Vatican Investigates U.S. Orders

The Vatican has launched an investigation of active orders of women religious in the United States, an initiative that has provoked both strident resistance and tentative applause. As noted here in Mere Comments, strong advocacy for women's ordination is one reason that Rome has finally begun an investigation of liberal orders.  But for many lay Catholics, the more important issue on the table is a long-overdue review of the present ministry of U.S. orders that have strayed from their original charism. Some teaching orders no longer serve the Church's mission in the world, preferring to engage in political advocacy or to serve the poor in secular occupations.

Yesterday, a New York Times article on the Vatican "apostolic visitation" identified two schools of thought: 

"While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world."

Perhaps the most vocal advocate for U.S. nuns who oppose an investigation is Sister Schneiders  who emerged as a lightening rod for the liberal camp after her email criticizing Rome's action was widely distributed on Catholic websites and blogs:

“They think of us as an ecclesiastical work force,” said Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California. “Whereas we are religious, we’re living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet.”

Is Sister Sandra right: Is the Vatican trying to subjugate U.S. women religious, once again?Is the Church headed for an era of class warfare? Certainly Sister Sandra's stance reflects the position of many progressive nuns I have known and respected over the years. Some were strongly influenced by feminist ideology. Others reacted to the problem of clericalism, a widespread problem in the church that demeaned and infuriated many women religious who had devoted their lives to service for others. The play and film, Doubt, suggests that clericalism and unchecked clergy sexual abuse in the fifties and sixties prompted  women religious to flee the convent and their subservient position in Catholic parishes.

But it is also true that feminist ideology poisoned many U.S. religious orders, rendering them spiritually and materially barren. Today, the most liberal orders boast few, if any, recruits. Rather, orders that wear the habit, live in community, and serve the mission of the church by continuing to transmit and defend Catholic faith and morals -- "in season and out of season"--are attracting vocations. This is a fact that many progressive-minded women religious prefer to ignore. 

Indeed, while many such orders argue that they can best serve "humanity"--specifically the poor--by shedding these distinctive elements of traditional religious life, as well as the practical mission for which the orders was founded, the reality is that individualistic and short-lived efforts cannot match the power and continuity of communal work. Once burgeoning teaching orders have dissipated their energies, with individual nuns choosing various types of religious and secular employment. Inner-city schools have been the hardest hit. Once an oasis for the poor,  hundreds of these schools now close every year.

A case can be made that the apostolic visitation is at least two decades too late. Many religious orders are near death. Even if they heeded Rome's advice and reconsidered their past choices, they appear beyond repair. Still, there is great hope to be found in the orders that attract what many call the "John Paul II" generation. Many young women have joined new and old orders, and live their countercultural vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience in an increasingly uncomprehending world.  For more information on the apostolic visitation and on the state of U.S. orders of women religious, check out my posts on The Cathoholic. 

The Ongoing Divisiveness of Women's Ordination

The issue of women's ordination is a topic that received Touchstone's attention many year ago. It has received very little of late, perhaps in part because we've said enough about it and because it has ceased to be an issue in certain circles--most denominations have gone one way or the other with it and things have settled down as the debate has cooled. But the embers are flaring up again as some Anglicans who have left the Episcopal Church (or have been shown the door) are coming together to form the Anglican Church in North America. Among the dissenters and re-formers, there is no one mind on the issue of ordaining women to the priesthood.  Discussions, like this one at TitusOneNine, are taking place in cyberspace and real meeting places. It's not an issue that admits of accepting both positions, such as, say whether an Orthodox congregation favors pews or not.

I wrote this rather long-winded editorial back in 1992 about women's ordination. At one point I wrote about what an observer from the future might see (like you, reader, in 2009?):

Our observer would also report a major cultural change in how we value people. Despite our rhetoric, we value people mostly by their function in society and not their creation in the image of God. We value people on the basis of what they own and what they do. So, our observer might note, to deny a women employment in the pastoral office is clearly to deny one of the positions valued in our society and to make her a second-class citizen. Having a meaningful function is the chief road to self-fulfillment, rather than simply being a good person—achieved by submission to and formation by the Holy Spirit of God. The ordination of women then becomes inevitable not by the weight of theology but by the pressure of the surrounding culture. Indeed, much of the language surrounding claims to the pastoral office is not that of biblical service but of personal “rights” and self-fulfillment.

The observer from the future might also note that the roles based on familial relationships—mother, father, wife, husband—along with the labor they require, have been devalued, even sneered at, while society values profoundly impersonal work—science, finance, engineering—which are based on data. It does not matter whether you are a man or women to work with this neutral data. Even positions with a more personal element to them, such as counseling, amount to diagnosing specific problems defined by the research of social scientists. Literature and art, once the expression of what is human, are thought of as the publishing or movie “industries” and are strictly business. Whatever is corporate is impersonal and functional. And so with the pastor of the franchise church. Since he is no longer a “father” to his flock, a woman pastor need not be a “mother” to hers. The pastorate is now unisex, governed more by modern social sciences than by patriarchal Scriptures.

When we establish a unisex pastorate by essentially denying significance to the male-female nature of humanity, we have done more than simply bring the secular “equal opportunity” ethos into the sanctuary of the Church. We have paved the way for chaos. If there is no created orderliness to sexuality and sexual roles, then indeed we not only may—but must—bless same sex “marriages.” Children can be raised by lesbian “couples.” And denial of the pastorate to homosexuals is indefensible.

Such is the environment in which we find ourselves debating the issue of women’s ordination.

That was 1992. If you want to read more of what Touchstone published, and better than what I wrote, here is S. M. Hutchens on "God, Gender, and the Pastoral Office" from 1992.

Where do Southern Baptists Go From Here?

I have been reading the David Dockery Book on Southern Baptist identity and the future.  The essays by Timothy George and Russ Moore were exceptionally interesting and provocative.  

A question has lingered in my mind as I've read the book.  Is there a future for Southern Baptists as a distinctive branch of the Christian church?  

It seems to me that the great contribution of the Baptist church has been to conquer the Christendom model of a watered down church into which basically everyone is baptized as an infant in favor of a regenerate church model where the only people in the church are those who want to be there.  The Baptists carried the flag of the voluntary, free-will church and seem to me to have essentially prevailed in that respect.  The Catholic church, itself, has largely conceded that the faith is voluntary and should not be compelled by the state.  Sure, Catholics, Presbyterians, and others still baptize infants (which is a signficant difference), but that is the free choice of the parents and not a statist initiative or a cultural expectation.

So, if it is the case that the great Baptist identifiers are a voluntary church (which leads to religious freedom), faithfulness to the Bible, and baptism by immersion of those capable of claiming their own faith in Christ, what part of that is really distinctive today?  To me, it sounds like a giant swath of evangelicalism.  So then, why not just be part of that larger group (beyond Southern Baptists) with which they agree instead of continuing as a separate branch?  

This is the great question and one that interests me intensely.  As an example, it is hard for me to understand what would separate Southern Baptists and the Christian & Missionary Alliance from being one body.  What would separate those two from a variety of other evangelical denominations (like perhaps the Evangelical Free Church)?  

Would love to see some discussion around this idea . . .

Conservative Alliances Forming

That's what seems to be going on here, according to OneNewsNow, and I am not surprised.

Here Lies Feminist "Scholarship"

Bill Tighe sent me this link to Christian Hoff Sommer's article in the Chronicle of Higher Education about Persisent Myths in Feminist Scholarship (the last word should have quotes around it....) Examples are given, including an entry by Joan Zorza, a domestic-violence expert, in a textbook college students are assigned:

Zorza also informs readers that "between 20 and 35 percent of women seeking medical care in emergency rooms in America are there because of domestic violence." Studies by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Bureau of Justice Statistics, an agency of the U.S. Department of Justice, indicate that the figure is closer to 1 percent.

One more:

Consider The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World (2008), by the feminist scholar Joni Seager, chair of the Hunter College geography department. Now in its fourth edition, Seager's atlas was named "reference book of the year" by the American Library Association when it was published. "Nobody should be without this book," says the feminist icon Gloria Steinem. "A wealth of fascinating information," enthuses The Washington Post. Fascinating, maybe. But the information is misleading and, at least in one instance, flat-out false.
One color-coded map illustrates how women are kept "in their place" by restrictions on their mobility, dress, and behavior. Somehow the United States comes out looking as bad in this respect as Somalia, Uganda, Yemen, Niger, and Libya. All are coded with the same shade of green to indicate places where "patriarchal assumptions" operate in "potent combination with fundamentalist religious interpretations." Seager's logic? She notes that in parts of Uganda, a man can claim an unmarried woman as his wife by raping her. The United States gets the same low rating on Seager's charts because, she notes, "State legislators enacted 301 anti-abortion measures between 1995 and 2001."

Feminist brain-washing for unsuspecting students (who pay for it)? Can't we just call such tenured "scholarship" something like an "oppressive structure of falsehood"?

Grateful for Your Support

On behalf of the staff of the Fellowship of St. James I thank the many readers of Mere Comments, Touchstone and Salvo who have sent in support in the last six weeks. We have received $633,304 total over the course of the last twelve months, exceeding our annual goal by $13,304 (don't worry, we will only spend it on publishing and advertising the magazines). You have been very generous, and we are deeply moved by your kind support. We ask for your continued prayers for us and support during this next year, as we continue in our labors for Christ, Creed and Culture. The letters and messages we have received have been humbling and encouraging. It is by God's grace that we continue. May God bless you.

A Day & a Half

That's how much remains in our current fiscal year. Please consider a donation at this time, as we are set to begin a new fiscal year for the first time in twelve years without our usual major quarterly grant on July 1. Anything you can donate at this time will help us end the year strong so that we can pay our bills this month and over the summer. Many, many donors have contributed so that today we are within just a few thousand of our goal for June 30. Thanks so much! You can donate on-line here, or mail a check to Touchstone, P.O. Box 410788, Chicago, IL 60641. Thanks!

"Gay" Bishop Prophesizes Collapse of Anglican Church in North America

New North American Anglican grouping won't last says gay bishop
By Chris Herlinger
New York, 29 June (ENI)--A new North American group claiming to embrace "traditional Anglican values" will not last long, the Episcopal Church's first openly gay bishop has predicted.

V. Gene Robinson, an openly homosexual man living openly with a partner, whose 2003 consecration as bishop of the diocese of New Hampshire created a backlash among traditional believers within the U.S., church, told Ecumenical News International he does not believe the new Anglican grouping has long-term viability.

"A church that does not ordain women or openly gay people - I don't see a future for that," Robinson told ENI after delivering a sermon on 28 June at the First Presbyterian Church in New York City during the city's annual gay pride festivities.

Court Overturns Sotomayor

Uh, oh, will this come up in confirmation hearings? The Supreme Court finds that white firemen were denied their rights in promotion, contrary to the view of nominee Sotomayor, who ruled on the case earlier.

The Gospel of Mark (Driscoll) & His Critics

By Justin D. Barnard

June 26, 2009 - Mark Driscoll, pastor of Seattle-area Mars Hill Church, has continued to draw fire for his frank discussions of sex, both from the pulpit and on his church’s blog. Both John MacArthur and John Piper have criticized his exegesis of Song of Solomon; many have been critical of the “unwholesome talk” that is unbecoming one charged with the proclamation of the word of God. Still, some (including John Piper) defend Driscoll’s ministry for its faithfulness to the Gospel.

Sadly, most of the discussion about Driscoll is reflective of a deeper problem that infects not only evangelicalism writ large, but Driscoll’s views on sex as well. Typical criticisms of Driscoll suggest that his preaching style and methods “go too far.” He’s “coarse” or “vulgar” – or so Driscoll’s detractors allege.

What is striking about this critique is what it assumes about sin and the Gospel. Sin and redemption are, on this view, principally, if not exclusively, matters of the heart or soul. The effect of the Gospel is primarily about having a “clean heart” (not a sanctified, embodied life). Unwholesome talk despoils sanitized hearts. Hence, it is to be avoided in order to maintain the pristine condition of a soul that’s been washed by the blood.

Meanwhile, the life that believers lead in the flesh bears little to no relation to the life they possess in the spirit. Ironically, this is what enables Driscoll’s defenders to argue that his verbal faux pas is excusable since overall, Driscoll’s ministry has reached hundreds of “souls for Christ.” Moreover, by focusing their critical efforts exclusively on his lack of circumspection in speaking about sex (which, for the record, is clearly problematic), Driscoll’s critics disclose their tacit agreement with this dichotomized Gospel that undergirds Driscoll’s very teaching about sex. Specifically, (within marriage, of course) we can do whatever we’d like with our bodies; let’s just not talk about it publicly, since that might corrupt our souls.

Even if he were as circumspect as the most sanctimonious of Puritans in how he spoke of it, the content of Driscoll’s teaching about sex (even within marriage) is inexcusable. Driscoll seems to think that traditional marriage is the gateway to the license of mutual consent. Thus, like the world, he fails to grasp that human sexuality might be ordered toward ends to which even husband and wife might be subject. Rather, just like your garden variety advocate for moral legitimacy of homosexual behavior, Driscoll views sexual activity (of course, within traditional marriage) as subject to nothing other than the mutual desires of the participants.

Driscoll’s teaching reflects an impoverished understanding of the Gospel. For it presupposes that the moral boundaries expressed in Scripture have no internal order. They are, in that respect, effectively arbitrary. Thus, in Driscoll’s view, provided that we remain within the arbitrary boundaries expressed in God’s word, God’s saving grace in Christ gives us license to follow our desires. In practice, this means for Driscoll that a husband and wife may do things in their marriage bed that a gay couple may not since the former, having had their souls saved from the disembodied stains of sin, are doing such things within the essentially arbitrary boundaries that God has given.

Such a view is deeply mistaken. The Gospel does not free us to give license to our desires; it orders our desires aright. In ordering our desires, it guides and governs our behavior – to wit, the very acts of the body. Yet, this aspect of the Gospel is apparently lost not only on Driscoll, but his critics as well. For by and large his evangelical critics fail to call Driscoll to account for the fact that the things of which he speaks publicly should not merely not be said; they should not even be done.

The furor over Driscoll’s teaching about sex within marriage should be an occasion for evangelicals to reflect deeply on their understanding of the Gospel. If the Gospel is nothing more than fire insurance for the soul, then both Driscoll and his critics are right. We can do whatever we’d like (Driscoll), as long as we don’t talk about it in “dirty” ways in public (his critics). But if the Gospel has genuine implications for the conduct of our embodied public lives, then we must one and all repent of the dialectical quagmire that we’re currently in over Driscoll’s pillow talk from the pulpit. For it reflects a Gospel eviscerated of its power to transform human life - body and soul.

Justin Barnard teaches philosophy at Union University, where he also serves as Director of the Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Intellectual Discipleship. 

Pseudogamy 108

     Two observations, from Canada, where we spend the summer.  Down the road from me live an elderly couple who have been married for 62 years.  They are utterly comfortable with one another, and that means, as anybody knows who observes happily married people, comfortable in their skins, with his being a man and her being a woman.  He runs a perpetual yard sale out of his garage, selling anything from salt shakers to new bicycles, a generator, a washing machine, and so on.  She rolls her eyes at this habit of his, but indulges him in it, because he has put that same habit of pottering to good use in the home, turning a trailer into a snug ten-room outfit that seems, in the finished basement, to go on forever.  And it could go on forever, too; when the island is without power (as it was, over and over last winter), he just turns on his generator.  He has all kinds of backups down there, so his wife will never have to worry about anything; a regular dugout a la French Family Robinson.

     If you drive up the highway from his house, you will see a neat patch of land, apparently in the middle of nowhere, mowed and trimmed, with a white picket fence surrounding a large white cross.  He erected that cross in honor of his wife's father.  In the old days, the highway that runs round the island was a mud road, impassible when it snowed in the winter.  So the father of that family would lead his wife and children up to the road to pray.  This they did whenever they could not make it to the church, four miles away.  Because that place was sacred to his wife and her family, it became sacred to my neighbor too, even though he himself never worshiped there, and never even grew up on our island.  He just considers it a good husband's thing to do, as evidently his father-in-law considered what he did to be the fatherly thing to do.

     Meanwhile, stuck indoors one day on account of rain, I caught a few minutes of a Canadian fashion show televised every afternoon.  The hosts are named Steven and Chris, and they are too absurd to watch; walking parodies of the mincing, lisping, girl-mimicking, louche gay man.  Chris, who appears to be a desperately insecure fellow, told a story about how he had waited an hour to get into the hottest nightclub spot in Bangkok, only to find when he got to the door, dressed to the nines, that they didn`t allow anyone in with flip-flops.  And he'd been dying to make his killer appearance in there.  So he ran out into the street and bought the first pair of shoes he could find: expensive orange crocodile shoes.  (I have no idea what crocodile shoes are; I guess shoes made of crocodile leather; I don't know why anyone would want them, but then, I have no idea either why anyone would want to visit a nightclub in Bangkok rather than, say, have dinner with an ordinary family on one of the floating houses.) 

     It occurs to me that the pseudogamy of the male homosexual is essentially related to the need to put on an act, an act that the man not burdened with same-sex attraction can hardly understand.  Suppose that because of the neglect of your father or brothers, or because their cruelty, or because of some episode of molestation or seduction, you find it difficult to identify yourself as a male.  You might then compensate by the practice of a campy and exaggerated masculinity, such as is to be found in the gymnasium among weight lifters; or you might become what you see, usually by caricature, as girlish; or you might flit uneasily between the male and the female roles, but you will always see what you are doing as something donned and doffed.  Of course, in the very act of sodomitical relations there is a pretense of being the male or being the female; while all along the relations are with someone like oneself.  The narcissism of the attraction -- one is attracted to what mirrors oneself -- is at the same time expressed by means of an act, that one is not oneself, one is actually a girl in disguise, or a hyper-man, or whatever the idol-making machine of the mind can suggest.  Hence among male homosexuals the self-advertising, the exhibitionism, the camp, the grim unseriousness, the childish fascination with bodily functions, and the other fascination, akin to the former, with death.  Of all such things the old fellow up the street is wholly innocent, because he is no more aware of his manhood than he is aware of his skin, which is as it should be.