I heard a joke the other day about a pious soul who dies, goes to heaven, and gains an audience with the Virgin Mary. The visitor asks Mary why, for all her blessings, she always appears in paintings as a bit sad, a bit wistful: Is everything O.K.?
Mary reassures her visitor: “Oh, everything’s great. No problems. It’s just ... it’s just that we had always wanted a daughter.”
That story comes to mind as the Vatican wrestles with the consequences of a patriarchal premodern mind-set: scandal, cover-up and the clumsiest self-defense since Watergate. That’s what happens with old boys’ clubs.
....
The Catholic Church still seems stuck today in that patriarchal rut. The same faith that was so pioneering that it had Junia as a female apostle way back in the first century can’t even have a woman as the lowliest parish priest. Female deacons, permitted for centuries, are banned today.
That old boys’ club in the Vatican became as self-absorbed as other old boys’ clubs, like Lehman Brothers, with similar results. And that is the reason the Vatican is floundering today.
....
Yet there’s another Catholic Church as well, one I admire intensely. This is the grass-roots Catholic Church that does far more good in the world than it ever gets credit for. This is the church that supports extraordinary aid organizations like Catholic Relief Services and Caritas, saving lives every day, and that operates superb schools that provide needy children an escalator out of poverty.
This is the church of the nuns and priests in Congo, toiling in obscurity to feed and educate children. This is the church of the Brazilian priest fighting AIDS who told me that if he were pope, he would build a condom factory in the Vatican to save lives.
This is the church of the Maryknoll Sisters in Central America and the Cabrini Sisters in Africa. There’s a stereotype of nuns as stodgy Victorian traditionalists. I learned otherwise while hanging on for my life in a passenger seat as an American nun with a lead foot drove her jeep over ruts and through a creek in Swaziland to visit AIDS orphans. After a number of encounters like that, I’ve come to believe that the very coolest people in the world today may be nuns.
Yes, there is the other Catholic Church, the church which does not get the headines, the church in which my family and friends remain and which they don't even recognize when they read the headlines, the church that serves the least amongst us, not only in mission fields abroad, but mission fields here at home, and carries on with the work of the Gospel in spite of the failures of their leadership.
To my family and friends within the Roman Catholic Church who remain to do the work of the Lord, I offer you my prayers, my encouragement, and my support. If I could ask one thing of you, and I freely admit that I, as an outsider, have no right to ask anything of you, and yet I am bold to do so: Please do not feel compelled to defend the indefensible. Tell me about your church on the ground. Tell me about your ministries. I see in my own town that God's kingdom is brought into reality right here and right now by faithful members of the Body of Christ, who are also faithful members of the Roman Catholic Church. Tell me your stories, for I know the good news is plentiful.
