Religious Maturity: A Catholic Feminist View
By Mary E. Hunt, PhD
March 20, 2002

Presentation from CPCSM's 2001-2002 Speakers' Series,
The Sacramentality of Human Experience: Empowerment Toward Prophesy

I appreciate the general rubric of this series, "The Sacramentality of Human Experience: Empowerment toward Prophecy." It reminds me of the words written some 15 years ago of the late Kevin Gordon, a theologian and activist in San Francisco, who coined the term "the sacrament of coming out." He was ahead of his time in thinking about it. I have long claimed that the uniqueness of the Catholic tradition is its combination of sacrament and solidarity.

By sacrament I do not mean the seven (or six if you are a girl, or five if you are a lesbian woman and can be neither ordained nor married) signs of grace we are used to in Catholic circles. Rather, I mean a more expansive definition of the communal acts of lifting up certain common human experiences experiences to public expression BECAUSE they are holy, not in some magic sense to make them holy.

Likewise, I see solidarity as purposeful alignment with those seeking love and justice. Put together, sacrament and solidarity make for a great religion, indeed they are one of many recipes for mature religiosity, the sense that one is living in concert with the cosmos and in harmony with one's fellow human beings and creatures. Any one of us knows this only in the dimmest sense. Our Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, pagan and other religious colleagues who seek to live in right relation have their equally valid approaches to religious maturity.

Let me spell out my approach, beginning with the current situation in its three most startling components: the war in Afghanistan, the Enron debacle and the priest pedophilia scandal in Boston. I cite three common threads in those cases: different values, lies and duplicity, and power as the reigning problems. Then I will conclude by suggesting how religious maturity might help us to cope with these. I hope you will find the transfer value to the specific issues with which you are dealing helpful, and that in our discussion we can apply some of these insights to your local situation.

It is obvious that the early 21st century will be punctuated by September 11. Three major current matters framing the context in which we live:
A. The war in Afghanistan with the "Axis of Evil" not far behind as a new theatres (North Korea, Iran and Iraq);
B. Enron as proof that the economy is as strong as the character of the people who comprise it;
C. Archdiocese of Boston pedophilia scandal bringing down the house of cards that is one patriarchal/ kyriarchal religion.
Let me say something about each of these as they overlap to form the contemporary gestalt in which we seek right relation as religiously mature people.

A. The War in Afghanistan
After Sept. 11 everything was in place to have a war, nothing in place to adjudicate the crimes committed. War is war. Despite the unspeakable acts of September 11, war is part of the vocabulary of civilization that takes on new and more dangerous meaning with each generation unto nuclear destruction. Feminist scholars in religion include critical reflection on daily life (lo cotidiano, as mujeristas name it) in order to influence public policy. Basic insights from our several decades of activist scholarship are useful in the analysis we hope will lead toward justice.

First, we are suspect of private approaches when public/political work is needed. Religiously mature people are concerned with more than themselves. Many U.S. commentators act as if the world's problems began when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center. They ignore the links between globalized economic injustice, political differences and fundamentalist-fueled fervor. Tragic as the results were, simply focusing on the lives lost neither brings them back nor prevents such atrocities from being repeated.

Likewise, the pitiful personalized question, "Why do they hate us?" asked by well fed Americans with stock portfolios rings hollow. What is a stake is not something individual, like a grudge or a slight, but the reality of hegemonic power facing its challengers. To pretend otherwise is naive.

Second, feminist analysis of structural power helps to make sense of the ensuing war. Religious maturity invites a look at structures as well as individuals. The reaction of the Bush Administration was to respond with military force. Another option was to see the terrorist acts as crimes appropriate to adjudication in a World Court as some governments eventually agreed was the case.

But all the players were in place for a war and not an international tribunal to be found. An arms build up with no outlet, an economy in recession for which war is a "good" short term solution, domestic officials left flat-footed in the face of thousands of deaths, even a convenient prison in Cuba to send detainees made war easier than patience.

The flags went up like spring flowers and the US was back in combat mode that felt so familiar to older generations. President George W. Bush had a focus for his term in office and the bands played on, all at the enormous price of countless civilians and yes, thousands of soldiers, squared off over issues many of them still do not understand. Such immaturity is morally embarrassing.

Terms like "homeland security" and "axis of evil" are thrown around with abandon. Those who read history hear the strains of an earlier time. The continued shadow of Saddam Hussein haunts while Taliban and Al Qaeda forces are routed in a war that spread quickly. Bombing is off the front page of the newspapers, but bombs continue to rain over Afghani militia forces. These will be the war years indeed.

Third, feminist work in religion emphasizes connections between and among issues. Religiously mature people see the links that form the whole. The collapse of the Argentine economy, the notorious implosion of the energy conglomerate Enron and the self-destruction of the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston over priest pedophilia are related contemporary instances of kyriarchal powers run amuck.

Chicago-style economists' callous disregard for working people in Argentina, the executives of Enron lining their pockets while pension funds evaporated, and Cardinal Law's indefensible and incredible denials of knowledge in the face of scores of pedophile accusations against diocesan priests smack of degrees of the same hierarchical problem. Participation in decision-making is denied. Checks and balances are missing. Lies are accepted as normal. Eventually the cards come crashing down and those who suffer most are innocent, just like in war.

Fourth, feminists in religion are familiar with assaults on civil liberties, having suffered them when it comes to the free exercise of pagan, wiccan and goddess religions, for example. Religious maturity presumes more than a nodding acquaintance with other faiths. Hence we recoil at the notion that unauthorized searches and seizures are carried out, that surveillance can increase without due cause, that persons from racial/ethnic groups are profiled and singled out for extra scrutiny.

Even in the name of peacekeeping, this does not convince us that the ends justify the means. Like its cousin, the so-called just war theory, this outmoded ethical approach leaves too many bodies and souls in its wake. We protest and offer more nuanced ethical reflection that holds several goods in tandem.

Finally, feminists in religion query what of the divine is present in these war years. Religious maturity includes the divine as a part of every justice-seeking equation. What does Godde think of dueling religious ideologies? Is She on anyone's side? Does Sophia laugh at our foolishness or cry at our cruelty? Perhaps the divine cares more for the scorched earth and the dry rivers than for any one of us. These are questions that elicit our deepest commitments and invite our best efforts. War does neither.

Why do we see this so clearly and those in power not? I suggest that three dynamics account for this. First, different values hold sway with hegemony not cooperation prized by our government officials, US power not power sharing is the goal.

Second, lies and duplicity play a major role: now we know a shadow government is in place on which even some congressional leaders were not briefed. Enemy troop strength is kept from foot soldiers lest they realize how difficult their job really is. Election year posturing plays a role in the war calculus.

The third factor is the power to carry it off without much opposition. In this case, the Democrats are in disarray; Al Gore now sounding like war monger; little left of the religious left though there are several nascent religious coalitions making little difference.

How are religiously mature people to act while the killings continue and the threat of a wider war is omnipresent? I suggest that we bring other values to bear, that we deny the lies and denounce the duplicity, and that we work to develop alternative power bases, easy words, tough practice.

B. The Enron Debacle
A second part of the context in which we find ourselves is the Enron debacle. It is a local story in Texas, but international story insofar as the tentacles of this corporation stretch to dozens of countries around the world. Details are unfolding, but the outline is clear with same three problems emerging.

Different values hold sway. The prevailing belief that I do not share is that capitalism unfettered is fine. You can make as much as the market will bear. Buying and selling energy that virtually everyone needs is smart business and how it is done is not so much the matter as that it makes profit.

Lies and duplicity abound in this case. Those who warned of the unacceptable accounting practices were ignored while the top management lined their pockets just before the ship sank with the workers going down with their pension funds. Now officials say "He said, she said" pointing the finger at one another with accounts of what happened that differ so greatly that only lying will explain them; suicides and firings, families broken apart and friendships rent asunder; what is life worth? As a neighbor often reminded my father in his retirement community, "You never see the Brink's truck go out behind the hearse."

This was a classic case of the power to carry it off. Whether the accounting firm Arthur Anderson or Enron itself, unregulated market power allowed this system to be built and sustained without apparent interference. Meanwhile, there is no safety net for those who lost their life savings, for investors whose portfolios suffered, for those who lost their jobs. All this is power gone awry, power based literally on "every man for himself" with no concern for the common good.

The stock market has been up the last few days and some say recession is on the wane. But welfare programs that do not protect the poor are not changed, companies that will turn out like the Wizard of Oz abound. I fear the worst is ahead of us. Religiously mature people are not simply offended, but outraged that human life means so little to so many.

It is hard to imagine how we few justice and peace workers can stop war and tame capitalism. But the fact that we want to is not a weird idea based on some genetic defect. Rather, it is a direct and reasonable result of our Catholic tradition of love and justice, and parallel values in other religious traditions, that provides us with some hints and glimpses of a world we prefer to the one we live in today.

So when the institution that pretends to transmit that message acts in ways similar to the war machine and the market madness, it is a cause for some reflection. That is precisely the situation we face with regard to Catholicism as we seek religious maturity.

C. Pedophilia scandal in Boston
I contend that new values will not come from the institutional church, which has now been exposed for the lies and duplicity that prop it up. It is quickly, praise God, losing its power. Indeed many of us have been calling for wholesale church change, arguing on the basis of feminist insights and GLBTQ sensibility that the Catholic Church is as much a part of the problem as the solution. Sadly, we are correct, more so than we knew, with attendant challenges for religiously mature people who have to face this reality squarely. Boston, in my judgment, is simply the tip of a large iceberg.

The Archdiocese of Boston pedophilia scandal is another example of the same kinds of problems found in the war and Enron. No doubt there are some false positives, and all priests are not pedophiles. But as I read the data, this incident has so thoroughly damaged the Catholic Church in a city where it is still powerful (only in Chicago, Philadelphia and New York City would it have similar impact) that I do think full recovery is doubtful. Note that a letter went out recently from seven Catholic law professors at Harvard asking for Cardinal Law's resignation, as did the conservative Boston Herald.

The Cardinal's own house organ, the diocesan Boston Pilot, raised, however tentatively, the matter of mandatory celibacy. The Cardinal now denies it, afraid Rome will squawk pointing to the fact that the editorial only reprised the issues raised at parish speak outs, but it is clear that the kyriarchal church is sending out tests balloons of all sorts. There is a crisis at hand and dissent in the ranks.

In my view, the problem, while sexual, is really at its heart about power and not so much about sex. I do not mean to suggest that the sexual dimension of it is not important. Indeed pedophilia is criminal activity and needs to be prosecuted as such. But the deeper problem is a corrupt power structure. Instead of focusing on pedophilia, which is by almost everyone's lights a hideous crime, imagine that the cover-ups had been for illegal drug use settled out of court; gambling debts paid with the collections; alcohol abuse unto drunk driving left unprosecuted. Or, imagine if the sexual abuse of women, as in the well documented cases of abuse by priests of nuns, were taken as seriously as when boys and young men are victims.

Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza hit the nail on the head when she coined the term "kyriarchy" to describe "structures of lordship," a system of inter-locking forms of oppression that lacks controls, functions without checks and balances. That system is why what might have been an incidental problem is now an epidemic in Boston with allegedly 10% of the diocesan clergy involved.

One ought to expect no more priests than lawyers, doctors or teachers to be pedophiles, systems being equal. Then on first, or, at worst, second offense the professional standards would kick in and the offender would be history. But what is egregious in the Catholic case is that the system functioned to protect the perpetrator, silence the victim and keep the general public in the dark. That is not so much a sexual problem as a systemic one.

Let me use my same tripartite analysis to suggest the scope of the problem and conclude with what religious maturity might suggest in this case:

(1) Different values
Religions offer different sets of values. In the Catholic case, we have been taught that our values run counter to the prevailing social norms such as war and greed. Ironically, in this case the insurance companies will accomplish what progressive theologians and activists have tried to change. We have insisted that the model of church must mirror the values underlying it or it will not work. Now we have more proof than we need of the fact that authority vested in a few for the many is inferior to democracy, and that it is dangerous.

We have said that setting aside and privileging some people, namely clergy, at the expense of the laity is bound to be corrupting. We have claimed that seizing upon control of sexuality as the distinguishing feature of people in ministry will lead to unhappy and unwanted consequences. All of these and more consequences are being played out in Boston with tragic and costly consequences for all involved. I am pessimistic about the insurance companies' ability to reform the churches after seeing what they did with health care. But blessings on them!

(2) Lies and duplicity
A second dimension that contributes to the crisis is the unbelievable web of lies and duplicity that are an integral part of the Catholic Church. I suggest reading Mark Jordan's book THE SILENCE OF SODOM (University of Chicago Press, 2000) for an eye-opening, and sometimes stomach-turning view of what he calls the "honeycomb closet" that is the Catholic clerical culture. It is my view that lies on one score lead to lies on another.

This is very tricky on the matter of homosexuality but I think we need to talk frankly about it especially since the Pope's own spokesman has suggested that homosexuality maybe the problem here. Rather fancifully from the perspective of canon law, he suggests that gay priests may not have received their orders validly and/or licitly. Like married Catholics who divorce, maybe there ought to be some annulment of their ordina-tions, he muses. This is not my reading of Canon Law, but just the dubious suggestion that homosexuality causes pedophilia is reason enough for serious discussion.

I believe this shows who is religiously mature and who isn't! Kyriarchal officials have hidden beneath their ignorance for too long. Now they must confront the reality of homosexuality, the difference between it and pedophilia, and the relationship of celibacy to both.

Let me suggest a way to think about these matters that is conducive of religious maturity. I think we have to take as a given that a high percen-tage, upwards of 50%, perhaps closer to 75%, of Catholic priests are gay. Few knowledgeable people dispute this. Given that pedophilia, though data are hard to come by, is usually heterosexual (men and young
girls) there is clearly an anomalous situation here. But that by no means suggests that the cause of pedophilia is homosexuality any more than it is heterosexuality. Let us put that logical confusion to rest without further ado.

Mandatory celibacy means that all sexuality is circumscribed for Catholic priests, not only for gay priests, but also heterosexual priests with women lovers. We must ask what kind of people want to live with control over their sexuality, and then recognize that those same people live in a clerical culture that rewards lies about sexuality. This is a recipe for disaster and disaster is what we are experiencing.

I think honesty and good sense compel us to say that the heart of the problem is not sexuality as such there are plenty of well adjusted GLBTQ people who do not engage in pedophilia, including gay priests. There are also a lot of pedophiles that are not gay. Rather the heart of the problem is a system that fosters lies about something so basic as sexuality about which most people lie anyway.

Tragically, the easiest sex is with someone who won't hold you responsible. Who better than with a child in a system where "father knows best," and it is his word against the child's. To reiterate, neither homosexuality nor celibacy causes pedophilia. But a system that discri-minates against gays, imposes celibacy as an unnecessary requirement and then rewards lying makes it easier to get away with pedophilia.

Now bishops claim they did not have access to psychological info on the full impact of pedophilia, especially how hard it is to cure. I believe them. But it never occurs to them what else they don't know, like about women or about homosexuality that might change their views on other topics; yet they persist in their ignorance on those matters as well. No one is pushing the obvious, that it is a system gone awry a system that needs fixing, not simply a small sexual minority whose illness requires treatment.

Some argue, erroneously in my view, that celibacy is the problem. The problem is mandatory celibacy and the psychological health of those who will embrace such a basic demand in order to do their job when it is clearly not necessary to the work. It would be like demanding that all priests be vegetarian.

Using the vegetarian analogy so as to see the systemic implications, while it may be healthy to be vegetarian, it is by no means necessary to priesthood. The question is not about being vegetarian, but about accepting circumstances imposed on one's life that are irrelevant. The great temptation in such a situation, in an effort to deal healthily with an unhealthy system, is to lie. The vegetarian who eats the occasional hamburger is like the celibate who has a little sex.

The distinction between celibacy as not getting married and chastity as not engaging in sexual conduct would keep many people from seeing a priestly fling as much of an indiscretion. But such distinctions are lost on the rank and file who, Bill Clinton notwithstanding, think sex is inter-course and if you are celibate you don't engage.

The problem is that sex is more than heterosexual intercourse. Pedophilia takes many sexual forms, not only heterosexual intercourse. So the same logic applies to countenance it, except that it is illegal activity with persons who can suffer irreparable harm. That is a big "except." Experienced in the same system that allows other loopholes, it is easy to see how the problem got out of control. It is tragic and demands immediate changes, not just in the matter of mandatory celibacy but in the entire outmoded clerical system.

Like being a public vegetarian and a closet meat eater, the problem is not, under most circumstances, simply the sex or the meat, but the fact of living in a system that rewards duplicity. Because of the mandatory nature of it, one never really knows/feels that the choice for celibacy/vegetarianism was made freely. This engenders a kind of spiritual immaturity and often resentment. When a system requires something unnecessary for the job, whether celibacy or vegetarianism, the question is what kind of people will live with the consequences. In my view, this is an invitation to religious immaturity.

I do not mean to suggest that all people who live with mandatory celibacy are religiously immature. Indeed, religious orders have more of a rationale for it than diocesan clergy. They too, I think, need to revisit the question in a postmodern context. Nonetheless, I am claiming that a system that circumscribes one's choices about something so basic as sexuality is not the optimum context for developing religiously mature people.

(3) Power to carry it off
The third dynamic I have outlined in the war and Enron situations is the power to make the unjust, unhealthy aspects stick. This is the heart of the problem. Rome permits no external check on the discretionary power of bishops. There is simply too much power concentrated at the top.

The handling of the Boston cases is evidence of this. Settlement talks with 86 defendants indicate the Archdiocese will spend $20-30 million. The law requires only $20,000/victim in a non-profit setting, but the Cardinal is willing to pay many times that to close the books, cut his losses. How would you feel as a parishioner in Boston? Would you put another nickel into the collection? It is power on the decline, but power nonetheless to go this far despite all the hoopla.

Justice surely cannot be measured only in money, so no matter what the settlement it won't be enough. Still, justice would be served with changes in policy and polity, not simply on the matters of celibacy, homosexuality and women priests, but on models of ministry. Religious maturity in my circles focuses on what Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza calls "a discipleship of equals" as the normative model of Christian community. The Catholic Church is increasingly far from it with devastating consequences.

What I have tried to sketch is a context of war, economic injustice and ecclesial corruption held together by different values than I cherish, lies and duplicity which hold sway, and the power to make it all work. I have painted a rather bleak picture because it is bleak, especially for those people in the rugged mountains in Afghanistan (I think of women with their children), for the people who are unemployed because of the Enron officials' greed, and, of course, for the victims of priest pedophiles.
It is bleak, too, for those confused, misguided priests, some of whom are now going to be looking at prison time. Life is short for all of us and I believe we can imagine and work our way into better options.

What then might mature religious people do that might be helpful? I am not naïve about the David and Goliath situation we face, and even my feminist work is not without its flaws. Feminism claims such values as inclusivity of differences, participatory process to a fault, a preferential option for women and children who are marginalized. But in truth, feminism has its soft underside as well.

White, middle class feminists have repeated many of the mistakes of our forefathers in making claims for ourselves and other women that simply do not correspond in method or content to the larger reality of most women. We have ignored crucial areas of racism and colonialism, for example. We have left aside economic justice when it has suited us. We have allowed our own issues to keep us from seeing the urgency of other matters; for instance, the justice that demands the ordination of women, but the absurdity of adding one more person to a system that does not work for men.

Our enthusiasm for contraception and reproductive choice, which I encourage, must be balanced against population and development concerns throughout the world. Here feminist theory is not flawless either. The reality is that feminism does not guarantee moral perfection, and we who are its religious adherents must be frank in acknowledging that. Still, it provides a running start for something new.

How might we bring such values to the table, noting how they dovetail with the best of our Catholic tradition, for a more promising future for ourselves and our children? I return to my three issues: Different values; lies and duplicity; power to make it work, as I ponder what religious maturity demands.

(1) Naming the values at hand is a good place to begin. In the case of war, naming US power and might as wrong is a first step toward acknowledging another way. To those who say our safety is compromised if we let out guard down, citing September 11th as evidence, I say how do you want to live? In fact, nostalgia for pre-September 11th is really a desire to live without fear on our soil, without expectation of a surprise attack, a luxury most countries, and surely those we have now called the "axis of evil" will never know. To want it for ourselves is to want it for others. That is religious maturity.

Enron exemplifies a get-rich-quick scheme that finally points to the elephant in the living room, namely, capitalism itself. Is this the best way to allocate the resources of a finite planet when 5% of the world owns more than 50% of the world's goods? Is this system working when millions of people are hungry, HIV-infected, uneducated and without the possibility of meaningful work? Can't we imagine and put into practice a better way? Religiously mature people try.

The Catholic Church is arguably the most powerful religious institution in the most powerful country in the world. I do not hate it or revile it. Rather, I love it enough to mourn that what could be such a powerful force for good has squandered its moral capital. I think of Catholic ethicist Daniel C. Maguire's insight that we have the task to embrace what he calls "the renewable moral energy of religion" as our task.

It is an ecological phrase, one that gives us a wonderful imaginative challenge to take what is best of our tradition love, justice, equality, mutuality and build on that foundation a new movement in the history of religion. Progressive, inclusive, feminist Catholicism will be a new tradition, not only because of its kyriarchal antecedents, but also because of the pluralistic nature of our context.

I suggest reading Diann Eck's book, A NEW RELIGIOUS AMERICA: HOW A CHRISTIAN COUNTRY HAS BECOME THE WORLD'S MOST RELIGIOUSLY DIVERSE NATION (Harper San Francisco, 2001) for a crash course in how this new context is unfolding. Future Catholicism will be open to learning and borrowing from other traditions, not closed and rude about the insights of other faith traditions as the kyriarchal church is now, as in the papal document Dominus Iesus, which calls into question the salvation of those who are not Catholic.

(2) Are lies and duplicity part of human nature or built into corrupt systems? Perhaps a bit of both. Rather than be self-righteous about this, I suggest we try telling a little more truth, better, telling the truth a little more often. If we think of the number of times in a day when we are tempted to look away from the reality in front of us, stretch the matter a little, leave aside some important detail, deny the reality of own and others' failings, we so do so at our peril.

When "don't ask don't tell" becomes the operative assumption, very little good flows. I do not mean to stand in judgment of anyone's veracity but my own, but I mean to create and participate in organizations and structures that encourage and reward truth.

(3) On the matter of power, I could sink into pessimism. It seems as if small centers like CPCSM, WATER, where I work, Quixote Center, the Grail, Critical Mass, Women's Ordination Conference, Dignity, Catholics for a Free Choice and our many friends, social justice groups of all stripes are a beleaguered and perhaps outmoded band. Perhaps we are simply good people who waste our lives trying to make a difference when we would do better to own more stock, vote more proxies, become high ranking military and ecclesial officials to change what I have critiqued from within.

No thanks, I say, both because those cultures repel me and because I am not persuaded that change ever takes place from the inside without outside pressure. No thanks, because religious maturity requires that we seek to live the values and models we envision now, not for generations to come.

This analysis may be helpful to look at other crucial contemporary ethical issues such as the death penalty, the School of the Americas, health care, welfare reform, and see how a difference in values, lies and duplicity and disproportionate power skew those in the direction of injustice. We can use it to think through the challenges from the transgender community and push the horizons of even the most progressive Catholic thinking on
sexuality.

In so doing, by engaging in imaginative as well as strategic thinking, we can begin to live like first generation religious people, new Catholics, religious people who practice what they preach, or at least try mightily to live with integrity. That is religious maturity.

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