Borderlands

Victoria Rue, Ph.D., R.C. Womanpriest

Text of keynote speech given at the "Conversation and Celebration of Women Called" event hosted by Women's Ordination Conference

Santa Barbara , La Casa de Maria, February 18, 2006

I thank the Board of WOC for inviting me to speak today. And a particular thank you to Sr. Theresa Harpin, a visionary religious leader, who forged this inspiring day.

How appropriate that we speak of radical renewal in the RCC at La Casa de Maria! The Immaculate Heart Community is a model of faith-filled women and men. Despite the bullying of the Cardinal of Los Angeles and the Vatican, they held to a constant vision of Spirit-filled renewal inspired by the Second Vatican Council. Anita Caspary says in her book, Witness to Integrity:

"The Immaculate Heart story is not simply a matter of the pitting of ecclesiastical might against a small band of dedicated women. At the heart of the controversy the real protagonist might well have been the unchanging male hierarchical system, and the antagonists, the female agents of change, who are viewed as inevitably destructive of that system." (Caspary, Anita. Witness to Integrity, preface)

Some 40 years later, we here today know that the diverse approaches to women’s ministry are symbolic of a renewing church. And of course this is not without controversy. Some women request communities to ordain them as priests, others eschew priesthood as too hierarchical. Thus, some women are commissioned by a whole community, others ordained by bishops, still others experience a blend of both. This is the way the Spirit is at work renewing us—in profusion, in multiplicity.

What of my own story? How did the Spirit lead me to be a womanpriest? I place my story as one piece of a stained glass window. This window has many shapes and sizes of colored glass through which light illuminates an image-- the myriad journeys of women across our world who are offering new ways to minister.

I am the oldest of 8 children—yes, a “good” Catholic family. Do you all remember Necco wafers? They are multiple colors of round sugary wafers.

They happen to look a lot like hosts. So on the steps of our house in Downey, at the ripe age of 6 or 7, I would invite other children of the neighborhood to kneel on the steps of our front porch and---yes, you guessed it, I placed the sugary wafers on their little tongues! So I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Necco wafers!

Skipping ahead a few years, in the late 60’s I entered the convent to consecrate my life to God in a teaching order—the Sisters of the Holy Names. I left the order a year later knowing this was not my call. In many ways, being a womanpriest is a return to living this consecrated life.

When I left the convent, I left the church. The theatre became my church. The women’s movement my congregation. For 25 years I wrote and directed theatre in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Theatre is transformative. It is a rehearsal --for change, for how we would like to see our world.

In the early eighties, with other theatre artists I traveled to Nicaragua to explore how theatre was being used in literacy. Quite by accident, I witnessed the power of a Catholic base community. This congregation understood prayer as action—creating clean drinking water was prayer, creating street lights in the village was prayer. I saw for the first time in my life, the Catholic Church involved in the work of social justice. That vision led me to theological studies in l985. I studied feminist and liberation theologies at Union Theological Seminary in NYC with Dorothee Soelle, Beverly Harrison, and James Cone.

Just before receiving my M.Div. in l988, I was asked to con-celebrate a Eucharist on the sidewalks of NYC. It was a cold January day standing on the sidewalk across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral. A cloth covered board was held at each end for an altar. There were some 300 people spilling out onto 5th avenue. As gay and lesbian people and many others who supported us, we gathered to say “we are church” to Cardinal Ratzinger’s now infamous “Halloween Letter.” That letter stated that homosexuality is “an intrinsic moral disorder.” But we understood the Eucharist to be a liberative act…God’s table where everyone is welcome. And so standing beside me in the cold was an out gay priest, in an alb and chasuble with many sweaters underneath. I stood next to him dressed the same way. Shoulder to shoulder we con-celebrated the Eucharist. Someone sent me a photograph of that moment. For years I would look at that picture and know-- that was my ordination. Con-celebrating that Mass with an out gay priest was my first ordination. I was called out by that community.

You know, coming out as a womanpriest is a lot like my experience of coming out as a lesbian. I’m proud of both and both are subject to being trivialized or misunderstood. So it was ironic and humbling that a Muslim woman student was assigned to interview me for the university paper at San Jose State where I teach Women’s Studies and Religious Studies. I feared that she would have a bias against me, perhaps thinking I was a renegade religious person. And I feared that might affect the article.

You never know who your allies are . As a Muslim and a Roman Catholic, we were women of faith, we also shared a sense of being misunderstood.

When Faridah’s article came out, so did I. It was even, balanced, and most respectful. But I had no idea that they would put it on the front page, with a picture! Without exception, my classes were curious and later, with more conversation about it, even enthusiastic. And so last semester was a series of conversations, because no matter where I went in the university I heard-- “Are you the….? Congratulations, Victoria. And, what does it mean to you to be a womanpriest?” Each conversation, with students, with faculty and staff was and continues to be an opportunity for me to reflect on what it means to be a womanpriest.

If others outside the Catholic Church are curious or misunderstand womenpriests, then advocates for women’s ordination, my own community, sometimes treat it with ambivalence and even hostility.

Some Catholic women allies, upon hearing of my ordination, say to me, “why are you joining a hierarchy, a club? Why are you setting yourself apart from everyone else--we are all priests by our baptism. Why do you ‘buy into’ biologistic theology—believing in the ‘magic hands”’ of a bishop? The tradition of ordination and priesthood are corrupt patriarchal symbols---women should not use them. Why don’t you just leave the RCC and start your own church?” These are all good critiques of women joining the RC institution of priesthood.

But for me I kept hearing the call. You know, there is another model of priesthood that emerged at the turn of the 20th century with the onslaught of industrialization. Worker priests. They labored alongside other workers in factories, their presence a sign of God’s compassion and the church’s commitment to social justice. As a womanpriest, I too walk alongside others in their daily lives a s a teacher, a theatre artist, and celebrating the Eucharist with students.

I deeply believe that as women we are being led to this moment by the Holy. This moment, this intersticies---is a time in which the priesthood and the church stand revealed in their brokenness, they stand revealed in their dire need of reformation. And therefore this is a time of re-imagining from within our church. The papacy of Cardinal Ratzinger, Pope Benedict, reveals the patriarchy as being very much in place. And so it appears to some that I am joining this patriarchal institution-- as it is. Yes there is a “shadow” side to my journey.

But at the very same time, I also live and work from the margins of the institutional Catholic Church—and I like it out here on the margins. There’s more room. More possibility. And there are a WHOLE LOT OF US out here on the margins!! The church I love, the church of Jesus, the liberation church, the dignity church, small faith communities where women and men create their own liturgies. The Spirit is working in our church today from the margins. Those who are divorced, gay and lesbian, homeless, unemployed, estranged from the church or abused by it, women and men who are progressive and who long for a liberating church! Young women, older women, women in religious communities, across the spectrum of shapes and sizes and colors who are not allowed to exercise their leadership. There are a whole lot of us out here. Some times I think the margin is larger than the center!

Someone who knew a lot about living on the margins, was the poet and Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldua. Gloria often wrote of living in the borderlands/la frontera. She says:

"To live in the borderlands means you

Are neither hispana India negra Espanola

Ni gabacha, eres mestiza, mulata, half-breed

Caught in the crossfire between camps…

To survive the Borderlands

You must live sin fronteras (without borders)

Be a crossroads." (Anzaldua, Gloria. Borderlands/La Frontera. 194)

Living on the margins of the institutional RCC, we women must be crossroads. Mindful that we carry on our backs the past, present and future of women’s lives in our church. Intersecting through us are the voices that suffer, the injustices that cry for recognition and healing, the silences that have been imposed, the borders set up keeping some in and others out.

As women who are surviving the borderlands, living on the margins, women are forging different kinds of leadership. For my part, I am discovering what it means to be a womanpriest --who doesn’t have a parish or any traditional ministry—we make it up as we go along. Let me share a story.

I was teaching a course in Western Religious Traditions last semester. It focuses on Judaism, Islam and Christianity. One day, a woman student who identified herself as a “Catholic Christian,” was due to make a presentation on the traditions that surround Holy Thursday. I noticed as she was setting up that she took out a large bottle of grape juice and an equally large box of matza crackers. I thought to myself, oh no! she’s not going to do the Eucharist right here in the classroom of a state university!! — uh, oh. But as she went on in the presentation, the clock also went on, and she ran out of time. “Oh well,” she said, ”maybe you can use it,” and left me with the grape juice and matza. Fifteen minutes later, my next class started in the same classroom. The grape juice and matza continued to sit on my desk.

The class was a Women’s Studies course called Women of Color in the U.S. In the four times I’ve taught the course, I always begin it with “what’s a white girl like me doing teaching this class?” Knowing smiles, but then I share with them that the course is also about building alliances--- as a lesbian in the USA and a Roman Catholic, I too know what prejudice is about.

Just as the students were leaving the class, a Latina student named Teresa arrived. She was out of breath. Teresa is always a revelation to me. She was physically abused in her marriage and last year courageously left that marriage and has since then discovered the empowerment of being a student activist for La Raza. On this day, Teresa comes up to me and says “I’m sorry I missed class today Professor. I had something important I had to do.” Are you OK? I asked. “Oh yeah. I’m just a little light headed. I was at the blood bank giving blood.” Teresa, sit down, I said. She went on, “They needed to know what blood type I am because I’m going to give bone marrow to somebody who needs it.” Bone marrow? Teresa! “Yeah, I read about this guy needing a donor and so I signed up, but I’m sorry I had to miss class.” Then I remembered the grape juice and the matza crackers on my desk. As I poured cups of grape juice, and offered the matza, they were hungrily eaten. I looked at Teresa-- I knew very well that this young woman, giving of the marrow of her life for another’s life WAS the body and blood of Christ---and this was a Eucharist.

Afterwards, students arrived during my office hour. So no time for lunch. But I did have the grape juice and matza. Then on to my third class--

Women’s Studies 101 with juice and matza in hand. “Well dear class, a student brought this food this morning for a presentation she gave on the Roman Catholic Eucharist---so, I offer it to all of you now --- like me, you might need some sustenance!” There was a hesitation, but then we gathered around the desk, and shared the food. And so, for the third time that day, we celebrated a Eucharist of sustenance at San Jose State University.

The Spirit was at work. Using up everything to make Itself known.

I just had to see It and urge It along.

Or think about it this way. Here’s a so-called illegitimate priest creating a so-called illegitimate eucharist. And don’t double negatives create a positive? And that’s where the Spirit shows up!! And that’s when the people get fed.

There are a lot of people who have served God anonymously, like my student Teresa, who have not been recognized, or who have served anonymous Eucharists, who have not been able to be out in their leadership, but who have made the difference in our lives and our communities and in our churches. Would you, right now, call out their names?

(-------------------)

Our point here is making the invisible real and seen. The names you’ve spoken are prophets, they arise from communities, they embrace the margins, they transform what we see and how we act in the world. Now I want to recognize everyone here as a leader as well. Like Moses said, “Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets!” (Numbers 11: 29) So call out your own names now.

Prophets!!!

Prophets call the church to the Not Yet. If laws are unjust, we must break them. Our African American sisters and brothers in the civil rights movement have taught us this. And so faith communities, house churches and yes women bishops are ordaining women, are commissioning women, because they know that in order to cause justice, we must enact it.

The movement of women’s ordination has many streams within it. The stream that I am swimming in is called Roman Catholic Womenpriests (we have a website! www.romancatholicwomenpriests.org) The 9 women ordained last summer on the St. Lawrence as womenpriests and womendeacons, along with the 12 that will be ordained this summer on a boat in Pittsburgh, another 5 who will be ordained on Lake Constance in Switzerland in June are all considered “contra legem”—against the law, against Canon Law 1024.

As outlaws, as womenpriests, we claim the validity of our ordinations because we are ordained by womenbishops who were ordained by male bishops who are in good standing with Rome, and that is how the tradition works—but also in the eyes of the tradition, we are “illicit” because we are breaking the law—Canon Law.

What we are really doing is following “prophetic obedience.” As one of our womanbishops, Patricia Fresen, has said:

"The word obedience comes from the Latin ob-audire, to listen attentively: to myself, to the signs of the times, and listening with others for the Spirit, who we believe is always moving and awakening (yes, calling) us to new levels of awareness. As Isaiah says so often: Listen to me, pay attention and your soul will live." (Is. 55:3).

We arise from communities!!

We all come from several communities. In your own life you could name them. Your work community that you might have a ministry in, neighborhood communities, cyberspace communities. I come from several communities--the house church that I serve, the students that I teach, and at the end of the month I’ll begin celebrating a weekly Eucharist with students at my university –so I will serve a student community; I serve my brothers and sisters in the lesbian and gay community. And the growing community of R.C. Womenpriests. So I come from several communities. All of us do.

And it is our communities, who call us forward, send us forth, and to whom we are accountable.

In July of 2004 and 2005, I attended two CLOUT national conferences—Christian Lesbians Out Together. These conferences took place days before I was ordained on the Danube, and the next year on the St. Lawrence Seaway. CLOUT is a gathering of Protestant lesbians-- some ordained, some who had done everything possible to be ordained in their denominations but their churches still rejected them. These women, God’s anawim, called me into the center of a circle, stood around me. Rings of women laid their hands on me, called my name, invoked the Spirit. They gave me a purple stole and the blessings of lesbian communities across the country. As womenpriests, we are called out by the grassroots, by our sisters and brothers on the margins. And so we must consciously water those roots.

The RCWP community that I am a part of is on both sides of the Atlantic. There are presently 120 women globally in our community. In the USA alone there are 80. Right now, we are learning how to build community amongst us--across the Atlantic and across North America. We want to be accountable to the people we serve and to each other.

Priests must also reflect the people they serve. Womenpriests are married, single, domestic partners, some have children, and grandchildren, others are celibate by choice. Some are divorced. Some remarried.

Our communities are our families, our friends, those who hear of us, argue with us, support us and begin to gather with us. Let me share with you some of the ministries of our Roman Catholic womenpriests and deacons: we are chaplains in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices, we offer retreats, spiritual guidance, we facilitate house churches. Some of us are therapists offering healing to confusion or brokenness. Some start public worship communities—new Catholic communities. Some celebrate the sacraments weekly, some monthly. Some of us are teachers at universities and high schools and find in our teaching our ministry. Some are artists and create with their hands or theatre artists and create plays that open new landscapes of the Spirit. Some of us are not able to be public about our ministries because we may lose our jobs if we are. But wherever we are, we are worker priests—we work for a living and walk along side the lives and needs of the communities that we serve. We arise from our communities.

As women and men, we are called to renew our church, as (1) prophets, (2) we arise from communities, (3) We transform what we see and how we act in the world!!

A feminist approach to theology and ritual understands our bodies as the site of the Holy. Historically, Catholic theology and sacraments privilege the spirit over the body. This false dualism lies at the heart of the patriarchal church’s misogyny, for it has traditionally aligned women with the body and men with the spirit. If I was to imagine the Vatican’s worst nightmare, I think it would be a pregnant womanpriest at the altar. In one magnificent image, we would see a woman’s body creating life and celebrating life! What a wonderful nightmare! And at the same time, women’s bodies are sometimes sites of struggle or painful memories. Genevieve, a French woman ordained with me on the Danube, who is now priest, stood beside me struggling with cancer, losing her hair, offering us the image of the suffering Christ.

Earlier I spoke of that cold day in New York, standing on the sidewalk, shoulder to shoulder with an out gay priest. For that Eucharist, I put on the robes, the costume. I performed the role of the priest. It was an act of justice. Enacting the priest, and through the power of the community that was calling me forward, I became the priest. I call this “performative resistance.” Performative—which means speech that makes a promise. The words of the Mass and the actions of a priest, made the promise to be priest.

Performative resistance means that as womenpriests we embrace an important symbol in Roman Catholicism--the role of priest-- and we use this symbol to enact a justice-seeking church in theology and rituals. By simply being womenpriests, we deconstruct the pathology of a male priesthood, its myths, its exclusivity, its misogyny. We aspire to create the fresh air of shared power, no more the elitism of clerics over lay people. Later today we will celebrate a Eucharist together. We will all be aware that the very presence of a womanpriest, let alone a lesbian womanpriest, gets under the skin of the ritual and works to open it, and transform it. We work from inside the tradition to change it, renew it, re-imagine it.

I believe we are all called to performative resistance in our communities, through word and action, promising to resist an imperial church and instead throwing our energies into creating a liberative church, the church that Jesus calls us to.

We are called to be women and men in a renewed church, as (1) prophets, (2) we arise from communities, (3) we transform what we see and how we act in the world, and (4) we embrace the margins.

What do we mean when we say a more inclusive church? In San Diego, this past Advent, Jane Via, a womandeacon of RCWP began her own New Catholic Community. Here is what she says about its purpose:

"Our purpose is to reach out to Catholics who feel disenfranchised: driven-away Catholics, fallen-away Catholics, divorced and remarried Catholics, lesbian, gay, and transgendered/transexual Catholics and progressive Catholics who no longer have a parish in which to worship with a true sense of belonging or personal and spiritual integrity."

How many of you know just one marginalized Catholic? Left out Catholic? Recovering Catholic? Six? A dozen? Yes, I think the margin is larger than the center!!

To return to Gloria Anzaldua, these margins are borderlands. And to thrive on the borders, we all must become crossroads. The patriarchy isolates, lays down boundaries that demarcate clergy from lay people, some wear red shoes while others wear sandals. But at the crossroads there are many colors and shapes. At the crossroads all faiths can meet.

Imbedded as we all are in patriarchal religions, women of different faiths, must find faith in one another. And faith will change us, turn us around, soften our hearts.

As women of faith let us link arms with Protestant women ministers who have gone before us, with women rabbis, women swamis, with Buddhist nuns and monks. Let us link arms with our Muslim sisters, and our Native American sisters who are and always have been wisdom filled elders of their tribes.

One such woman who has lived on the margins is Bev Souliere, an Algonquin. She led our ordinations last July with a drum blessing. Recently she wrote to me:

"I left the Catholic Church after hearing Leviticus read from the pulpit. It was like being assaulted, only a spiritual wound. No one could see it, but I can't believe how much it hurt.....for years. How can one become a productive member of society while believing they are an abomination in the eyes of God? Tell your conference that the ordination boat changed my life profoundly.

"I would have given anything to see the look on my face when Kathryn told me that you were her lover. I remember grabbing my chest and holding my breath.

"The day after the ordination boat, I was crying, driving into work. I came to a red light, and with tears streaming down  my face I looked up and asked... “What is it you want me to do?” I looked left to see a very large red sign that said, “Do It In Church!” When I got to work, I googled “Churches that welcome gays in Ottawa” and with fingers crossed and chanting “please be a Catholic church, Please be a Catholic church” Up came.... A whole list of Anglican churches.  So until the Catholics welcome me back....I’m with the Anglicans... waiting."

Bev survives the borderlands, by being a crossroads.

But let us realize that our visions for a renewed church are at risk. It is a risk for example that my community of Roman Catholic Womenpriests uses the traditional symbols of womenbishops, womenpriests and womendeacons. On the one hand, we work for the equality of women and men in the church. And on the other hand, in our reform movement, we must not replicate the authoritarian structures of the Vatican. Often when those who have been marginalized for so long begin to create their own structures, they duplicate the oppression and the brokenness that they have known. We are all culturally constructed. Can we use the masters tools to dismantle the master’s house? as Audre Lorde asked. Yes I think we can. But consciousness and democratic structures are the key. The methods that we use, the structures that we create in renewing our church must be constantly scrutinized by this question—are we being transparent and accountable to God’s people?

The grassroots knows that the church needs reforming—we the people know that the church needs renewal, on every level. Womenpriests are one step in the changes that need to take place. And the need for changes are legion--- as John the XXIII said---we need to open wide the windows.” a new inclusivity---transform the hierarchy, priests, theology, rituals--all of it. You can’t just add women and stir!! You can’t just ordain women and think that nothing will change.

When women are at every door and every window

When women’s images are in every prayer

When every ritual has women and men creating it

When women sit in every room where there are decisions being made

When every religious gathering is transparent to the whole church

When every room is filled with Wisdom Sophia

We will rest.

But until then, we journey on, in the name of Jesus our brother who invites everyone, everyone to the table.

 

 

Theresa Harpin, CSJ, warmly thanks Victoria Rue after her speech.