Wednesday, May 16, 2012

from The Vatican vs. the Nuns


by John Shelby Spong
support@johnshelbyspong.com

Perhaps it takes a political campaign to reveal the fault lines in both our nation and in institutional religion. At least that is what appears to be happening in current American politics. The political season has a way of loosening latent fears, exciting the extremists and bringing silliness to the political arena. We have watched that process for long, long months now. There have been moments when it was the theater of the absurd. Now a news story comes out of the Vatican announcing that, as a result of issues raised in this campaign, an American archbishop, J. Peter Sartain of Seattle has been appointed by the Vatican to deal with “serious doctrinal problems” that have appeared among American Catholic nuns.

When the Catholic bishops criticized the Obama health care law’s requirement that contraceptives must be made available to female employees of Catholic institutions, President Obama immediately worked out a compromise. Churches had already been exempted and now it was agreed that contraceptives will be provided free of charge to those female employees of Catholic institutions by the health care companies themselves, so that the Church’s moral teaching on this issue was not compromised. It seemed a reasonable solution and was widely applauded. The largest body of Catholic nuns called “The Leadership Conference of Women Religious,” many of whom work in hospitals and health care facilities, agreed to the compromise immediately.

The bishops, however, a few days later did not agree, thus pitting the sisters in a public dispute against the bishops, who are in the Catholic system proclaimed to be the church’s only “authentic teachers.” Dissent in an autocratic system strikes at the root of authority and threatens the imposed conformity.  It now appears that the “independence” of these sisters had to be countered and the sisters brought into line, that is into conformity with the teaching of the bishops. So now a “visitation” has been ordered by the Vatican and, once again an all-male hierarchy in the name of a God named Father, has directed that women be disciplined and forced to conform to the patriarchal ordained leadership of the church if they want to remain in religious orders.

In this church all power flows through the hierarchy of the ordained and since no woman is in that flow chart, women are inevitably and finally powerless.

“Separate but equal” was once nothing more than propagandistic perfume sprinkled over the stench of segregated America, now it is to be propagandistic perfume sprinkled over the stench of a patriarchal, sexist church. “Separate but equal” is always separate, but it is never equal!

There were, of course, other issues. It was said that the nuns have also challenged the church’s teaching on homosexuality, a male-only priesthood and promoted a “radical feminist agenda incompatible with the Catholic faith.”

By entering into the American political process so blatantly and by forcing the issue of contraceptives into that debate so centrally, the Catholic bishops have blurred the lines between church and state rather considerably.

In the candidacy of former Senator Rick Santorum, a very traditional Roman Catholic lay person, he not only stated his opposition to contraception, but he also dismissed President John Kennedy’s understanding of the separation of church and state, saying that it made him “want to throw up.” That candidacy gave us a clear vision of how the Catholic bishops will try to manipulate the American political process. The scene was not pretty. Without any fanfare, the nation now awakens to the fact that two thirds, that is, six of the nine sitting justices on the Supreme Court today are Roman Catholics and that three of them, Justices Scalia, Thomas and Alito, identify themselves with the most hard line conservative wing of that church. Suddenly, the American dream of “Freedom of Religion” looks shakier that it has ever looked before.

This ecclesiastical attack against health care for women, against contraception, against the nuns and against their leading theologians, presents us with a picture not of strength, but of a desperate power play, designed to recover influence that this religious system has so clearly lost.

When abortion was the defining issue in church-state relationships, the polls continued to show that a majority of Roman Catholic lay people wanted abortion to be a legal option, a safe option, while being at the same time as much as possible, a rare option. Every study reveals that the availability of contraception cuts down the abortion rate dramatically. The Roman Church, however, also wants contraception to be curtailed. Once again, polls reveal that up to 98% of Catholic women in America avail themselves of contraception during some part of their lives. These women are clearly not following the teachings of the bishops. So the bishops have now decided on a plan to use the health care bill of the government of the United States to force its own members to do what their church is not capable of forcing them to do.

Is this not a strange twist on the relationship between church and state? Next, they want to use male hierarchical power to silence any dissent within the largest body of nuns in America. If the lay people of this church are not buying what this church is selling and now if the nuns are not buying what this church is selling, perhaps the bishops might ask themselves whether they have truth on their side.

During his unsuccessful run for the Republican presidential nomination, Senator Santorum also complained that 60% of those who enter a college or a university with a strong religious faith had that faith challenged, disturbed or destroyed by what the senator described as “liberal secular professors.” It did not seem to occur to the senator that maybe these students’ “strong faith” was based on concepts that are either dated, immature or simply wrong. Is knowledge in the future in our universities to be bent so as not to offend the naïve faith of some religious believers? Are we ready to put the Catholic Church in charge of discerning all truth? Was this Church not wrong about Galileo, about Darwin, about Hans Kung? Are they not wrong about women, about birth control, about celibacy, about homosexuality, about mental illness and about left-handedness?

Where was this passion for truth and for the exercise of moral leadership when priests were abusing children and the hierarchy was covering it up? Why is Cardinal Bernard Law, the prelate guiltier than any other of covering up that scandal, in a senior Vatican position where he will never have to be called to testify under oath for his criminal behavior?

Those vital nuns are now on the battle line facing this out-of-touch male hierarchy. I predict, however, that the nuns will ultimately prevail. The Vatican has never understood either feminine wiles or the fact that truth cannot be finally trampled in the service of institutional power.

1 comment:

  1. So....the "Adventist" Wheel is a political propaganda site? Then why use the churches name?

    ReplyDelete