Justice, radicalism, humility and getting your hands dirty is the real work of the Church, writes Sarah Carey
What a gift for the media! A wild rumour is published. Someone in authority is obliged to deny it. Thus are a thousand newspaper articles and hours of airtime spawned. Hurrah!
This week it was the idea that Pope Francis might create female cardinals. It was news to me that cardinals need not have taken Holy Orders, and in days gone by were often laypeople. Unfortunately some of the precedent are not the best examples. Take Cesare Borgia, who was made a cardinal in 1493. He was, of course, one of those Borgias; the illegitimate son of Rodrigo, who became Pope Alexander VI. Alexander is the one played by Jeremy Irons in the television series The Borgias.
Outlandish
The sexual, financial and political antics portrayed in the series are outlandish, but based on enough truth that you can understand why the practice of appointing lay cardinals came to a screeching halt. In real life, Cesare got his comeuppance when he contracted syphilis, though he eventually managed to die in battle, rather than from the gruesome infection he caught from his frequent relations with prostitutes.
Still, we shouldn’t let those unfortunate facts stand in the way of a good idea: why not appoint laypeople, and why not appoint women? People can talk all the talk in the world about ‘women’s theology’ and valuing women and blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard it all before in a hundred different contexts: in the corporate world, media, politics, medicine and the Church. Yes, yes. Everyone values women. But actions speak louder than words and a thousand excuses can always be found not to do something. Until someone just does it. Appoint a woman and that action does more than all the patronising speeches and gestures in the world. If the obstacle to action is not the law, but a lack of imagination and bravery, then the imperative increases.
It would ‘send a message’, as they say, that the Church means business about women. But while they’re at it, what other messages could they send? One thing that struck me about the list of potential candidates is that these are not just women –but a certain kind of woman. It included our excellent former President Mary McAleese and another Irish woman I’m embarrassed to say I hadn’t heard of before – Prof. Linda Hogan of Trinity College. Another was Sr Teresa Okure, a professor at the Catholic Institute of West Africa. These women, who are superbly successful in their fields and of whom we can be extremely proud, are academics.
I value intellectual activity highly but if we’re sending message, I wonder if the focus on academic knowledge is the right one to be sending?
The enormous strength of the Church, certainly in Ireland, is the parish and the everyday pastoral activities of the priest and lay people. The Church I see isn’t about dogma with men (or women) in red hats obsessed with clericalism, parsing and analysing theology in Rome. Whatever enthusiasm exists for the Church is based on priests looking after their communities, from baptising the newborn to burying the dead. In between there is what the Taoiseach, Enda Kenny referred to in his famous speech in reaction to the Cloyne Report as, “The radicalism, humility and compassion which are the very essence of [the Church’s] foundation and purpose.”
The humility and compassion is lived out every day by priests and the radicalism is found in the work of people like Fr Peter McVerry or Sr Stanislaus Kennedy who have worked with the poor and outcast.
Great weakness
In contrast, the great weakness of the Church has been the fatal errors of judgement made by men who were so distant from the ordinary experience of human life, that protecting institutions over children, seemed like a rational choice. They were men who were extremely clever, highly qualified and experts in canon law. But so buried were they in their books, inside the walls of their palaces and places of study, that the simplicity of right and wrong passed them by.
Knowing everything in the books, but not enough about people, led them into error. Mary McAleese and Linda Hogan are both married with children, which would save them from this fatal insularity. But I think we could do more. Pope Francis has been marvellous about promoting humility and the necessity to remember the poor. If a great gesture is ever to be made in appointing a layperson, and a woman, then why not go for broke and appoint someone who works on the ground with the poor? Let’s look outside the professors and seek out someone who is living out the Gospel in a very real, if non-academic way. That would ‘send a message’ that justice, radicalism, humility and getting your hands dirty is the real work of the Church.
