November 23, 2012
A prophet is
not without honor except in his native place and in his own house. Matthew
13: 57
I don’t know who got to decide that the one day of
the year that brings out the best in people would be followed by just the
opposite. Like the week before the election, I gave thanks yesterday for being
so removed from media bombardment. Although, advertising is quite skilled at
permanent infestation: far from a T.V., I can still hear the piercing shrill of
the announcer ringing in my head: “Don’t miss Kohl’s biggest sale of the year!
Doors open at 6am. Shop early for the best deals… before it’s too late!”
Yuck.
As much as I despise what our culture has done to
the day after Thanksgiving, today pales in comparison to what I’m calling to Black
Monday - the day the Vatican announced their excommunication and laicization of
Maryknoll Father Roy Bourgeois. To say that I’ve been disturbed by this news from
November 19th is an understatement. It has consumed my week and
stirred up some pretty serious venom in my head and heart.
Fr. Roy has been a Catholic priest in the
Maryknoll Order for 45 years. During his early years as a missionary priest, he
was immersed in the brutal civil wars of Central and South America- first in
Bolivia, and later in El Salvador. Through his ministry he encountered countless lives affected by the violent repression by each
country’s military. He grieved, as others did, the deaths of thousands,
including the 1980 murders of the Archbishop of San Salvador, Oscar Romero, and
the four North American Churchwomen, and the 1989 assassinations of six Jesuit
priests, their Salvadoran housekeeper and her daughter. In time he discovered,
as others did, that many of the perpetrators of these and other incidents of
murder, rape, torture, and disappearance were trained in these tactics- on U.S.
land and with U.S. tax dollars- at the School of the Americas in Columbus,
Georgia. Fr. Roy established the SOA Watch outside the gates of Ft. Benning in
1990 and has energized tens of thousands of faith-filled people to rally every
November and to lobby Congress for the closure of the School - students,
clergy, nuns, parents and children, retired adults, former military personnel,
myself, and others.
During these years of standing on the side of the oppressed,
he came to meet Catholic women who felt oppressed in a different way. These
women identified a personal call to the priesthood, a vocation to the ordained
life, within the Catholic Church. Fr. Roy chose to stand with these women and,
in a similar way as he spoke out against the injustices in Latin America, he
began to speak out against the injustices in the Catholic Church, his own
community.
Let me pause here and acknowledge that when I
first learned of women feeling this “call,” I was dubious. “Men are priests. Period.
What are they even talking about?” thought my Catholic school girl brain. Thankfully,
I’ve moved on from that opinion, but only through repeated encounters with what
was once a foreign concept.
After several demands for Fr. Roy to recant his
support for women’s ordination, the Vatican followed through with its threats.
Fr. Roy is no longer a priest, no longer a member of the Maryknoll order, and-
in the eyes of the Vatican- no longer a Catholic. In practical terms, that
means he is also bankrupt- stripped of the pension and retirement support other
members of religious communities receive after devoting their adult lives to
serving the Church.
One can think what they will about a woman’s right
to ordination. But one can’t miss the glaring hypocrisy of this situation if
you’ve been around the U.S. Catholic Church lately. Priests, bishops,
cardinals actively and passively
allowing the sexual abuse of children- for decades- in Boston,
Philadelphia, and likely every diocese in this country- not only remain “Catholic”
but most remain in their positions of high authority. No laicization. No
excommunication. And in most cases, not even a conviction.
The Vatican described Fr. Roy’s support of women’s
ordination as a “grave scandal against the people of God.” Let’s think about
this rationally, shall we?
*Attending the ordination of a woman and the
showing of a documentary on women’s ordination.
*Sexually abusing children and covering up the
sexual abuse of priests under your authority.
Hmm…which one sounds grave and scandalous to you?
If the decision handed down by the Vatican and Maryknoll
wasn’t so scandalous it would be laughable. This decision, coupled with their
treatment of American nuns over the last year, seem to point to only thing:
fear. The fear of the other half of the planet? Possibly. But certainly the
fear of sharing power. For a change.
Thus, in their carefully orchestrated effort to
hold back the inevitability of Church hierarchy that includes the full
manifestation of God- both male and female- the Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith will demand allegiance to their definition of vocation. They will
insist that they know better than God the form and function of God’s unique call
to each one of us. As Fr. Roy has stated multiple times, “Who are we to say, as
men, that our call from God is authentic but God’s call to women is not?”
In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I want to offer
thanks for not receiving the call to
ordination. It’s a painful call. In a community that rejects the legitimacy of
your relationship with God, it’s a lonely path to walk. Few are as courageous-
as prophetic- as Fr. Roy to stand in solidarity with these women and to speak
out on their behalf. Certainly other priests voice similar support, but most anonymously, off the record, or behind closed doors.
Like Archbishop Romero, the world does not stand
quietly by prophetic voices. It silences them. And so, the saga of Fr. Roy’s relationship with
the Catholic Church and, specifically, his Maryknoll family, has come to a bitter end.
But I hope, and pray, and fully expect that his
call- to speak truth to power- is only just beginning.
There’s a bumper sticker that seems made for
times like this:
If you’re
not angry, you’re not paying attention.
