SUMMER SPEAKER SERIES - 3

2020 is the 100th anniversary of the The Catholic Women’s League of Canada (CWL).  The CWL’s national convention/AGM was to be held in August.  However, with the onset of the COVID-19 virus restrictions, all conventions/AGMs were cancelled.  The National Council of the CWL were proactive in using technology to engage several of the guest speakers for the National Convention to give their presentations as webinars.  The webinars are called the Summer Speaker Series.  Well over 1,500 people from across Canada and from several other countries tuned in to the webinars.  Today, I share with you some of my notes from the third session.

August 12 - Sr. Nuala Kenny, O.C., M.D., F.R.C.P.(C)  speaking on "Women and Healing Our Wounded Church"  "All elements of the crisis of clergy sexual abuse of children and the vulnerable are in stark contradiction to Jesus’ mission, words and witness. Jesus Himself demonstrated a profoundly counter-cultural approach to children and to women. Together, we will review the harms to victims, survivors and the entire Body of Christ from the history of abuse. All are called to healing the Church from this scandal. This reflection brings specific insights from women’s experience and research on vulnerability, abuse of power, care and relational moral thinking.” (Introduction to Sr. Kenny’s webinar, Summer Speaker Series, 2020)

Sr. Kenny’s goals for this session are:

1. To review lessons from the Coronavid-19 pandemic
2. To contemplate Jesus and women
3. To review women’s experiences in the church and insights for renewal
4. To review challenges and prognosis for conversion to ‘the mind of Christ’

 
Pope Francis said, “I see clearly that the thing the church needs most today is the ability to heal wounds and to warm the hearts of the faithful ... I see the church as a field hospital after battle.” (Oct 27, 2015) Dr. Kenny challenged each of us to enter into a topic that we may be afraid to approach.
 
In the past 100 years during which the Catholic Women’s League (CWL) has served God and Canada, we have dealt with and/or are dealing with global crises:

• 1920s - Post WW1  and the Spanish Flu epidemic – a wounded state in the world and the church
• 2020 COVID-19 –started from a wounded state in the church and in the world:
  • Ecological crisis
  • Economic inequity
  • Political divisions
  • Pandemic of racism
  • The clergy sexual abuse crisis

 

1. Goal:   TO REVIEW LESSONS FROM COVID-19:
   1. Unprecedented vulnerability re:  health; the COVID-19 pandemic is leaving the vulnerable more vulnerable – refugees in refugee camps, people needing assistance to get food and medicine; women and children stuck at home in abusive situations; increase in domestic violence.
   2. Dependence on powerful others
   3. Women – the hidden heroines for the most vulnerable.  Also in the church, women are the hidden workers while men are the power and authority.
   4. Closed churches – a Eucharistic fast imposed on us – loss of usual conjugal supports.
   5. Sr. Kenny asks us to reflect on the challenges and blessings we’ve experienced during this pandemic.
      
      
2. Goal To contemplate Jesus and Women:
   1. Jesus learned from his mother, Mary, a woman of modest means, a faithful Jew.
   2. Mary, along with Joseph, educated and formed the man that Jesus became.  Before and after the Temple experience, Jesus lived under the authority of his parents.
   3. Mary is mother and disciple:
      1. At the wedding at Cana, it is Mary who notices the embarrassment of the family when there is no more wine.  She directs Jesus even when Jesus hesitates.
      2. At the foot of the cross, Jesus provides an ‘advance care plan’ for his mother when he directs John to be Mary’s son, and Mary to be John’s mother.
      3. In Hebrew society, women remained at home and could not study the Torah; however, in the New Testament, counter-cultural interactions of Jesus with women and minorities take place:
         1. Jesus speaks with women and non-Jews in public.  The woman at the well has an intense, real, deep, spiritual conversation with Jesus, so intense that she goes and tells others about Jesus and brings them to Christ.
         2. Jesus learns from women.  The Canaanite woman with the sick daughter teaches Jesus that his ministry is not just for Jews but for all when she says, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' tables.” ... Matt 15: 21-28; Mark 7: 24-30.  Jesus is convinced.
         3. Jesus refuses to view women as unclean.  He treats outcasts and marginalized with respect and compassion.  He asks accusers of the woman taken in adultery to consider their own sins – “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw the first stone at her.”  John 8:7.
         4. Jesus has encounters with unnoticeable (not named).  He has compassion for silent sufferers such as Peter’s mother-in-law, the woman with the hemorrhage who touched his garment, the daughter of Jairus, and the son of a widow.
         5. Women are treated as disciples.  Jesus had many women with him who supported him – Mary of the story ‘Mary and Martha’ was a disciple.  Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene, the apostle to the apostles.  She ventured out to the tomb when the men were afraid and in lock-down.
         6. Jesus’ interaction with children was also counter-cultural.  Jesus shares what he thinks about the abuse of children.  “And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.  If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.” Matt 18: 5-6
            
            
3. Goal:  To review women’s and children’s experiences in the church and insights for renewal: 
   1. Sr. Kenny reflected on clergy abuse and the treatment of children and women in the church. She stated that sexual abuse happened early on in the church, first noted in one of the canons at the Council of Elvira (306)
   2. Public revelations in the 1970s forced recognition of the evil of clergy physical, emotional and sexual abuse of women and children.  Kenny notes that the church did not choose to do an examination of conscience; they were forced to.
   3. Pope Francis recognizes systemic and cultural issues in the church – the temptations and the diseases of leadership.
   4. Dr. Kenny speaks of the pathology in clergy sexual abuse – an abuse of power, trust and conscience – harming the vulnerable – profound harm and outright cover up – secrecy and denial to avoid scandal – bureaucratic responses regarding policies – failure to address systemic issues.
   5. Jesus and power:  “Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to.”  (Phil 2:6) Jesus assumes vulnerability for love of us and our use of power for others.  Jesus used power only to help people, never to oppress.
   6. Women’s experience with power:  the early church gathered in houses; women were a part of these gatherings.  By the 4th century, an imperial, monarchical, hierarchical, patriarchal, clerical and Euro-centric system existed with a sharp distinction between clergy and laity and where men owned their children and their wives.
   7. Pope Francis speaks on clericalism and abuse:  He has ordered that clergy “just say no to abuse... of power, conscience or any type.”  “Saying no to abuse means saying no with force to every form of clericalism”. (Sept. 9, 2019 Matters India)  “Clericalism whether postured by priests themselves or by lay persons... supports and helps to perpetuate many of the evils that we condemn today.”
   8. Women can help the healing process by breaching the silence; meaningful input is needed, requiring respectful listening, not judgmental rhetoric. Some think that ‘talking about abuses’ will only make things worse.  Priests especially have difficulty.
   9. Morality:
      1. Focus on sin-centred, confession-oriented with no attention to Scripture or relational consequences (i.e.) some clergy abused children but did not have sex with women and felt that they hadn’t broken their vow of celibacy; there was no attention to conscience or virtue, only focus on obedience to a vow.
      2. Dominance of sexual morality such as abortion, contraception; experience of heavy burdens especially for women
      3. Women’s experience in regards to sexuality: 
         1. ambivalence about the body and pleasure
         2. Vatican II renewal:  a personalist approach [all human beings deserve respect] to marriage and the role of sexuality with both unitive [capable of uniting] and procreative purposes. 
            
            
4. Goal:  To review challenges and prognosis for conversion to ‘the mind of Christ’:
   1. Avoid tragedy, fatigue, burn-out and feelings of helplessness
   2. Break ongoing silence and denial with courageous, respectful dialogue
   3. Reject irreconcilable and polarizing responses (i.e.) some people want to go back to a powerful church for the wealthy, excluding women; some priests and bishops are returning to prehistoric practices such as celebrating in Latin, excluding women as readers and cantors.  Dr. Kenny says that this is not good.  She reminds us that we should not be asking ‘Who is the celebrant?’ when we want to know who the priest is leading the celebration.  She reminds us that we are all celebrants. 
   4. Pray for the grace of atonement; believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to make all things new.  She suggests that clericalism may lead to the death of priesthood.  She asks:  If you’re on a pedestal bleeding and crying, who is going to help you? 
   5. We must deal with the big personal issues of power including not taking women seriously, justice and equality between men and women in the church, and the need for honest, open conversation.
      
      

Reflection and Action - Making a Difference: 

Dr. Kenny asks:

1. What do you see as the biggest personal challenges in healing the Church today?
2. What resources and assistance would be of the most help to you?

​Prophetic Possibilities for the Church (2014) a book by Dr. Nuala Kenney.  “The recognition of the importance of underlying systemic and cultural factors is not new. In 1989, following devastating revelations of child sexual abuse by Irish Christian brothers and diocesan clergy in St. John's, N.L., I (Dr. Kenny) participated in the lay-led Archdiocesan Commission of Inquiry into the Sexual Abuse of Children by Members of the Clergy. Its 1990 report summarized the available literature on the sexual abuse of children. In assessing why and how the abuse had occurred, the Commission concluded that no single cause accounts for the abuse but that a number of factors coincided to allow the abuse to occur. It identified six factors in urgent need of further exploration by Church leaders for their role: power, education, sexuality, support for priests, a management approach and avoidance of scandal.

Twenty-five years after Newfoundland and despite compelling research and experience, the hierarchy, with notable exceptions, is still unable or unwilling to acknowledge the systemic and cultural factors that have shaped and, at times, fostered the sexual abuse crisis. Why the moral blindness in failing to recognize the deeper issues of ecclesial sin and the denial of the pain and suffering inflicted on the whole Church? Agere sequitur esse is an old moral maxim. Action does indeed follow being, and Church leadership has responded to the global crisis with the same denial, minimization of harm and protection of image as in individual cases because of deeply enculturated attitudes and practices. Deep within a culture, a moral blindness can infect so that it becomes impossible to see and assess its dark side. This is when it is crucial to learn from others.”