Inclusive liturgy

I write the Intercessions for our Catholic womanpriest liturgies, and after Sunday's Ascension and Mother's Day celebration, our musical director said they should be read in all churches, and he asked me to email him a copy.  After I sent them he urged me to publish them, at least in my blog, if not elsewhere.
They are an example of how the symbolic interpretation of doctrine can bring meaning and assistance to human lives, rather than promoting the worship of an external god. For me "Christ" is not a human individual; it is the divinity within all. 

PETITIONS

For officials in secular and religious governing bodies to manifest the Ascension of Christ by promoting the welfare of all humanity without prejudice toward any group, we pray.

For people of the world ravaged by weak economies, natural disasters, and calamities caused by humans, either willfully or accidentally, to manifest the Ascension of Christ by rising from their Passion to new levels of health and prosperity, we pray.

For people of the world dulled by habit, ignorance, and comfortable consumption to manifest the Ascension of Christ by rising to new levels of awareness and concern for fellow creatures, we pray.

For mothers and mothering caregivers who are ill, impaired, or alienated to be lifted in an Ascension to inner healing, we pray.

For us gathered here to manifest the Ascension of Christ by allowing our deepest aspirations, yearnings, and revelations to guide us toward creating more satisfying structures in our communities and our nation, we pray.

WE INVITE PETITIONS FROM THE ASSEMBLY

3 women and Half the Sky

The three women in Cleveland who were abducted and endured years of isolation, rape, beatings, and more have incited widespread sympathy, but how many people are aware of the NRA vendor who sells a shooting target that is "your ex-girlfriend"?
And how many people understand the larger issue of violence against women, especially as religion impacts it? Upon reflection, anyone with a mind should see the obvious connection between worship of a male-only God and worldwide abuse of females.

What can we do?  We can be aware.

To that end, I post again the following, which I posted in March of 2012:

Half  the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn has more practical suggestions for transforming the world than any other book I know. It is painful to read. The first chapters are so packed with excruciating information, “the brutality inflicted routinely on women and girls in much of the world,” I could stand to read only small chunks at a time.

Its detailed evidence of sexual violence against women and girls—honor killings, bride beating, bride burning, genital cutting, forced prostitution, rape as a tactic of war, acid to disfigure, and selling of 7- and 8-year-old girls into sexual slavery—tells us that gender violence and discrimination is the paramount human rights problem of our time. Indeed, it tells us that nothing would do more to ameliorate the problems of the world than raising the status of women.

I say it’s painful, but you will read Half  the Sky easily, with absorbed attention, because these journalists, husband and wife, know how to tell engrossing stories; it is not academic. One part of you seeks relief from the brutality; another part of you can’t put down the stories of individual women who defy their tormentors and with dogged determination escape their circumstances and now are helping others.

Some facts that document and illustrate the horror:

• Biology produces more males than females, but China has 107 males for every 100 females (a greater disproportion among newborns), India has 108 and Pakistan 111. What makes the females disappear? The murder of women (femicide), the murder of female babies, deliberately less care and feeding of girl babies.

A Nobel laureate economist estimates that the globe should have 107 million more women.

• “One third of all women worldwide face beatings in the home. . . . Women aged fifteen through forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die from male violence than from cancer, malaria, traffic accidents, and war combined.”
• “Far more women and girls are shipped into brothels each year in the early twenty-first century than African slaves were shipped into slave plantations each year in the 18^th or 19^th centuries . . ."

Foreign Affairs observed: ‘It seems almost certain that the modern global slave trade is larger in absolute terms than the Atlantic slave trade in the 18^th or 19^th centuries was.’”

A story:

Meena and the other girls were never allowed out of the brothel and were never paid. They typically had 10 or more customers a day, 7 days a week. If a girl fell asleep or complained about a stomachache, the issue was resolved with a beating.

And when a girl showed any hint of resistance, all the girls would be summoned to watch as the recalcitrant one was tied up and savagely beaten.

“They turned the stereo up loud to cover the screams,” Meena said dryly. . . .

“They held my children captive, so they thought I would never try to escape.”

From a victim (sincerely, not ironically):

 . . . if the wife is truly disobedient, then of course her husband has to beat her.

From the chapter “Rule by Rape”:

Woineshet—a battered, pint-sized girl surrounded by men who were threatening her—told the court official that she had been abducted [and raped], and she pleaded to be allowed to go home. The official, a man, didn’t want to listen to a girl and told Woineshet to get it over with and marry Aberew.

“Even if you go home, Aberew will go after you again,” the official told her. “So there’s no point in resisting.”

Half  the Sky also exposes the complexities of achieving change. Genital mutilation has cultural approval in all of north Africa; women insist on it. Sometimes aid groups have committed blunders that worsened conditions for women and girls. Banning prostitution, for instance, does not work, and legalizing-regulating may not work either.

Nothing works better than education. So say women in the field and the world’s chief economists in the UN and World Bank. They state that educating and empowering women in the developing world is the most effective way to reduce poverty and, for the highest possible return on investment, to raise all economic indicators and bring benefits to whole societies. Women are the linchpin of effective economies. But education does not mean imposing Western values (learn how Tostan finally is making progress toward overcoming female genital cutting in Africa after Western methods failed).

I invite readers to consider the pain of these women and also the hope of real transformation, only possible if we allow women to become confident and powerful. Half the Sky lists effective organizations and gives specific suggestions. I don’t see how you could read these chapters without being changed in some way.

In churches, we need to change the talk about a lord or lords in the sky. Women of the world have too many lords lording it over them—they don’t need a god-lord besides. Yes, it’s hard to confront the aging, ultra-conservative men ruling from Rome, but not harder than the cultural changes we demand of the developing world.

Is God laughing or crying?

I think She’s doing both. Get ready to hold your mirthful sides and nod your head as you laugh at these cartoons on John Chuchman’s site. You’ll say, “Right on!” Be sure to click on some of his other pages.

Chuchman requests that I add this site on growth through loss and love.

 

Francis affirms Benedict's rebuke

Colman McCarthy asked, “What will it take to get me back?” Apparently he means get back to Catholicism, but for me the question is, “What would it take to get me back to respecting Catholic leadership?” 

The news that PopeFrancis reaffirmed Pope Benedict XVI's rebuke of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious does not promise changes that both McCarthy and I want from the hierarchy:

•  “Go to confession collectively . . .”
• “Confess to the sin of harassing the American nuns, . . .”
• “the sin of stonewalling the appeals of pedophile victims.”
• “the sin of expelling Fr. Roy Bourgeois from the priesthood . . .”
• “the sin of demeaning gays and lesbians, . . .”
• Give the laity equal status.
• Put an end to priestly celibacy, male-only clergy, bans on contraception and altar girls.

A pretty thorough list that still leaves out a critical piece for me—stop the sexist God-talk. This tops all the rest because correcting it would naturally correct all the rest.

Readers, look at McCarthy’s list and see if you can find one not related to male domination. You think maybe pedophilia?  Can you really believe the scandal would have happened if women had been equally represented in clergy and hierarchy?

Official and non-official explanations of sexist liturgical language insist that the He’s and Him’s do not stand for worshipping a set of males. Then why insist on keeping it? Why continue training the Christian world to value male over female? I believe Catholic leadership is conditioned and sabotaged by its own sick God-talk. Its deep-seated core belief, its North Star, is belief in the supremacy of males.

Speaking in St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis repeated the old saw that women have “a special role,” code for no role in leadership or decision making. Combined with affirmation of Benedict’s rebuke of LCWR, this signals an intention to bar women from leadership. Francis’ rejection of papal pomp and his solidarity with the poor, welcome and attractive as they are, do not make up for his apparent acceptance of female subordination.

He can’t succeed, of course. Inside and outside of the Church the rise of feminine power proceeds, because Spirit does not take orders from the pope. To unseeing eyes it is not apparent, but we are moving toward equality between males and females, between colored and white, between various sexual orientations, between ethnic groups, and between religions. We are moving away from European and male domination of the globe. Despite loud splashes of evangelical color in the media, the Christian era is closing in the West as we move into the post-Christian era.

What would it take for me to respect Catholic leadership? I only ask the question rhetorically because I don’t expect the hierarchy to change collectively. I do expect continuing challenges to the official narrative, including those by individual bishops and cardinals. Little explosions of resistance will pop up here and there, in starts and stops, in a relentless, inexorable process of crumbling hierarchical domination and intimidation.  

Easter

posted March 31, 2007
From a religious point of view, Easter is a more important Christian feast than Christmas, but it gets less attention because there’s less money to be made from Easter. So much for our supposedly Christian nation.

Like Christmas, Easter derives from pagan myth and ritual. The ancient religions surrounding the first Christians celebrated various saviors coming down from heaven and going back up to heaven.
A striking parallel to Easter is reported by church historian Henry Chadwick. He tells of the god Mithris, whose death was mourned on March 22 and resurrection celebrated on March 25.

The likeness of Good Friday and Easter to religious festivals of the pagans prompted them to accuse Christians of plagiarism. Besides the idea of dying and rising again in three days, Christians apparently borrowed ritual ideas.

My reporting this may give the impression that I have little respect for Holy Week and Easter. Wrong. I regard the Paschal mystery as a profound spiritual mystery, one centered on transformation, one that grows in meaning as I grow older.

But it doesn’t belong to Christians alone. Our tradition received appreciation of the link between dying and rising from both Judaism and paganism. Mythologist Joseph Campbell found thousands of transformation stories in myths of the world.

The word “paschal” is derived from the Hebrew word for the annual Passover celebration, when Jews commemorate their deliverance from Egypt. God brought death to Egyptian homes but passed over Hebrew homes on the night of their escape. They celebrate their break from bondage, the promise of a new home, and their birth as Yahweh’s people.
New Testament accounts say that Jesus was put to death on or around Passover, and so Christians and Jews celebrate the feast most important to them at the same time.

Pagan religious festivals honored several deities who died and rose in three days. The region where Christianity began teemed with death and resurrection stories prefiguring that of Christ.

Especially poignant is the story of Persephone, daughter of Demeter, who gifted humankind with fertile land and bountiful harvests. Persephone is playing in a field when she is abducted by Hades, god of the underworld and brother of Zeus, who is Persephone's father.
Heartbroken and mourning fiercely, Demeter learns what happened. She vows never again to let the earth be fruitful until her daughter is restored to her. Zeus relents, but Persephone has to spend part of the year above and part of the year below. When she arises every spring, the earth turns green again.

This mother/daughter story balances against the father/son story of Christianity as both portray the central figure dying and rising—both symbols of transformation. And the Eleusinian Mysteries, which commemorated Persephone’s rise, were celebrated for almost two thousand years, about as long as Christianity is old.

These mysteries had much in common with Holy Week mysteries. Initiation, fasting, and extensive preparation preceded them. There were processions, music, purifying with water, ritual eating and drinking, fire and light symbolism—all the elements of masterful Holy Week liturgies.

At the climax of the Eleusinian Mysteries, participants had a beatific vision that released them from the fear of death. They were transformed. Christians are urged to be transformed into new people, to die to our old selves and rise to new selves. But transformation from death to life permeates all of existence.

New shoots in spring arise out of dead vegetation left by winter. The end of a job opens the door to a new path in life. Births and deaths come together in uncanny ways. More than one family has seen new grandchildren arriving upon the passing of a grandparent.

The Paschal mystery tells us that beginnings and endings are joined in a mysterious way. John 12:24 states, “Unless a grain of wheat fall to the earth and dies it remains just a grain of wheat. But if it dies it produces much fruit.”
Understanding this soothes the pain of change. Every end’s sadness opens to a fresh beginning. Easter and other religious myths and rituals symbolize this holiness in all creation.

Pundits on the pope

The latest National Catholic Reporter (Mar.29 – Apr 11) feeds my addiction to religious politics with a wealth of opinion, reflections, suppositions, and guesses about the new pope. Joan Chittister (p. 13) expresses weary longing for reform of the Catholic Church, and many observers offer suggestions for cleaning up its moribund institutional structure.

John Allen (p. 9) reviews qualifications for high offices in its governing structure. Antonio M. Pernia (p. 12) states,

In a complex world—more multicultural, pluralistic, postmodern, global and technological—it is no longer possible for one person to govern alone. . . .

Just as a superior general of religious orders has a council to govern with him, cannot a pope, too,  have a council (e.g., of six or eight or 10) who would share the responsibility of leadership with him?

Emeritus Archbishop of San Francisco John Quinn calls for

major decentralization of Vatican and papal authority . . . through the creation of regional bishops’ conferences and synods of bishops with decision-making authority, . . .

He said there is no impediment in doctrine or canon law that would prevent the creation of new patriarchal structures in the church.

Well, it would be some change but hardly encouraging. Thomas Reese (p. 17) appreciates the need for more substantive reform. His prescription for reforming the Curia resembles my decades-old prediction that the Vatican would eventually evolve into a centralized clearing house for Church matters.

It should be organized as a civil service and not part of the hierarchy of the church.

Thus my reforms start with not making members of the Curia bishops or cardinals. The current Curia is organized like the royal courts of the 17^th century where princes and nobles helped the king run the nation. . . . where the monarch held the legislative, executive and judicial powers.

Modern governments recognize the need for a separation of powers. Agencies like the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith should not make the rules, and then act as police, prosecutor, judge, jury and executor in dealing with theologians.

In other words, it should not exercise top-down power over the universal Church.

Jamie Manson (p. 11) offers the most provocative and unsettling comments by reporting that Cardinal Bergoglio was close to a movement little known in the U.S. but globally powerful. She quotes a researcher of Communion and Liberation who wrote,

CL boldly claims that the Church embodies authoritative truth that is binding on society at large. [It claims] a kind of inerrancy.

Manson warns,

Those who hope Francis’ humility indicates he may decentralize Rome’s authority or relax the demand for absolute orthodoxy may want to read more about Communion and Liberation’s understanding of the papacy.

It's as if Jamie Manson were answering me personally after reading my past ruminations about the new pope. Her facts suggest that Pope Francis will not address the institutional Church’s most pressing need—shared power. On pelvic issues his bias toward traditional teachings is clear.

We’ll have to see whether the Catholic Church will be a stabilizing or destabilizing force in the 21st century as the globe transitions to the post-Christian age.

March 26, 2013
Thomas Reese, former editor of America:
on Bergoglio’s opposition to Liberation Theology and on his alleged complicity with Dirty War tactics:

Part of the problem was the use of the term "Marxist analysis" by some liberation theologians, when they sought to show how the wealthy used their economic and political power to keep the masses down. The word "Marxist," of course, drove John Paul crazy. . . .

As provincial, Father Bergoglio was responsible for the safety of his men. . . . The junta did not get information from Bergoglio. Contrary to rumor, he did not throw them out of the society and therefore remove them from the protection of the Society of Jesus. They were Jesuits when they were arrested. . . .

Andrew O’Hehir:

Francis represents a break with tradition in several ways. . . . But the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio emerges from a Jesuit order that has been largely purged of its independent-minded or left-leaning intellectuals, . . .  

it’s difficult to imagine that he can or will do anything to arrest the church’s long slide into cultural irrelevance and neo-medieval isolation.   

Jim Wallis of Sojourners:

……. reports of the new pope being a “bridge builder” between Jesuits and other orders and, more widely, between conservatives and liberals in the church. How welcome that would be. ”

Wallis said the new pope must address these fundamental issues:

1. First, the church must indeed be transformed to become known, as Francis of Assisi was, as the defender of the poorest and most vulnerable.  . . . Sadly, the Catholic Church’s hierarchy is not best known for those primary issues today.
2. Second, Pope Francis must address, with both compassion and justice, the enormously painful reality of church’s sexual abuse of children. . . . the horrible sins of pedophile priests and cover-up bishops must be repented and reconciled.
3. Third, the new pope must reverse and redress the Vatican’s recent censure and, in my view, mistreatment of its own sisters. These Catholic religious women around the world represent the best of Catholic social teaching. Pope Francis could and should embrace the women of the church instead of suspecting and disrespecting them.

Garry Wills:

“ The next pope should be increasingly irrelevant, like the last two. The farther he floats up, away from the real religious life of Catholics, the more he will confirm his historical status as a monarch in a time when monarchs are no longer believable.

Some people think it a new or even shocking thing that so many Catholics pay no attention to papal fulminations—against, for instance, female contraceptives, male vasectomies, condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, women’s equality, gay rights, divorce, masturbation, and artificial insemination (because it involves masturbation).

But it is the idea of truth descending though a narrow conduit, straight from God to the pope, that is a historical invention. ”

 . . . “truth is not determined by a majority vote.” But that is precisely how the major doctrines like those on the Trinity, the Incarnation, the Resurrection were fixed in creeds: at councils like that of Nicaea, by the votes of hundreds of bishops, themselves chosen by the people, before popes had any monopoly on authority. .

Tom Roberts, editor at large of National Catholic Reporter:

. . . Francis also received enthusiastic endorsements from liberation theologian and former Franciscan priest Leonardo Boff of Brazil. . . .

Even his critics say he never acted to hide abuse and there appears to be agreement that Bergoglio acted with increasing resolve . . .

Pope Francis said:

We have to avoid the spiritual sickness of a self-referential church. It's true that when you get out into the street, as happens to every man and woman, there can be accidents. However, if the church remains closed in on itself, self-referential, it gets old. Between a church that suffers accidents in the street, and a church that's sick because it's self-referential, I have no doubts about preferring the former.

These words of Francis give almost more hope than his admirably simple lifstyle.  

It was not possible that someone more liberal could be elected by a bunch appointed by the last two ultra-conservative popes.

Change in the Church is coming and will continue to come from the bottom up and from outside in, not from the Vatican. Power centers rarely experience success at effecting lasting change. That has to come from the collective consciousness, and changes there are outside anyone’s control.