Two women speak for themselves

I am not going to write much about the Pope’s summit now going on in the Vatican. I will remind you to wear a blue armband at Mass tonight as the Catholics Banding Together movement suggests. You will love the video they produced, especially if you’ve never seen and heard Theresa Kane’s 1979 address to the Pope. They even have instructions on how to make a blue armband. Here’s the link to the cards they suggest you distribute that explain their objectives.

Today I want to direct you to two women interviewed in two important Catholic magazines. I won’t be as glitzy as #overcomingsilence, and I am amazed that I had this idea for the blog before I saw the site. This is a moment for speaking our own truths—as I wrote about Josepha Madigan doing last week. Both the women I write about today present themselves to the readers.

Megan K. McCabe is assistant professor of religious studies at Gonzaga University. She commented online that she was offended – strong language — by an article in America and, miracle of miracles, Bill McCormick, SJ, thought to ask her why. McCabe argues that younger scholars are within the tradition of Catholic moral theology even though they use intersectionality in their work. Of course it’s not only younger scholars who do, but it may be a school of thought not very familiar to those educated before—well, let McCabe summarize how the word came into use:

Intersectionality is a term introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw in a 1989 essay, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.” She argues that black women experience intersecting oppressions of both racism and sexism that come together to create a possibility for oppression that is not merely both racism and sexism but is something new formed by the way that the two are compounded. Sometimes black women are oppressed as women, sometimes black women are oppressed as black persons, and sometimes black women are oppressed as black women. Intersectionality helps us name and analyze these various dimensions of oppression that would otherwise go unrecognized.”

McCabe uses intersectionality in her own work on sexual violence against women, and gives examples of how others use it:

Sexual abuse in the church is a good example of the helpfulness of intersectional analysis. Abuser priests were not merely moved from parish to parish, but there is evidence of patterns of moving abusers to poor parishes and Latino parishes. Additionally, there are horrifyingly high rates of sexual abuse of Native American populations.

We understand more about this crisis when this window is opened. As McCabe argues, Thomas Aquinas himself incorporated a source outside the tradition – Aristotle – to sharpen his analysis. We need to do the same in our day.

A very different woman is interviewed by Commonweal: Fran Lebowitz. They characterize her as a “writer, speaker, wit, and archetypal New York personality,” and ask her questions about her gay Catholic friends in the art world. This interview is fun, despite the sadness around AIDS. She talks about the deaths of her friends Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowicz, and the insistence of the sisters at St. Vincent’s Hospital that doctors operate on people with AIDS. She quotes her friend, a board member there, about  fearful doctors: “The reason people respect doctors is because they take this risk. … Not because you have a Mercedes. You do this, or I’ll see that you lose your license.” To Lebowitz, the nuns created an environment where responsibility was demanded.

I am somewhat less thrilled with Lebowitz’s understanding of authority in the church. She disliked Cardinal O’Connor because of his political activism, but reports this exchange with Wojnarowicz:

He would say to me, “O’Connor said at Mass, ‘Do this, do that.’” I said to him, “David, telling the Catholics what to do is his job. That is his job, David. So you cannot take issue with him telling the Catholics what to do.” I said, “You can not listen; you don’t have to go.” But I said he is wholly not only within his rights, he is fulfilling his obligations to tell the Catholics what to do. It’s when he tells the Democrats what to do that I get angry.

I’m with Wojnarowicz on this; we are seeing today the problems with too much patriarchy, telling us what to do, hiding from us what’s really going on. See McCarrick in New York.

The interview concludes with Lebowitz’s reflections on Catholics and Jews:

This is why there are so many Catholics in the world. … The Christian God is a forgiving God. The Jewish God is a judge. So when Christ came and said, “I forgive you,” of course almost every single person said, “Yes!” ….  if you say to people, “Forgiveness? Or no forgiveness?” there is a certain kind of person who’s going to say, “No forgiveness.” But there are very few of them.

This hits right between the eyes when we read this as we are so aware of what’s going on today in the Vatican. Forgiveness, yes. But not blinding yourself to evil, or failing to protect the innocent. Lebowitz reminds us that the whole world is watching what is happening there.

My greatest fear is that Catholics who do think it’s the Cardinal’s job to tell us what to do will seize the narrative of sex abuse to discredit the Pope. I was appalled Wednesday night to see the PBS NewsHour frame its coverage around the rumors being spread by the National Catholic Register that  Francis might resign. Will the right wing stop at nothing to destroy this “liberal” papacy? Will we be better off with a traditionalist?

Rather, we need the insights of women like McCabe. Plenty of wrong has been documented and plenty of church leaders have ignored it for too long. But let’s band together to pray that this moment results in repentance, which must accompany forgiveness. WOC’s statement is perfect:

We pray for all those who have suffered in our Church, especially survivors of sexual abuse by clergy. We believe nothing less than radical transformation of the oppressive structures that entrench clericalism and patriarchy will heal the wounds of the People of God. We know justice is possible with the Spirit of Wisdom who empowers courageous, prophetic people to meet the challenges of our time.  We can be those people. We are those people.