Step by Step, Again

There are only so many ideas, apparently. I thought of this wonderful beginning for today’s blog and in saving it I found this, from May 20, 2020:

Step by step the longest march can be won, can be won 

Many stones can form an arch, singly none, singly none 

And by union, what we will can be accomplished still 

Drops of water turn a mill, singly none singly none

“This labor song by Waldemar Hille and Pete Seeger uses lyrics from a miner’s union in the 1860s…I love the simple complexity of the lyrics and I especially love these singers whose purpose is to teach the song. I hope you’ll sing along because there’s a lot to sing about this week.” I’m not as positive about Pope Francis’s new document as I was about the various women who stepped out in Europe and Africa and the US that week, like Anne Soupa and Shannon Sterringer. But Praedicate Evangelium (“Preach the Gospel”) is a step.  

You probably heard the big news: that lay women and men can now head Vatican departments. Maybe you had that as one of your goals for change. Maybe not. WOC’s response applauds the expansion of leadership opportunities but then spells out what’s missing: 

The continued exclusion of women from ordained ministries will only further entrench the church in harmful theologies that deprive the church of women’s sacramental leadership and reinforce cultural inequalities. 

Nevertheless, WOC reminds us it’s a big step for Pope Francis, who said in 2015 that he would not appoint a woman to head one of these offices. And if women are making decisions in the Vatican, who knows how soon their decision-making in other areas will be respected?

Various writers, especially in Europe, have been anticipating this major overhaul for years. Francis’s appointments and ad-hoc reorganizations are now seen as part of this comprehensive revision. But did you even know the church had a constitution? In this week when the US senate has been examining the possibility of a Black woman being appointed to the body that interprets our federal document, it seems especially important. I do not discover any Supreme Court in all the summaries, though I think the Pope’s little convocation of Cardinals has had a great influence, and there is the Synod. These changes are at a different level, but they matter. The document is 54 pages in Italian, so I am not following my usual practice of reading it before I look at what others have written.

Bob Shine’s summary for New Ways Ministry is most succinct: it “restructures the Roman Curia, the host of offices which support the pope in governing the Catholic Church. This new constitution has been in development since the election of Pope Francis nine years ago, and it does many things: opens Curia leadership to lay people, refocuses on evangelization, elevates the church’s charitable works, seeks to reform financial structures, and streamlines (hopefully) the labyrinth of Vatican offices.” Shine goes on to examine potential positive impacts on LGBTQ people, and while I will write about women here, our shared hope is for a future open to people of all genders. 

Christopher Lamb in The Tablet notes that the dicastery (which all offices will be called) for evangelization will take precedence over the one for doctrine, nicknamed “La Suprema” as it “investigated priests, theologians and religious and set out the red lines of Catholic doctrine.”

Now “it must first ‘seek dialogue’ with those it considers to have been in breach of Church teaching.” Are those supporting women’s ordination in line for an invitation? 

In America, Gerard O’Connell focuses pretty much on authority, but Colleen Dulle sees the implications of the priest shortage and the current exercise of lay women’s leadership for “the way forward” in the spirit of Vatican II, not a “smaller but purer” vision. They do have a podcast, if you like getting your information that way. 

In NCR, Christopher White brings different voices into it: Natalia Imperatori-Lee, Christian Weisner, Marie Collins, Kerry Robinson, and Cardinal Blase Cupich. (Lamb did have Cardinal Sean O’Malley.) Imperatori-Lee affirms WOC’s position: “To separate out governance or administration from orders means that orders is primarily a sacramental ministry and that governance then belongs to the whole people of God, which is as it should be,” and also notes the transition will be messy and expensive. “This means the Vatican will become even more dependent on philanthropy, she predicted, and warned that it will have to be especially on guard against catering to ideological preferences of church donors to avoid outside influence or mission creep.”

Michael Sean Winters evaluates possible impacts on the American Bishops and also notes: “Now, Francis has brought to the task of curial reform the distinctive experiences and insights drawn from the post-conciliar experience of the church in Latin America. The reception of the council in Latin America was the most theologically fecund of any region, and the specifically Argentine contribution, the theology of the people, seems to many as the most consonant with Vatican II.” 

Thomas Reese hopes Francis is not done reforming and suggests some problems with how combined offices will be able to creatively actualize the new mission. He shares the concern about salaries, and notes “Laypeople bring their own values and baggage to their jobs. As parishioners know, lay ministers can be just as clerical and authoritarian as priests.” Consider yourselves warned!

Finally, I have three articles from La Croix International by various French correspondents. “The seeds of several revolutions” are here, says Jerome Chapuis. Archbishop Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, the head of the French Bishops’ Conference, interviewed by Christophe Hennings, thinks that national conferences will have a greater role: “This new responsibility will require us to adapt: we will have to respond to requests from Rome” about the future and teachings of the universal church, not only to Curial concerns. Loup Besmond de Senneville begins with the potential impact of the document: “the mission of those who staff these Vatican offices is, first and foremost, to serve and assist the Church, and no longer exercise control over it.” He explores Francis’s operating style: “the Roman Curia is no longer the only instrument the pope has for leading the universal Church.” Think Synods, a few Cardinals, consultants. And he concludes, “But in addition to what Francis calls in the text a ‘healthy decentralization,’ Praedicate evangelium also considerably strengthens the personal power of the Roman Pontiff.” We’ve seen this in the changes to the punishment and the ministry provisions Canon Law related to women; the French easily identify power issues. 

Many concerns recur more or less explicitly in all the articles. I have tried to avoid repetition and highlight good phrasing. “Preach the Gospel” is another step in the dance between the Vatican and women. We have been doing our steps; now the Pope is clearly on the floor, whether or not he knows it.