Britain and the United States. They claim theological and biblical ressourcement through major recognized scholars such as Iris Müeller and Ida Raming who have influenced most contemporary theologies related to women and their equality to men as images of God (Gn 1:27).

Hope The biblical commission appointed by Pope Francis submitted yet another document arguing that women had been ordained deacons in the early church, finding no obstacle to ordaining them now. This was held for almost two years until yet another commission was appointed to examine the theologies and traditions related to women deacons. Major scholars (Schneiders, Schussler-Fiorenza, Macy, Osiek, Zagano) offer scriptural, theological, and traditional evidence that demonstrates ordination in the early church through the 1200s. For instance, St. Thérèse of Lisieux revealed that she wanted to be a priest and thought she would die by the age of 24 because the Church forbade female priests. She did die at 24, and she is a Doctor of the Church.

As shown so far, the story is one of ebb and flow. The dance of faith, hope, and love is troubled by pain and suffering. It is the story of our individual experiences as well as our organizational lives. While we move toward a goal of theological reflection A M AT T E R O F S P I R IT

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on the inclusion of all people as the “people of God,” we often celebrate those achievements that match our hope and faith while suffering disillusionment in the process of meeting resistance. As a leadership coach, I counsel people to note the level of resistance, as it often lets a movement know how successful the outcome might be. As Donna Markham, OP, wrote in Spiritlinking Leadership, great resistance to a change signals the inevitability of that change. Thus, the great resistance of the early 21st century signals major efforts to change are moving us toward a reworked landscape. The pain and suffering is quite overwhelming at times. A few examples demonstrate.

“Little is said or done to acknowledge the deep sin of pedophilia and sexual abuse of women, from individual acts of abuse to the abuse of the people of God by the organizational hierarchy of which all clergy are part.”

In 2002, Boston exploded and the pedophilia scandal caused the replacement of Cardinal Law, closure of many churches, creation of a lay movement for reform, and new rules within the conference of bishops for handling the placement of accused priests.

Even though this scandal has reached every continent and most countries, the universal church remains tone deaf to the depth of anguish the priests who committed these heinous crimes caused.

It also ignores the immense anguish the hierarchy inflicts as it continues to hide, support, and defend accused priests. The lack of universal rituals of lament followed by sincere sacramental reconciliation liturgies exacerbates the agony. Moreover, theologians, politicians and women are readily excommunicated for beliefs, yet no priest has been excommunicated for the incalculable harm to children, their parents, grandparents, siblings and friends. Little is said or done to acknowledge the deep injustice of pedophilia and sexual abuse of women, from individual acts of abuse to the abuse of the people of God by the organizational hierarchy of which all clergy are part.

As late as 2005, only 3 percent of all major Christian congregations in the United States were led by a female pastor. As late as 2020, doctoral studies demonstrated continual lag in employment, pay, health, and retirement for ordained women in most Christian ecclesial communities that allow women to be ordained. In 2010, Pope Benedict XVI listed the attempt to ordain women as one of the graver derelicts or offenses similar to pedophilia, apostasy, heresy, and schism. Ten years later, the bishops who met prior to the Amazonia conference in 2020 declared that they would consider every type of response to their priest shortage except that of ordaining women.

ordaining women to the diaconate in the early tradition of the church. Rather than move forward, that commission was disbanded and a new one appointed to study again. In the past, this movement has replaced the movement forward (1970s, birth control, women’s ordination) with rejection and return to misogynistic theologies that demonstrate misogyny as a theological principle (1970s, birth control, women’s ordination; 1994 women’s ordination; 2018-2022 women’s ordination).

Faith Still, voices call for reform (aggiornamento) and trust in the Spirit. Using feminine names for G-d scripture scholars and others pray to Ruah, Sophia, Wisdom, Spirit to renew the church. Organizations such as Called to Action, FutureChurch, Women’s Ordination Conference, Voice of the Faithful, and others educate people in the deepest traditions of our faith.

Graduate students in ministry and theology at most Roman Catholic colleges and universities explore the scriptures and ancient texts of the early Christian mothers and fathers. A groundswell of podcasts, zoom presentations and websites educate the people of God in our pilgrim church.

Hope

Pain and Suffering

While all of this works its way out in the ongoing ebb and flow dance of aggiornamento and ressourcement followed by resistance to change, many allies move the dance forward in faith, hope, and love. Several bishops, male priests and married men support the research and the prophetic stance of women and men who urge the church to speak out about women taking their rightful place as images of God. Breaking with traditional theology that cast women (and people not Western European) as 75 percent of what it is to be male, Karl Rahner wrote, “Every human being is an event of the absolute, free, radical self-communication of God.” Working ecumenically, Saint Pope John XXIII envisioned a new church. He reinstated theologians who had been suppressed by his predecessors. He embraced theologians who would lead Catholics into conversation with the world as it exists. Under his leadership, scripture study blossomed and Catholic scholars emerged. These scholars supported and offered renewed understanding of ancient texts, thus undergirding the ressourcement John XXIII envisioned. Pope Francis recently reaffirmed Vatican II as the teaching of the church. He clarified that to be truly Catholic one must embrace the teachings of Vatican II. And Vatican II expressed the very tension the church found in our ebb and flow process.

Recently in Fratelli Tutti, Pope Frances urges us to love each other and the universe we share. Jesus names God as love. As we keep faith and hope in the midst of pain and suffering, we look to each other and to God for love. Love is the antidote to pain and suffering. It is the response that moves us to resurrection.

And still a third commission submitted a report to Pope Francis three years ago categorically proving the precedents of

Sharon Henderson Callahan, EdD, is the Professor Emerita at Seattle University School of Theology and Ministry.

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