Matters of Church and State

HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL

          The opening two days of the Democratic Convention went extremely well, with bravo performances by First Lady Michelle Obama on Tuesday and President Clinton on Wednesday.

Still, it struck me as sad and ironic that here we are in 2012, not 1912, where a major political party has to spend the opening day of its convention reassuring women, who comprise 51 percent of the electorate, that they count and that they should be equal to men. Of course, it was necessary to raise the issue to underscore the sharp contrast between the Democrats and the GOP on women's issues.  For some reason, though, this political women's issue made my mind drift from U.S. politics to reflecting on the status and role of women in society, particularly in organized religion, specifically Catholicism and Islam, and how much more needs to be done to ensure women's equal rights. 

 Let’s start with my own beloved Catholic Church, and I don’t use the term “beloved” cynically.  Sadly, women are officially not equal in our church.  There’s no way to sugarcoat that reality; the Vatican from time immemorial has not regarded women as equal to men.  Period.  Cardinal Carlo Martina, recently deceased Archbishop of Milan, said in his final interview before his death that “the Church is 200 years behind.”  With respect to women’s place in the Church, I would submit that is a modest estimate.

          By the way, Martini was not a renegade prelate on the brink of excommunication.  He was once considered a strong candidate to become Pope and, according to the BBC, he “commanded great respect from both Pope John Paul II and his successor Pope Benedict XVI.”  He just enunciated what most of us Catholics have felt for a long time.  So, it was encouraging to hear his message.  Long-time friend Dave Schultenover, a Jesuit priest, writes:  “Somewhere in all this I do believe that the Holy Spirit is preparing the Church for a conversion that gets us out of Medievalism … into the 21st century.”

Happily, there are other hopeful stirrings of change in the Church and U.S. Catholic nuns are leading the effort.  The fact that Sister Simone Campbell, “one of the Nuns on the Bus,” was a speaker at the Democratic National Convention was tremendously heartening.  Just the fact that she was there was huge.  And, of course, even better that she used the podium to denounce the Romney/Ryan budget plan because of its harmful impact on the poor and the disadvantaged.  But, that is only part of the story.

This is the same Sister Simone Campbell who earlier this year organized a nine-state bus tour to highlight the important service that nuns provide in poor communities across the country.  While the tour was used to critique the Ryan plan, it also was a brilliant response to the Vatican smack down of nuns earlier in the year.  In April, the Vatican sharply criticized the nuns for challenging church teaching on homosexuality and the male-only priesthood, and promoting “radical feminist themes incompatible with the Catholic faith.” 

Instead of bowing and scraping and retreating to the chapel to pray privately for these misguided Vatican apparatchiks, they let it be known publicly that enough was enough and that they were not going to back down.  Later, a major nuns’ organization underscored that message when it announced it was ready to sit down with Vatican representatives to discuss the charges, but made it clear that it wasn’t willing to compromise the nuns’ mission of serving the least among us.  It was a brilliant stroke.   Game on.

Before any Catholics get giddy with the prospect of fundamental change, however, they must remember that change in the Catholic Church usually moves at a glacial pace.  Still those of us old enough still remember the sudden impact that “the interim pope,” Pope John XXIII, had on the Church in the 1960’s and the difference that made in our lives to this day.

Likewise in Islam, women are leading the effort to provide equal rights for Muslim women and that is even a much steeper climb than it is for Catholic women.  Still, when you read a book like Isobel Coleman’s “PARADISE BENEATH HER FEET: How Women are Transforming the Middle East,” it gives one heart.  Women are working in communities in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, to create educational and economic opportunities for women, write Coleman.

Like nuns in Catholicism, Muslim women are going about promoting change smartly – not by burning their hijabs or aping the ways of Western women.  In the process of improving women’s education, they are delivering the message that women’s subservience is not the result of the Prophet Mohammed’s teaching, but the result of ignorant patriarchy and tribalism.  And they are making inroads, even among some men.

That said, patriarchy and tribalism -- whether in Islam or Catholicism or in politics -- are strong, entrenched forces that die slowly and not without a fight. Still, there are stirrings of hope, and hope, as the saying goes, springs eternal.

Gerald E. Lavey