Dear Edith: Do I have a place in the Catholic Church?

Dear Jena,

You ask, "Is there a place for me in the Catholic Church?" I think that it may be useful to think a bit about what kind of "place" you are seeking, and what kinds of places the Church offers to you, both in its ideals and its practice.

Most fundamentally, the place of everyone in the Church is a place at the Eucharistic table and at the feet of Christ - the place of a disciple, of a sinner approaching God for mercy. A place as one member in the body of Christ, a place of communion with everyone in the Church. The Church offers this place to anyone and everyone who seeks to know, love and serve Christ in union with his Church in good faith. You are more than welcome to join all of us at Mass - I hope that you feel welcomed to our celebration practically, as well as ideally. You are always welcome to receive the healing power of Christ in confession.

Every Christian also has a place in the mission of the Church. That mission is to "go forth and make disciples of all nations." "Love one another as I have loved you." To "offer a continuous sacrifice of praise." Like Jesus, we are "to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favour." He tells all who would follow him, "when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind." As St. Paul so aptly put it, we are each a different part of the one body of Christ, and we each have a different role to fill in the mission of the Church, but each of us has a role. That certainly does not exclude you! It sounds like you are already serving the poor directly, a privileged and highly esteemed role in the Church. So there are the two most important places in the Church - the place of penitent disciple, hungry sheep, and the place of worker in the vineyard. If you would like to take those places, they're yours.

we are each a different part of the one body of Christ, and we each have a different role to fill in the mission of the Church, but each of us has a role.

Perhaps what you are also asking is whether there is a place for your ideas about femininity and spirituality in the Church. "Am I to be condemned or patronized for my passionate need to be seen as an autonomous being outside who I birthed or my biology?" Certainly not in the least. The Church has always celebrated the vocation to marriage and motherhood but has prized even more highly other vocations for women. In fact, if you look at the large number of women saints, few of them were canonized for being excellent wives or mothers. The Church holds them up as examples of fervent prayer, of service to the poor, teachers of the faith, founders of communities and missions, and for their witness of martyrdom. I have never had an experience in the Church of being "just a mother," or "just a woman." I have been a student, teacher, community member, community leader. Only a small fraction of homilies I've heard have involved motherhood, and even fewer femininity. Most of them are about the spiritual life, the Christian life, and the Gospels. "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus."

if you look at the large number of women saints, few of them were canonized for being excellent wives or mothers. The Church holds them up as examples of fervent prayer, of service to the poor, teachers of the faith, founders of communities and missions, and for their witness of martyrdom.

All of that being said, you have clearly had some negative experiences with the Church, both personally and institutionally. "I always leave Catholic mass on the verge of tears, for what I experience as the perpetuation of a lack of voice." I hear your deep pain, but would like to challenge you to rethink this a little bit. Whose voice are we supposed to hear at Mass? Not mine, or yours, or my husband's, but the voice, the Word, of God. Most of the words of the priest at Mass are not his words, but the words of Church. The priest or deacon does write his own homily, but a good homilist does not draw attention to himself, or to his unique ideas, but to Christ, to the Scriptures, in the way that the Church understands them. His goal should be to draw us to an encounter with God, who is reaching out to us, not to an interest in himself. Our voice at Mass is a common voice of prayer. This is why we have the ritual and ceremony that you've found so comforting - to remove our self-consciousness for a bit, so that we all blend harmoniously together in offering the sacrifice of praise, in our prayers for the world. It isn't about my voice or your voice or the priest's voice. It's about the voice of Christ and the voice of the Church, manifesting the echoes of an eternal conversation between a lover and his beloved. The Mass is a chance to step outside of and beyond social and political struggle and drama, not to fight over whose voice is loudest.

You can rightly be concerned about the institutional hierarchy of the Church ignoring the voices, experiences and missed potential contributions of women. I think that's valid. Can you find a place of influence at the level of the Vatican? Probably not. Would Jesus care if women wanted to be ordained? There is one thing I do know - Jesus does not care for grabbing for attention, power and influence. "To sit on my right or on my left is not mine to give, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared. Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant." The servant does not necessarily get to decide which service he or she performs. "What about women being called to the priesthood?" To put it bluntly, women aren't being called to the priesthood, because that calling is a two-way street. They may very much feel called to the priesthood. But am I being called by God to marry a man who does not want to marry me? Many men feel called to the priesthood, only to realize that their bishop does not feel the calling to ordain them, and that their vocation must lie elsewhere. In the Catholic Church, we believe that God speaks not only in the silence of our hearts, but also in the voices of other people and in the circumstances of our daily lives. Not only in the ancient text of the Scriptures, but also in the Church's living interpretation of them. We are asked to have the humility to accept that we are not the absolute arbiters of our own doctrine, and even to accept the idea, which seems crazy from a worldly perspective, that the Holy Spirit, God himself, guides the Church through imperfect people. That maybe, just maybe, what seems foolish to you is the wisdom of God.

Perhaps the only thing you can do for now is to lay your question at the feet of Jesus. You don't have to understand it. You don't even have to like it. For now, you would just have to be willing to accept a Church without female priests. Entering into any kind of relationship requires accepting some things we don't like, or aren't so sure about, doesn't it?

So I ask again, what kind of place do you seek in the Church? Do you wish to hear Christ and be transformed by his words and his grace, or do you wish to make yourself heard and to transform the Church according to your own ideas? Humility is not a natural virtue for me. Many times I have exclaimed in frustration, "Why won't everyone just listen to me and do things the right way?" It is not wrong to hope that the Church will make needed reforms, or even to seek to facilitate them if you find yourself in that position. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all the these things shall be added unto you." I would encourage you to pray with St. Francis that you may "not so much seek to be understood as to understand" - not to understand the Curia, but to understand Christ, the one man who truly loves and understands all women, who honors all voices, those of the small more than the great, the one man with the power to perfect the world through us, if we let him. And the best place to understand him is the place he gave us - his Church, in its human brokenness and its feeble failings, which still offers us Christ, in word and in sacrament.

Pray with St. Francis that you may "not so much seek to be understood as to understand" - not to understand the Curia, but to understand Christ, the one man who truly loves and understands all women, who honors all voices, those of the small more than the great, the one man with the power to perfect the world through us, if we let him.

You ask, "Can our differences of femininity be witnessed and honored at the same table without trying to change the Truth of each others hearts?" Yes, I think that women can be feminine in many ways and that they can be honored. But for the latter point, I believe that the encounter with Christ through his Church is meant to change all of our hearts. The Lord knows my heart needs transformation.

This author would like to remain anonymous.