A Structure Outpaced by Human Development
Message sent to my Pastor
The preamble you offered from the heart before presenting an overview of the parish’s financial status was so impressive. It was impressive for its honesty and forthrightness. It was impressive in communicating a concern you share with your parishioners - the disappointment, the absolute dismay and horror, as well as the concern and fear engendered by the current situation of the Roman Catholic Church. I think behind it all is your own sadness about the state of things and your opinions about what the necessary response should be but never seems to come. For all of this sincerity and frank communication I am personally grateful and I think all your people feel the same way.
As I continue to listen to and read reports about current events both political and ecclesial and consider them in the light of history I am beginning to conclude that the Church is losing ground in every way because its very structure has been surpassed by cultural and sociological developments. Its organization as a male bastion could hold sway and power as long as women and other groups were almost universally held as inferior and without rights. Institutional misogyny, slavery, rigid class systems, etc., held in societies were these attitudes were normative. Not withstanding the current mad wave of social hatred raising its head, western civilization has developed (matured in its evolution) to the point of general rejection of past societal norms which cast some to the margins of polite society. The injustice and harm wrought by those systems has been recognized in society and by governments.
But the Roman Church has not kept pace. It is so out of step with current attitudes that revelations of horrors wrought by the system in the past and those which continue are causing people to bail out; to walk away from an institution whose very structure is revealed to them each Sunday as totally out of step.
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1954 in Brown vs. Board of Education that by virtue of their very separation into different schools, Black and White students were not receiving an equal education even when their teachers, buildings, books, etc. were on par in quality. Today I have concluded that the Roman Church cannot possibly refashion itself in light of current societal norms of equality of human beings regardless of race, class and gender AND at the same time maintain a structure which does not reflect this equality.
This brings me to express my current feelings as a woman of the Church. Each Mass or sacramental rite I attend is an affront to my self identity as a woman of dignity, competence, experience and worth. I enter no other place where women are tacitly told they are not equal, not worthy, not able; that there is something inherently wrong with them, that automatically excludes them from a spiritual role and experience. Such structural intransigence will continue to give birth to misogyny, to a sense of privilege in the ordained and hierarchy, and to an attitude which allows for abuse of all kinds. Most basically, these structural realities make any preaching of Gospel morality, of Jesus’s message of love above all, ring hollow if not obviously hypocritical.
This is the truth, the elephant in the room, in the discussion of any Church reform. I was not surprised that Pope Francis requested that the US Conference of Catholic Bishops not issue any statements at the end of its recent meeting. Instead he postponed official statements regarding reform emanating from the Vatican until after a February 2019 meeting in Rome. Could it be that he too has concluded that the hierarchy is incapable of reforming itself? Could it be that he sees that the poison has so infected the body that the entire system requires a venous infusion of moral antibiotic?
I wish the people had an opportunity to discuss these matters in a frank and constructive way and that our opinions could be heard where ears would be open and egos put aside.
