Sexism in the Catholic Church

The Catholic Church is often spoken of as one of the last bastions of male power. After all, it lays claim to have been founded by a young man, who chose to appoint twelve males as the top leaders of his new church. Still, in the early centuries, after the crucifixion of Christ, women were frequently ordained deacons and some served as priests in the fourth and fifth centuries. However, the anti-woman Roman laws and culture, which dominated the West at that time, came to permeate Church thinking. This tradition gave pre-eminent position and importance to the male, consigning women to second-rate status. Many would say that this unfortunate sexism continues in Church thinking to the present day. Small groups of Catholics, who advocate for a priesthood that is open to both sexes, similar to what prevails in many Protestant denominations, are shunned by the official church, especially in Rome, where such views are deemed anathema, that is, to be completely rejected by the faithful.

Progressive Catholics tend to view the aging male hierarchy as a major obstacle to needed change in the Church. They shake their heads in disbelief when they hear pronouncements about important moral issues coming from mostly-old men, who have little connection with the real lives of ordinary people. Pope Paul the Sixth’s encyclical, Humanae Vitae, is often cited as an example of this disconnectedness. The Pope did not follow the advice of his own Advisory Commission, which included some lay people, to allow the limited use of contraceptives. Instead, he followed the arcane thinking of the traditionalists. The vast majority of Catholics at that time rejected the papal advice; today, forty years later, very few even know what that encyclical teaches.

The clerical abuse scandals that have rocked the Church throughout the world provide a better example of the inadequacy of celibate, male thinking. I am not concerned here about speculating why so many priests and religious brothers engaged in awful, sinful acts with children, whose welfare and spiritual development they were charged with. The question in this article centers on how so many bishops and religious superiors could be so morally blind in dealing with the crisis? Their modus operandi was first to deny the accusation and to protect the abuser, and, then when the behavior continued, to transfer the priest or brother to some other place where he would continue to have responsibility for young people. If women were scattered throughout the power structure of the Church, would they have been so blind and insensitive to those in their care? Would they have moved sick and dangerous individuals from one childcare setting to another?

Of course, many bishops and curial monsignors in Rome are notoriously removed from the daily lives of most people. In Ireland, some of the bishops called their residences “palaces,” stressing their superior lifestyle, completely disregarding their primary role as servants. Many parish priests live closer to the people; they are far more in touch with the daily struggles of their community. In the two recent American presidential elections there were various pronouncements from bishops, mostly directed against the Democratic nominees, because of the ongoing controversy about the Roe v Wade decision. My priest friends and acquaintances who work in parishes suggest to me that most of their colleagues in the priesthood may well have voted for the Democratic candidate in both elections, with issues of social justice trumping concerns about the abortion issue. I am waiting to see a study which would affirm or deny their hunches.

The Catholic schools in America were – and still are to a decreasing extent – major power bases in the Church community. The Sisters and Brothers who taught in and administered these schools provided an excellent service in the community, and because they were not in it for profit, they welcomed all families, irrespective of financial means. So, the hierarchy laid down the law, but the local nuns and religious brothers were seen as the real Church, the people who connected with and sacrificed for the struggling families in the community.

A letter in yesterday’s Irish Times presents a very interesting and different perspective on this issue of sexism in the Catholic Church. The writer argues that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the Church "from its inception, was a thoroughgoing feminine institution.” The writer invites us to consider first the core Christian belief of a virgin birth and continues his argument by pointing to the dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary, which clearly indicates that her husband, Joseph, lived a celibate life. Also, Mary, alone among humans, is deemed to be immaculately conceived -- a 19th century construct that most people find bewildering. He argues very cogently that these show a decidedly feminine church. The importance of male sexuality is also diminished by the Church’s mandate on clerical celibacy. According to this view, focusing just on the male hierarchical structure provides a very limited perspective on the dynamics of power in the Church.

The official Catholic Church seems determined to continue as a sexist institution, barring women from ministering on the altar and in the confessional. Most theologians disagree with this blinkered approach, but Church leaders continue to assert and justify the mistaken thinking of previous times. And these leaders appoint their successors, men who, very likely, will be selected, based not on their openness to change and renewal, but on their commitment to traditional thinking. The central Christian message is clouded by a determined and intransigent adherence to a conservative mind frame, especially in the area of women’s rights in the Church in the 21st century.

Socialism

A recent note from my friend and former colleague, Dan Abbatelli, raised the question as to whether he is some kind of Socialist because he supports universal health care for all Americans. His comment brought to mind the thinking of the philosopher, Ludwig Wittginstein, who believed that many debating points and differences could be resolved by defining and refining the terms used. I am sure that is an over-simplification of his philosophy, but it does highlight the importance of agreeing the meaning of the words we use. And the “S” word is a great example of a term that cries out for clear definition.

I was an active member of the Labour Party for many years in Ireland. It was an openly Socialist party, which gets about 10% of the vote in Irish elections. The British Labour Party has been in power for more than a decade and they too identify themselves as part of the West European social democratic tradition. They are all part of one of the biggest groupings in the European Parliament, the Socialists. All of these parties are committed democrats, fully accepting the results of popular elections.

The American tradition is very different, although Eugene Debs in the first decade of the 20th century and later Norman Thomas in the 30’s, both distinguished Socialists, had a real impact on politics in their time. And, today Bernie Sanders from Vermont, an iconoclastic political figure, was elected to the Senate as a Socialist candidate. Still, American electoral politics continues to be dominated by the two big parties, Democrat and Republican.

Communism can be viewed as an extreme version of Socialism. One of my professors in University College Dublin, a distinguished Dominican priest, Fr. Fergal O’Connor, always argued that Communism should be seen as a system of State capitalism, where the government controlled all commercial activity as well as owning all the means of production and distribution. Everybody had to be controlled and programmed to act in ways that the government deemed to be for the general welfare. Fr. O’Connor, who was an expert on Plato, pointed out that with a philosopher-king, really a semi-divine being, the Communist system might well work. The reality of the 20th century experiment with totalitarian communism is that it was a nightmare for the people living in these dictatorships. The names of Stalin and Mao and their minions in Asia and Eastern Europe are despised by most people because of their awful abuses of power, resulting in the deaths of millions.

North Korea is the only remaining country that seems to adhere to some version of orthodox communism. A recent visitor reported that there is widespread hunger there and the people rarely smile. China is a very different case. The Chinese rulers now promote individual enterprise and encourage the entrepreneurial spirit, and the Chinese growth rate is the envy of the rest of the world. They have not yet accepted democratic elections, and freedom of speech is very restricted. Their spokesmen identify their country, tongue-in-cheek, I think, as a modern communist state.

While communism has failed dismally, the Socialists in the West, social democrats, can point to major achievements since the end of the Second World War. Universal health care is now taken for granted in all the Western democracies, except, of course, the United States. High school and college education are no longer seen as the preserve of the rich; children from poor and middle class backgrounds now routinely avail of fine higher educational facilities. The availability of decent housing for almost everyone in the West is a significant indication of social progress, and workers’ rights are well established. Unfortunately, poverty is still a reality for some, but not the extreme deprivation that was the lot of many a mere fifty years ago. The Socialist movement has also been to the fore in promoting civil and human rights for all groups in society, especially women.

America has seen similar changes in the last sixty years. The GI Bill, which provided free third-level education to servicemen after World War Two, opened the door to a middle-class lifestyle for millions and provided a big stimulus to economic growth since the fifties. The Democratic Party has largely led the fight for progressive policies. The Republican philosophy is avowedly conservative; they are very suspicious of government social programs and, they have mostly opposed legislation to promote civil or human rights. The Democratic issues resonate with liberals everywhere – universal health care, improving education, especially among the poor in the big cities, better employment opportunities and a taxation system that favors the middle-class over the rich. The new administration in Washington is also committed to removing legal obstacles to unionization in the workplace.

Is Dan Abbatelli a Socialist, or is he just a committed progressive within the Democratic Party – or does it matter what words we use to define him?

The Dropout Problem

Prior to my retirement last December, I spent twenty years working as a guidance counselor in a high school in the Bronx. During that time, I spoke to thousands of parents, mostly at family conferences in my office, but also at various school wide parent meetings. In all that time, I never encountered a parent who wasn’t keenly interested in his or her child’s success. Yet, using high school graduation as the gauge of success, most of those parents have been disappointed. The high school graduation rate in the five boroughs in New York City hovers around 50%; unfortunately, the success rate in the Bronx is much lower, especially among young males.

These are alarming figures. How can serious educators justify the huge expenditure on education when most of the students are failing? Arne Duncan, President-elect Obama’s nominee for Education Secretary, was chosen for the position because he has been confronting the epidemic of student failure in the troubled school system in Chicago, with some success. However, nobody expects the federal government to have more than a marginal impact on school improvement. Washington can, of course, make suggestions and increase the low level of federal education spending, but real change has to come at the local level.

Starting about seven years ago, the New York State Board of Regents is testing a very interesting educational proposition: If you increase the educational expectations from students, this will result in better academic performance by the kids. Expect more and you will get more seems to work in many areas of human endeavor, so why not apply it to the classroom. The old competency tests in the various school subjects, commonly called the RCT’s, have been replaced by the more rigorous Regents examinations. Now, students have to pass challenging State examinations in English, World History, American History, science and mathematics before they can be awarded a high school diploma anywhere in New York State.

The worthy goal is to raise the bar for high school graduation. No serious educator would ever argue against the importance of insisting on high expectations for students at every education level. However, we need to tease out what we mean when we advocate raising standards by making the school curriculum more demanding. Some inner-city, at-risk students come to high school with poor reading and math skills. Many are three or more years behind the appropriate grade levels in reading and numeracy skills. There is a danger that we turn them off school completely by pretending that they are not away behind in basic skills. You end up teaching difficult algebraic computations to students who have not mastered their multiplication tables. A friend of mine, a devoted chemistry teacher, told me that most of the students in one of his classes were completely lost and, consequently, often disruptive while he was teaching a lesson. We expect students who may not be able to spell chemistry to deal with challenging abstract concepts.

High schools are judged largely by their graduation rates. So, predictably, there is an inordinate amount of time devoted to preparing for the State examinations. Has this stress on test results encouraged students or teachers to focus more on learning and understanding the subject matter in the various subjects? Or have the classrooms come more and more to resemble “exam factories,” where there is little attention paid, for instance, to developing a student’s critical abilities, not to mention promoting a love of learning? The result is that teachers scramble to push their students to meet these new requirements because they are largely judged on their students’ exam results. Still, the high school graduation rates in New York City have remained rather static.

The Bloomberg administration has moved away from the model of large high schools, which traditionally served most New York City students. They are seen as too impersonal, lacking the individual touch, which is especially important for at-risk students. The downside of this approach is that small schools find it very difficult to offer a wide curriculum. With limited staff, how can the high achievers be offered an opportunity to study physics or calculus or AP English? Also, sharing gym and cafeteria facilities with other schools in the same building has created planning and logistical problems in some high schools.

I started by talking about parents’ wishes for their children’s success in school. Their desire to see their kids do well is certainly a positive factor for any young person. Many, however, do not themselves have a high school diploma; some are emigrants who speak poor English. A majority of the students come from one-parent households, where often the mother is working long hours in a low-paying job, barely meeting her monthly bills. How can she be expected provide the encouragement that is so vital or the support with homework assignments?

Of course, this is not just an American problem. When I visited Australia last year, I spent a long time talking to a young doctor, a friend of my brother’s family, who was working with a community of aborigines. Her stories of poor school attendance and achievement mirrored my experiences in the South Bronx. We ended up discussing the occasional success stories, trying to identify what these students had that made them different. That will be the subject of another blog.

Blagojevich and all of That

Blagojevich and all of That

Governor Rod Blagojevich is the talk of the country. All the political leaders in Illinois and beyond say that he should resign immediately or be impeached. The federal prosecutor, Pat Fitzgerald, whose parents come from County Clare, stated that his behavior was so awful, so ignominious, that Abe Lincoln would turn in his grave with shame that a leader from his State could be so corrupt.

What, you ask, did this, “devil painted,” to use an expression of my late mother, do to deserve such obloquy? Did he invade neighboring Michigan or Indiana on some false pretext? Surely he killed somebody, or, at least, caused physical injury to some enemy, real or imagined? After all, we expect such stories out of Chicago! However, so far, there is no suggestion that he even threatened anyone.

Let’s look at the facts as they have come out over the last week. First, Blago, as he is now called, took advantage of his power to influence State contracts to milk money for his campaign from contractors. Nobody, so far, says that the contractors did second-rate work or that the bureaucrats did not supervise them properly. No! It seems that prior to any of his fundraisers, phone calls would be made to the appropriate people in these construction companies letting them know what was expected. The figure of $10000 was the amount often mentioned. Not nice stuff, but hardly damning in the light of what we know of American politics. Tonight CNN reported that the 50 billion dollars allocated to infrastructural developments in Iraq was mostly squandered. Who is calling for the impeachment or trial of Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld?

Secondly, the Governor is a first-rate cad, who treated his underlings with disdain. He is completely bereft of any ability for self-evaluation. This empty-headedness combined with overweening ambition has led him into all kinds of trouble, an ideal subject for a Shakespearean tragicomedy. In 2004, he was satisfied that he was going to be asked to be John Kerry’s choice for vice-president. The only question in his mind was whether he should accept or not! In fact, he was never even considered. Everybody knew that he was under federal investigation for the past few years; yet, he showed no circumspection, none of the cuteness that would have alerted him not to incriminate himself.

He loved the real power that comes with appointing a senator to replace President-elect Osama. That is big stuff!! And, it seems that he saw a golden opportunity to squeeze some real cash out of the many possible appointees. The only problem was that they all eschewed such deals, except for the man that Fitzgerald named Candidate Number Five. It seems that Blago’s people got some indication that substantial money would be provided if the right appointment was made. There was no agreement, no definite quid pro quo, and no hard and fast arrangement, just talk of possibilities. This candidate has been identified as Jesse Jackson Jr., and he has been on television adamantly claiming that he or his staff never discussed possible payments with the Governor, and most people seem to believe him.

No doubt, Blago is a blackguard and and a silly and inane fool. He may also be delusional, thinking that he could pull off some grandiose deal from the senate appointment, while the feds were looking over his shoulder. By the way, I thought it completely inappropriate that Fitzgerald, a top federal lawyer, seemed to forget the central importance in American jurisprudence of every citizen’s right to a presumption of innocence, when he publicly excoriated the Governor. Outside of a trial, I expect facts from prosecutors, not sermons. I will watch this case carefully because I think that they have very little on the silly Governor, and I predict that the Clare man will end up with egg all over his face.

Remembering Gurranes

My blog name Gurranes relates to the townland where I was born. It is located in the parish of Tuosist, which starts about eight miles west of Kenmare, a fairly large town in the southern part of County Kerry. My father was a sheep farmer in Gurranes when he married my mother, a returned Yank, who spent eleven years employed as a domestic worker in New York. She was very attached to her parents, who lived in Canfie, a different area of Tuosist, and she was on her third trip home when she met and married my father.

Ireland was predominantly an agricultural country at that time; most families lived in small farms, eking out a frugal existence because the prices paid for livestock were notoriously low. However, farmers had the big advantage of growing their own vegetables and providing their own milk and poultry for their children. Families of laborers and small shopkeepers in the towns often experienced more poverty than their country counterparts. Still, my father sold the farm in Gurranes before I reached my fourth birthday, and we moved to a new house a half mile from Kenmare. He never fancied sheep farming, and my mother was determined that, somehow, her children would get a good education, which was more available, after national school, in the towns than in isolated country areas.

I have a few clear – and happy – memories of my years in Gurranes. Our house was located about three hundred yards from the main road from Kenmare to Castletown, a town in County Cork, which was about the same distance west from Gurranes as Kenmare was in the other direction. Above the house was mostly mountain, with some reclaimed fields where the few milch cows grazed. Below the house, in my memory, was a meadow, stretching in a steep decline to the road. Somehow, I recall rolling down that field on a bright summer day, gamboling, enjoying myself thoroughly. I also remember a clear sense of positive expectation for candy or chocolate from my mother returning from Kenmare on the Castletown bus on a Wednesday, the market day in Kenmare. That Wednesday bus service continued until the 1970’s.

Our nearest neighbours were the Healys. Their house was located directly across the road from the bottom of our lane, and both families were and still are close friends. Evidently, I would make my way down the lane and across the road, causing some consternation in both families because of the danger of crossing the road unattended. So I was warned that a motor car might come by and kill the baby. My childish response to this was mo ca come and kill bobee. For many years afterwards when the families met, I would be greeted humorously by something like “Oh my God! Look at himself! mo ca come and kill bobee!”

I have one other distinct memory of my childhood visits to Mike and Josephine Healy’s house, and that involves my effort to consume a boiled egg. I was more than three years old, but, I felt very frustrated because it seemed the more I scooped the white part of the egg, the more egg there was separating me from reaching the shell and finishing the meal – a similar feeling to climbing a hill in a dream and never reaching the top.

Mike Healy died many years ago, a wonderful man who was always very positive in dealing with our family. Josephine is still alive and healthy. I visited with her in Kenmare Hospital when I was in Kerry in October. Aileen was with me, and Josephine was typically gracious by directing her attention to my wife to make sure that she felt comfortable. She told Aileen that she got a fine man, but my wife gave no indication that she was impressed!! Josephine will not change her mind now!!

THOUGHTS FOR TODAY

THOUGHTS FOR TODAY

I AM OFTEN IMPRESSED BY WHAT YOUNG CHILDREN SAY, AND TODAY, I GOT A GREAT SELECTION FROM Billy O’Sullivan -- letters to God from young children who really have some great observations.

Dear God: Maybe Cain and Able would not kill each other so much, if they had their own rooms. It works with me and my brother! LARRY

Dear God: Please send Dennis Clarke to a different camp this year. PETER

Dear God: I would like to be 900 years, like the guy in the bible. LOVE! CHRIS

Dear God: If you give me a genie lamp like Aladdin, I will give you anything you want --- except my money or my chess set. RAPHAEL

Dear God: If we come back as something else, please don’t let me be Jennifer Horton, because I hate her. DENISE

Dear God: I bet it is very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only four people in our family and I can never do it. NAN

Dear God: I am an American, what are you? ROBERT

Dear God: I think the stapler is one of your greatest inventions. RUTH M

I came across another good quotation in today’s Irish Times, the British sergeant-major’s Sunday morning instructions to his troops during the First World War. Roman Catholics to the right; Church of England to the left; all other fancy religions, fall in behind.

Finally a science writer, William Reville, in the course of an article about whether the human brain continues to function after the body’s demise, points out that we spend very little time worrying about death, which we know is certain, and a lot of time fretting about things in the future that, quite likely, will never happen. Shakespeare said it best: Present Fears are Less than Horrible Imaginings.

The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

The Band Played Waltzing Matilda

I borrowed Liam Uprichard’s car last weekend, and I listened to one of his Dubliners
discs, which included a special favourite of mine, The Band Played Waltzing Matilda, an Australian ballad about the First World War. Since then some of the powerful lines of the song have been rattling around in my mind, reminding me of my deep antipathy to the killing and mayhem of war. “And when I awoke in me hospital bed, and saw what it had done, I wished I was dead – never knew there was worse things than dying.”


I taught a Leaving Certificate History class one year when I worked in Dublin, and I recall that one of the students, Marie was her name, could not understand how what is called the First Great War got started. I wasn’t much help to her because it made no sense to me either. The murder of the Archduke Ferdinand and all that stuff leading to men in trenches killing and maiming each other to gain control of a few yards here and a few miles there.”In 1915 my country said Son it’s time you stopped rambling, there is work to be done, so they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun, and they marched me away to the war.”

War takes a terrible toll in human suffering. Whether in Iraq, Vietnam or Gallipoli, soldiers are placed in impossible situations. Imagine starting every day – day after day – knowing that you may well be killed or maimed before the night comes again. This kind of unreal pressure has to disorient any normal human being. No wonder so many come back from these wars, unable to cope with the real world. I find it hard to understand why most veterans prefer right-wing candidates, the guys who beat the drum and talk about the need for more and more money to be spent in armaments of all kinds. Maybe, having bought in to the heroics of war and the need to assert American power against our enemies, they keep believing that stuff and rejecting the more thoughtful liberal perspective.

Cheney and Bush decided to invade and occupy a Muslim country whose people remember the Crusades by the infidel West the way the Irish remember Cromwell. Both men used their family influence to avoid serving in their war, Vietnam. If they had served, maybe, just maybe, they would have had second thoughts about that stupid invasion. Do statements like “bring them on” and “mission accomplished” suggest any knowledge of real warfare? The reality is so different. “The armless, the legless, the blind, the insane. Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla.”

Am I a pacifist? I am very close to that position, as I understand it. Of course, the Nazis had to be stopped. And what about Pol Pot and other murderous dictators? I don’t have the answers, but I do know that if even half of the money that is spent on weapons every year was directed instead to eliminating poverty and disease, we, in the West would be much safer.

I recommend listening to or reading this powerful Australian ballad. “The band played Waltzing Matilda when we stopped to bury our slain. We buried ours, the Turks buried theirs, then we started all over again.”