‘How happy are the poor in spirit:
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Happy the gentle:
they shall have the earth for their heritage.
Happy those who mourn:
they shall be comforted.
Matthew 5:3 - 4
Paul often referred to his
addressees as saints, or the holy ones. He wasn’t writing about those very
holier-than-thou canonised variety of saints, but the regular every day faithful who chose to live out Christian
lives with conviction. And, they weren’t perfect by any means.
I have known some great saints;
people of patience, honesty, trustworthy and trusting, compassionate, kind,
gentle and loving. Oh yes, some liked to party. Brother Gabriel Preston,
Brother Damian Ryles, my late dad and mum, my father-in-law Jim, my grandfather-in-law
Basil O’Halloran, Sister Mary Sarto, great aunt Gwendoline. And yes, they were
not or are not perfect.
The people who impact on our
lives for the better, are those who challenge us by the way they live their own
lives. They may be great teachers, great academics, sports people, financiers,
military, clergy, religious, artists, musicians, builders, librarians,
homemakers or office workers – they are good at what they do, but they have an
enormous capacity to care about others, they want others to dream dreams, reach
for the stars, be healthy and know love.
Gwendoline, whom we called
Aunty Jimmie, was a nurse. The pictures of her in the 1920s and 30s present a
vivacious and attractive young woman. She took to nursing like a duck to water.
She did service in New Guinea, and returned to Australia a wiser human being.
She never married; she was one of the first graduates of the College of Nursing
Australia’s Diploma in Nursing Education, taught, and then retired to nurse her
ailing sister. She lived a wonderful, rich and fruitful life, nursing and
caring for thousands. Her life affected so many, and none more so than my own.
Her humour and concern for others was infective and influenced many young woman
to take up careers in nursing. Aunty Jimmy was certainly not what I would call religious, but she was certainly faithful.
And a saint.
Matthew (5:1 – 12) sets out his
criteria for ‘sainthood’ – the Beatitudes. To whom does the kingdom belong? It
belongs to the poor in spirit, the gentle, mourners, those who hunger and
thirst for what is right, the merciful, the pure in heart, peacemakers, those
persecuted in the cause of right, those who are abused and persecuted on
account of their faith. They are indeed saints.
Such saints are within our
grasp. We know them, they are not superhuman beings, but they are superb human beings.
This coming Sunday, is of
course, All Saints Day, in recognition of God’s grace so generously bestowed on
us through the exemplary lives of our forebears in faith. This is followed by
All Souls Day on which we recollect our many loved ones who have gone before
us, Brother Gabriel, Sister Mary Sarto, Basil, my mum and dad, and Aunty Jimmy,
holy ones indeed, each chosen by God, and loved by him – and they will be made
perfect by him.
Peter Douglas
HEAD OF SCHOOL SERVICES, NORTH
Living inside the Church as a
woman, you just get used to the exclusion
By Carmody Grey
I am young, female and
Catholic. That alone makes me incomprehensible to many of my contemporaries. To
make matters worse, I have chosen to work in and for the Catholic Church as a
theologian. People are sincerely mystified. Why do I labour on behalf of an
institution that regards me as constitutionally incapable of ordained ministry
or teaching authority? My personal identity is clearly confused or
contradictory.
As for my fellow feminists,
mystification is the best I could expect. They see Catholicism as a religion of
the worship of a Father and his Son, who chose 12 male apostles to govern an
institution in which his authority can only be represented by men. I am not so
much confused as traitorous. I am accustomed to these reactions. Proud of my
scepticism of secular mores, I smoothly explain that the Catholic Church is an
institution which respects and values women; an institution in which I am taken
seriously.
I am well versed enough in the
traditional practice of the Church, and the rhetoric which justifies it, to be
able to rehearse the arguments convincingly – the dignity of motherhood;
male-female complementarity; the importance of Mary; and so forth. I like to
quote Balthasar: the Catholic Church is the last institution on earth which
values sexual difference.
At a UN conference recently, I
found myself talking to a Mormon. A former Catholic, he explained to me with
enthusiasm how the priestly hierarchies of Mormonism were naturally attractive
to him. He was proud to tell me that Mormons value the priesthood even more
than the Catholic Church does, because every adult male Mormon is ordained a
priest. As if he was saying – if you want a religion which values priesthood,
we are the real thing, because all our men are priests.
It is a shock to realise that
the continuity he perceived between Catholicism and Mormonism is quite real.
Although in our tradition not every man is a priest, every man is
constitutionally capable of representing the sacramental priesthood of Christ.
And every woman is not.
I do not understand why it is a
shock to me. I live with it every day. The patriarchies of Mormonism make me
sickened and angry. I was brought up to believe that women can do everything
men can, and most things better. I had a liberal, progressive, secular
education, which taught me that where men are, there women can be – should be.
It is thanks to people who believed this too that I am able to vote, be
educated, inherit property. How is it that I apply this logic against Mormonism
with righteous anger; but when I see it ignored in my own faith, I justify
it?
The truth is that, living
inside the world of the Church as a woman, you just get used to the exclusion
of your kind from visibility in sacramental ministry, in authoritative
teaching, in governance. You cannot be upset about it every day, every Mass. As
a Catholic intellectual who has accepted the task of defending the credibility of
the faith, you try to make sense of it, to see it as “good news”. You learn
nuptial theology; you learn “theology of the body”; you learn “the New
Feminism”; you get good at explaining why “equal” doesn’t mean “same”; you
gather fragments of tradition which contain untapped resources for valuing
women.
But there is a desperation
here. I can’t help wondering how it affects me that in this most foundational
sphere of my life, in the vision of faith by which my deepest identity is
formed, there are no female bodies sacramentally representing Christ to me.
What does it do to me that the
redeeming humanity of Christ can never be represented to me by a body that is
like my own? What does it do to me that the authoritative teaching I will spend
my life studying and expounding will only ever come from men? What am I
internalising, by schooling my mind and my heart in this world?
I know that simply because I,
and we, do not like something does not mean that God does not will it. I know
that my feelings are not a sure guide to the true and the good. I know that
“what it is like to be me” is not normative for anyone. This is what I teach my
students. I pray and live according to this knowledge. But still. It is
difficult to be young, female and Catholic.
Carmody
Grey is a
doctoral student in theology at the University of Bristol.
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