Black Monday

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 19^th 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.

You can read Fr. Roy’s brief autobiography here: http://www.roybourgeoisjourney.org/book/book.pdf

You can read Monday’s news here: http://ncronline.org/news/people/maryknoll-vatican-has-dismissed-roy-bourgeois-order

You can read Fr. Roy’s response to his dismissal here: http://theprogressivecatholicvoice.blogspot.com/2012/11/roy-bourgeois-statement-on-his.html

And if you want, you can do something about it here: http://theprogressivecatholicvoice.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-bloodless-yet-painful-martyrdom.html

There’s a bumper sticker that seems made for times like this:

If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention.