Christa comes to mind this morning as I pray and reflect on the ongoing news related to the Vatican crackdown on the LCWR. There is a wonderful article in the Catholic National Reporter this morning http://ncronline.org/news/women-religious/lcwr-earthquake-snaps-tensions-present-vatican-ii#comment-322240. In one section of the article the writer says that this should not be about men vs. women or even about who is most important in the church. But he says the male leadership has made it about both of those issues. And he is correct.
You can imagine the controversy about Christa. A great deal of it had - and has - to do with the sense that Jesus is MALE. How heretical to imply otherwise and to put a woman's body on a par with a man's. One of the life giving dimensions of Christa is that she does not say Jesus is FEMALE. She opens up the fullness of God as neither male nor female but all encompassing. She fills in a terrible blank space that has impeded our capacity to bring the Gospel message to life in our world. God as the perfect balance of masculine and feminine energies - ying and yang - required for creation in our physical world. And yes, of the suffering of women in our world. And when women suffer, inevitably children do as well.
Those energies - masculine and feminine - exist everywhere and all of us have varying amounts of both. True leadership in a time like ours requires us to love both - to tend to both - to find our perfect balance of those two energies in our own lives.
I worked in the American Council on Education's Office of Women in Higher Education in the early 1970's and many of us had a sense that if we only brought more women into leadership positions in education, medicine, law, business, that the mere presence of those women would transform the institutions. From my point of view it has become clear that that idea has not worked. In order for women to get to those positions and to hold them, they need to take on many of the characteristics of those patriarchal organizations. There are some important shifts, of course, but not the transformation we had hoped to see.
And this is why the current confrontation from Rome with the women's religious orders that are part of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious fascinates me and makes me hopeful. Here we have an indication of what happens when women actually control the organizational structure within which they work. Over the past 50 years, these women's religious orders have transformed themselves in response to the mandates of Vatican II. We see in them leadership that respects both masculine and feminine styles of leadership. We see in them respect for wholeness and diversity. And we see in them courage to pray, reflect, change and yes - to lead.
What we are seeing here is the absolute refusal of the patriarchal structures of the Roman Catholic Church to see in this a way forward for the church. We see Rome understanding what a threat to their authority - moral and temporal - these women and their religious orders are. Of course, these women have been invisible to the power structures for so long that they have had a chance to actually institutionalize the kind of women's leadership those of us at ACE's Office of Women in Higher Education envisioned over 40 years ago. If Rome and our Bishops force us to choose between them and these women religious there will be no contest -- a huge number of American Catholics will stand with the sisters who have demonstrated moral courage and authenticity and true service to the Gospel in the world.
There is no question that this is a critical issue for American Catholics. I also believe it is important for our larger society since it has both political implications, and it has relevance for us in our quest for a more just and more effective political and governmental sector. This story is as important as covering the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street movements. It is based in the same spirit of freedom moving powerfully through our world.
So back to me. My undergraduate degree from the University of Maryland is in political science, with a concentration in American Political Thought. My graduate work at NYU was in Religious Education. And I attended an Interfaith Seminary in New York City - The New Seminary - from 1993 - 1995. I was ordained at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine when Dean Morton was there -- that courageous man who unveiled Christa during Holy Week. On a trip to Antigua in the 1980's I met one of Her Majesty's Submariners - he was one of a number of submariners on their way home to England from the Falklands. We went to dinner and dancing and when he asked about my education and I told him he smiled and said "Ah - religion and politics - the two things one does not discuss in polite company". I still laugh when I think of it.
By the way, Edwina Sandy's artwork is amazing and provocative in addition to being quite beautiful. So if you have a chance visit her website at www.edwinasandys.com I think you will be glad you did!
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