There is a saying a conscientious father quoted to me some years ago: “The greatest gift a father can give his children is to love their mother.”

And I would say, with regard to the Church: The greatest gift priests and members of the hierarchy can give to the People of God is to love and honor our women.

In my lifetime, I have known many priests who have loved and honored women, and it is they who have kept me from despair, especially during the last twenty years when clergy abuse of children left the hidden confines of rectories and chancery offices in favor of headlines in our nation's newspaper.

The question we women ask is: How did we move from salvation for all, love for all, to a Church where women have been set apart as inferior to men, and frequently treated with contempt, or worse?

Where did perverted, consecrated men of God acquire the notion that mothers' greatest treasures, their children, could become private possessions of clergy, to be used as pawns on a chess board for sexual pleasures?

. In his book, Sex, Priests, and Power, A.W. Richard Sipe presents us with the use of words that put down women, made them no-account to church men, and, in some instances, of no-account to themselves.

Even from St. John Chrysostom, writing in about 386, we hear: What else is a woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity. a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colours! (Jurgens, 1955, p.49)

Despite the real progress among many members of the hierarchy, in 1989, we find Cardinal Giaccomo Biffi, archbishop of Bologna, Italy, stating:

The splendor of the Immaculate Madonna allows us to see with biting clarity how great is the misfortune of our era, in which the prevailing image of women ....who even if externally refined is substantially squalid, who appears to detest virginity and maternity in equal measure; a woman who does not say to God, ‘Here I am, I am yours' but who cries, hysterically, ‘I belong to myself.'

Sipes goes on to tell us that the Vatican radio endorsed the message by pointing out that the cardinal's speech could provide an important opportunity for reflection on the role of woman in society and in the church.

The message has certainly caused thousands of women to reflect on their role in the Church, and they do not like what they see.

In a book giving voice to women around the world, Like Bread, Their Voices Rise! Sister Francis Bernard O'Connor, C.S.C., points out the terrible harm such hurtful words have done to women:

Women have for millennia participated in the process of their own subordination because they have been psychologically shaped so as to internalize the idea of their own inferiority. The unawareness of their own history of struggle and achievement has been one of the major means of keeping women subordinate.

( Gerda Lerner, The Creation of Patriarchy, New York: Oxford Universiy Press, 1986, p. 218)

Women have become angry over injustice done to them in God's name, and the anger is healthy. It is when it degenerates into deep depression and sadness that we find their hope turning to despair over any possibility of a future for them in the institutional Church.

I hope I am wrong, but I suspect that this may be why I have found a reluctance on the part of some women to read Vows of Silence by Jason Berry and Gerald Renner. They don't want to hear any more about the abuse of children by clergy. In self-defense, they have psychologically distanced themselves from the Church, traveling as far from the center as they can get, while remaining on the edge, as though hoping against hope for meaningful change. Some have gone so far as to form house churches, conducting their own liturgies, away from reminders of a Church they had once so loved, and now find a matter of heartbreaking consternation, (taking their checkbooks with them).

This is understandable, and in a number of cases, absolutely necessary for those who are emotionally and spiritually vulnerable, but we women who are able, cannot, must not, abandon our God-given task to be part of the change that is going on at the grassroots level. Our sisters need us. Our children need us. Our brother priests need us. We need one another. Now is not the time to remain on the sidelines when God gives us the grace, at least to be a presence in the midst of unspeakable suffering, to witness a modern Calvary most of us would never have imagined.

In his excellent book, Sacred Silence, Father Donald Cozzens tells about sitting in the living room of a suburban Cleveland home and listening to Medical Missionary of Mary, Sister Maura O'Donohue, a medical doctor, describe the rape of religious sisters by priests and bishops in Africa., whom she met on her travels as the AIDS coordinator for the Catholic Fund for Overseas Development, based in England.

The Sisters told her that numerous priests and bishops, fearful of contracting the AIDS virus from women of the cities and villages, turned to religious sisters as safe outlets for their sexual desires, while, apparently, faithful to their vow of celibacy.

I often wonder with what mental and spiritual gymnastics such priests and bishops preach homilies, offer Mass, hear confessions, and collect salaries, made possible by the sacrifices of little people throughout the world. And I also wonder about the revulsion with which Sisters attend their Masses and listen to their homilies. I cannot imagine their going to confession to the predators. Nor can I understand why Mothers General don't just yank their Sisters out of such dens of iniquity.

In meeting with Cardinal Eduardo Martinez, prefect of the Congregation for Religious and Secular Institutes, February 1995, O'Donohue proposed the appointment of an Apostolic Visitator to investigate the issues, believing that: Such a visitation on a low key basis would give enormous encouragement to local religious who have pleaded with us to bring these matters directly to the attention of the Holy See. It would be seen as a potent sign of pre-occupation and solicitous care for those same religious.

Can you believe the tone of civility in O'Donohue's desire to proceed on a “low-key basis” when religious women are being raped? Is this not lunacy? What are the bishops thinking of? The Curia? Why has not Cardinal Ratzinger acted? Where are the Knights of Columbus? The Knights of Malta? Ordinary Catholic men in the pews?

In November 1998, Sister Marie McDonald, of the Missionaries of Our Lady of Africa, presented a paper titled, “The Problem of the Sexual Abuse of African Religious in Africa and Rome,” to the Council of 16 delegates from the Union of Superiors General, an association representing men's religious communities based in Rome. Six years later, the rapes continue.

An editorial in The Tablet told of a mother general in Malawi, who was publicly removed from her post after she reported to her archbishop that 29 nuns in her community had been made pregnant by priests, a fact that was well documented.

Is there no group of men willing to stand up to this abuse of women? Is there no perversion low enough to gain the concerted attention and action of those who call themselves the shepherds of the Church in the very heart of Christendom?

This, my friends, is our road to Calvary, 2004. We can ignore it. We can walk around it, avoid the stones, the blood, the screams of the abused women and children, and seek out paths with spring flowers, and Gregorian Chant in the background. But the Christ won't be among the violets or the chant. He will be with those suffering, from whatever source, and if Lent has meant anything, that is where we shall be, as well.

Let us walk with one another from Palm Sunday through Calvary's pain and sorrow, knowing with certitude that Easter will arrive to point the way to a holier Church of tomorrow, one that will die to sinfulness and rise to Resurrection's grace.

Home

Archives