Another Church is possible

International Incontro on the Renewal in the Catholic Church

Carlos III University - Leganes (Madrid)

2002 / September / 19 - 22

Christine Schenk csj

FuturChurch Director

 

1. Concept of ministry

 

a. I believe all ministry is grounded in the call of Godıs Spirit. All the baptized are called to minister in some way according to their giftedness in that same Spirit.

 

b. According to Fr. Ronald Rohlheiser our ministerial call can be found ³Where my greatest passion meets the worldıs deepest need²

 

2. Role of Community

 

a. Individual ministries proceed according to who is called and gifted for them by the Spirit of God. In the light of the Spirit, the Community has the responsibility to discern both communal needs and the needs of the neighbor, near and far. The Community must also discern who has the gifts to meet the needs identified.

 

b. This Communal responsibility requires leadership. Leadership serves the community by coordinating the discernment of which needs have priority and by identifying those persons whom the Spirit has gifted to meet the needs.

 

c. Leadership functions as one gift of the Spirit among many gifts of the Spirit given to a church community so that the life and values of God may flourish in our world. There should be no dominating quality to leadership or one may question if it really is of the Spirit, whose signs are truth, peace and joy. I quote Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff in a farewell letter written to the National Catholic Reporter in 1992.. "if there is a hierarchy, it should be a hierarchy of service.²..as in the example of Jesus who washed his disciplesı feet. (Leonardo Boff)

 

d. The Church Community is an icon and a sacrament of God in the world. I agree with Leonardo Boff when he says that since there is no subordination in the Trinity, neither should there be subordination in the Church. This is not the same as saying there should be no authority in the church. It is to say that authority functions best as the Spirit given gift of servant leadership.

 

It also functions only by consent of the governed who also have the Spirit of God.

 

3. I will now move into the specific area I have been asked to speak about:

 

My work with FutureChurch and specifically womenıs roles in the church.

 

Some Statistics:

 

According to the 2001 Annuario Pontificio the number of Catholics in the world increased by 16 billion between 1998 and 1999 while the number of priests increased by only 383. There are 1.038 billion Catholics in the world but only 405,009 priests and 4,482 bishops.

 

FutureChurch was founded in 1990 when a parish council in Cleveland, Ohio USA passed a resolution asking the bishops to open ordination to all the baptized rather than lose the Eucharist as the center of Catholic worship.

 

Demographers estimate that by 2005 there will be be 40% fewer priests in the United States compared to 1965 levels. We have taken to heart Vatican IIıs recognition of the Eucharist as the source and summit of our life as Catholics and we believe the Mass should be regularly available, at least weekly, to every Catholic all over the world.

 

As it stands North America has the best priest to parishioner ratio in the world with one priest to1072. In Central America the reatio is one priest to 7,498 Catholics and in Africa it is one to 4,400 Catholics. We are well aware that in many countries represented here, weekly or monthly celebration of the Eucharist is simply impossible with Mass often available only once a year . This is an unconscionable failure of leadership in our view, especially given the large numbers of people called and serving generously in the apostolate all over the world.

 

The Vaticanıs Annuario Pontificio says we have:

 

2,440,000 million catechists.

809,351 professed nuns,

80,662 lay missionaries.

55,428 religious brothers who are not priests,

31,049 members of secular institutes

26,629 permanent deacons,

 

Were we to open ordination to all the baptized, a high percentage of these ministers would very likely be willing to serve as priests, and the Eucharist could again become the center of our Catholic worship.

 

In the United States an estimated 82% of all 35,000 paid lay ecclesial ministers are women. To my knowledge, the Annuario Pontificio has not included gender in its demographics of lay catechists, lay missionaries and members of secular institutes. However even if we said only 50 % of these were women (which is probably underestimating the actual number) we see that 54% of people dedicated to the apostolate (2,085,207) all over the world are women.

 

Given current church governance structures that exclude women from nearly every level of decision making we must admit that we are shamefully far from imitating the inclusive practice of Jesus who called both women and men to discipleship.

 

4. Role of Women in the Church

 

Today we have many women in the Catholic Church who tell us they experience a call from the Spirit to serve as priests. To whom do these women go to discern this call ? At present, Vatican leaders refuse to discuss the issue. They give two reasons:

 

1. Male only ordination is an unbroken tradition in the church which the Pope has ³no authority to change² because it was established by Christ himself who chose only male apostles.

 

2. Women lack so-called ³iconic resemblance² to Christ.

 

There are many factual and pastoral and difficulties with these beliefs. I list three of the most serious:

 

1. These beliefs do not correpond with the biblical witness of the historical Jesus and the history of the early church. They contradict the findings of the Vaticanıs own Pontifical Biblical Commission, which in 1976 found nothing in scripture that would prohibit womenıs ordination.

 

2. These beliefs give rise to the question: If women cannot not image Christ, why are we baptizing them?

 

3. The third difficulty is pastoral: The beliefs as stated by the Vatican have led some women and men to conclude that Jesus was chauvinist and sexist. Unable to accept this scandal, good Catholic families leave in search of other religious traditions which model for their sons and daughters full respect for the dignity of women.

 

Since our time is limited I am able to speak only briefly. I, refer those interested to a brochure I have written which summarizes the biblical and historical data. It is available here in English French German and Spanish and at the futurechurch website: www.futurechurch.org

 

5. The Practice of the Historic Jesus and the Practice of the Early Church

 

I will take a moment now to give a flavor of the biblical and historic data:

 

Jesusı behavior with women was markedly countercultural for his day. He included women in his itinerant Galilean discipleship at a time when good Jewish men did not speak to women in public let alone travel around the countryside with them (Luke 8: 1-3)

 

While Jesus did name only men to be apostles we must understand the quintessentially Jewish context of his mission:

 

Jesus came in the prophetic tradition of Israel to call Judaism to repentance and fidelity to the new reign of God being born through him. In this context, Jesus appointed 12 apostles as new leaders for the 12 tribes of the restored Israel. The category of ³the Twelve² was limited to Jesusı time, and was not continued by the early Christian communities. These grew rapidly in the Gentile world and most converts were not Jews. Worship nevertheless developed along the lines of Jewish table fellowship in house churches, often the homes of women. Worship was prophetic and charismatic in style, and both women and men provided leadership. This was in keeping with what the first followers of Jesus had known of him and his person and mission.

 

While Jesus did not ordain anyone, he did call both women and men to discipleship. Lukeıs gospel (8:1-3) reports that Mary Magdalen, Joanna, and Susanna were among the women who traveled with Jesus, and supported his ministry from their own resources. That these women are mentioned by name is significant. Women are normally not mentioned in ancient writings because they were valued solely because of their relationship to the male patriarchal household. If a woman is mentioned by name in first century writings it is either because she had significant wealth, or had achieved

some social prominence.

 

Mary of Magdala figures prominently in all four Resurrection accounts and has been called ³The Apostle to the Apostles.² It is upon her testimony that the proclamation of the Resurrection rests. Women disciples are the last to see Jesus at his death, and the first to see him risen. This is regarded as one of the most telling arguments for the historicity of the Resurrection accounts. Had the accounts been fabricated by over-zealous male disciples, women would never have been featured witnesses because in Judaic culture only men were able to give legal testimony.

 

Paulıs writings (which predate the Gospel accounts) show women serving as prophets (Philipıs daughters), deacons (Phoebe), missionaries (Prisca), and leaders of local communities (Lydia). One is even called an apostle (Junia). Women in the Pauline churches clearly were called and chosen for discipleship and leadership.

 

6. Theological difficulties.

 

In the past the Vaticanıs argument has rested on womenıs lack of iconic resemblance to the male person of Jesus. This argument has not been used recently because it is heretical. If by reason of our physical bodies, women are unable to image Christ, then we cannot baptize women either. Christ is transcendent... the ³Body of Christ² which is the Church cannot be reduced to Jesusı physical body. St. Paul says that all Christians, both male and female, share in and make up Christıs risen body, not by imaging the maleness of Jesus, but by participating in the paschal mystery through Baptism. Galatians 3:28, an early Christian Baptismal formula, tells us ³There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female ... all are one in Christ Jesus.² Both women and men image Christ.

 

7.Countering the notion that Jesus was sexist

 

Since the Vatican has attempted to close down discussion of womenıs ordination which would give women full baptismal voice in the church, our work at FutureChurch has focused on making more widely known contemporary biblical scholarship about the inclusive practice of Jesus. In the United States we have distributed over 5000 Women in Church Leadership packets which have inspired countless parish programs on Jesus and Women and which advocate in behalf of women ministers in the U.S. Church.

 

For the past six years we have promoted the annual celebration of St. Mary of Magdala to name her as ³Apostle to the Apostles as the early church Fathers did, and to reverse the mistaken idea that she was a prostitute. We provide a prayer service in which women may serve in visible liturgical roles.

 

We have recently created a new resource called Celebrating Women Witnesses: a Project to Rediscover Women Leaders in the Catholic Church. This contains essays and prayer services written by experts about 12 historic women of faith who resisted the patriarchy of their day because of belief in Jesus. Over 3000 of these have been sold and monthly prayer services, at which women presider, have been held in parishes and small faith communities all over the u.S. We develop and administer these projects from our FutureChurch office in Ohio and partner them with Call to Action and its 41 regional

affiliates.

 

8. Need to Change Governance Structures:

 

While I would support any woman discerning a call to the ministerial priesthood, I believe the governance structures of our church need to change before I personally could pursue such a call.

 

For me some top agenda items for a future council of the church :

 

1. Reform of Church governance structures to incorporate Vatican II values of

 

a. Collegiality - Decisions made by Bishops of the church in communion and consultation with the Bishop of Rome.

 

b. Subsidiarity - Non doctrinal decisions should be made at the level of those most intimately involved (ie Vatican should stay out of translation issues)

 

c. Particularity - Unique gifts of local churches are to be respected... (Liturgy in India should look different than the liturgy in /Guatemala which should look different from liturgy in the US... Must be adapted to culture of people).

 

2. Explore linking governance in the Church to baptism rather than ordination.

 

3 The need to open ordination to all the Baptized if we are to continue as a sacramental church.

 

Underlying Themes/Questions which may nurture the agenda of an international council:

 

1. What organizational/jurisdictional structures will best promote, support and release the life of the Spirit among the People of God?

 

2. To what extent are present hierarchical structures constitutive of Church?

 

3. If it is true that the Church is the icon of the Trinity, and there is no subordination in the Trinity, how can there be womenıs subordination in the Church? (Leonardo Boff)

 

4. Are Catholic womenıs bodies the ³Body of Christ?² as much as Catholic menıs bodies?

 

Christine Schenk csj Sept 2, 2002