A New Dialog for Pope Benedict XVI
By Paul Surlis
Professor Emeritus, St. John's University, Jamaica, NY
Pope Benedict's visit to Turkey has been widely regarded as successful in his
ongoing dialog with Muslims. I believe he should initiate another serious dialog,
this time with Catholics, the more than one billion members of the Church he
heads. And in this dialog at the outset, Benedict should be primarily a listener.
The first group he should hear from are women, more than half the membership
of the Church and by far its most active adherents. Women would tell Benedict
about the need for sympathetic attention to their demands for full, co-equal
membership in a restructured Church that adheres to the Vatican Council's demands
for structures favoring collegiality at all levels, from Rome to local dioceses
and parishes. Only in this way will women's voices be heard on a variety of
issues ranging from Church ministry to moral areas. Women who seek access to
Church ministry at all levels do not wish to do so in a top down, hierarchically
organized Church, where they would be confined to low- level positions without
power or influence.
Married women especially see access to safe contraception as a right not a sinful
practice. Likewise, women, especially in Latin American countries, where abortion
has been outlawed, and where death from unsafe abortions is common, would want
to remind the Pope that the Church's own moral tradition allows for abortion
in life threatening circumstances. Women would remind the Pope that they are
not anti-life when they opt for safe, legal abortion in rare circumstances.
On the contrary women have been to the fore in nurturing children down through
the ages and are still doing the majority of child raising today often in situations
of poverty and violence.
Catholic feminist theologians are leaders in highlighting environmental and
ecological issues as life issues on a planetary scale, and they regularly incorporate
these concerns into the moral agenda they discuss. Women also oppose nuclear
proliferation and excessive militarism which drain money from poverty alleviation,
health care, housing and day care for the children of working parents and the
Pope should also highlight these issues.
Benedict should hear from survivors of clerical sexual abuse and express the
Church's sorrow and determination to see enforcement of conditions necessary
to prevent this scandal from recurring. He should encourage bishops to seek
justice for survivors in ways that are primarily pastoral not legalistic.
Benedict should hear from priests who have retired from active ministry to marry.
They would tell him that marriage is a sacrament in Catholic teaching and that
they are prepared to re-engage in active ministry to ensure that no parish lacks
liturgical celebration at a time when vocations to priesthood are still in decline.
Benedict would be reminded that we already have married priests in the Catholic
Church: formerly Protestant ministers, who became Catholic, have remained married
after ordination and the people whom they serve in ministry not only do not
mind this development, they scarcely seem to notice. The time for optional celibacy
has long since arrived. Far from being an innovation this would be a recovery
of ancient church tradition that lasted for more than eleven hundred years of
church history.
Benedict should listen to divorced and remarried Catholics at present excluded
from Eucharist if unable to obtain annulments. They would remind him of practice
in the Orthodox churches where irreparably broken marriages can be departed
from and communion can be resumed Benedict should also listen to gay, lesbian
and transgender Catholics who presumably are around 6 percent of all Catholics,
as they are of the general population. He should reflect on their affirmation
that sexual orientation is a discovery not a choice an insight unknown to biblical
writers two and three thousand years ago who assumed that all persons were heterosexual
and only the perverse opted for homosexual relationships. This insight alone
invalidates the shaky biblical strictures condemning homosexuality which have
much to do with taboos against non- procreative sexuality when infant mortality
was high and a beleaguered Israel needed soldiers and workers for its very survival.
And Benedict would be asked to ponder the fact that islavery is endorsed and
even mandated far more strenuously than homosexuality is condemned in the Bible.
Yet, today slavery is regarded as intrinsically evil and is everywhere condemned
even if practiced in places. But if such a turnaround of biblical teaching can
occur in the area of slavery why may we not witness a reversal of centuries
of misguided condemnations of homosexuality which is increasingly recognized
as neither disordered nor sinful when consensually embraced in equal relationships?
Benedict is too good a theologian not to recognize that describing moral rules
and strictures that are changeable and are culturally conditioned and have varied
over time, as Catholic teaching is misleading both to Catholics and those who
are outside the Church but influenced by its positions. There is a hierarchy
of truths in Catholic teaching and these revolve around the good news of the
divine mystery communicating a share in divine life to humans through Jesus
Christ in the power of the Spirit. The moral message of Christianity is primarily
about preserving planet earth, our only home, as a sustainable environment for
all life, including humans who are invited to live at peace with each other
as they press for greater justice, reconciliation and healing.
(This piece is published in the April issue of the Furrow).
Paul Surlis
1684 Albemarle Drive
Crofton MD 21114
410-451-1459
Fax: 410-721-2801