I Heart Francis by Donna Schaper

Author:Donna Schaper
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-5064-0862-0
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2016-11-09T00:00:00+00:00

A Small and Simple Theology of Ordination

Not everyone should be ordained. But no one should be refused ordination because of their orientation or their gender. That exclusion diminishes ordination and turns it into the very thing it is not. It is a sacred, not a banal, quality and calling. Cardinal Leo Joseph Suenens is often remembered as saying, “Remember, God has called you to the priesthood because he does not trust you to be a layman.” I am not elevating ordination when I get enthusiastic about ordination. There are lots of very fine people, perhaps especially nuns, who don’t need the mantle or mark of ordination. However, making it off limits to women, when men are failing so brilliantly at their calls, is ridiculous. And wrong.

I would like you to get to know and really listen to Sister Joan Chittister, arguably the strongest woman’s voice expanding your message while directly questioning it. Of course, Mary Hunt is great, too. I have been a subscriber to her newsletter, Water, for decades now. I think you’d love her because you are so nuts about water, too. Anyway, I suggest these two sages because I know you have no real reason to listen to me. I’m not in your system. I am just one of your fans and proud to be one.

Joan just gave the fiftieth-anniversary speech at the National Catholic Reporter anniversary celebration. Standing in that long line of unordained women who are Catholic leaders, like Dorothy Day and Mother Theresa, she has refused to go away.

Sister Joan loves to tell a joke about a guy going into the bar, repeatedly asking for grapes, and the bar owner finally throws him out, shouting, “We don’t have any grapes; we only have booze!” I love to reinterpret her story. She tells it a lot. It’s about the wine in the grapes, for sure, but also about people’s hunger for a holy sacrament. I respect the Catholic point of view that the bread and the wine are good even if the priest isn’t. I also don’t think Sister Joan or Mother Teresa or Saint Dorothy needed to be ordained. They did not. I think instead that the fact they cannot or could not be ordained puts the lie to more than itself. Lying about the holy discredits the holy. What is the lie? That women aren’t human enough to preside at the holy table. Jesus thought we were human enough to touch. What do you really think?

Your institution—but not your faith, nor your Jesus—has long had a hard time with female power. However, I believe we—the songbirds or the sea or the people or the planet—wouldn’t be in so much trouble right now if people could have seen the full humanity of women. I think your own inner logic agrees.

Joan of Arc was murdered for wearing men’s pants. I certainly don’t want women murdered, nor do I think ordained women need to wear men’s pants. We need to find our own way. We need to transform what we mean by power and hems and healing.

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