Defining Sin:
McCarthy, Abigail
OF SEVERAL HINDS Abigail McCarthy DEFINING SIN SEXISM: SIMPLE & CONCRETE It came as no surprise when the bishops at their Collegeville meeting sent the first draft of their letter on women's...
...They have condemned the abuse of women and rape and pornography-all evils highlighted by the women's movement long ago-but both the mention and the condemnation are couched in general terms...
...The letter speaks, for example, of " the anguish of women who have wide-ranging spiritual and intellectual gifts that could be of service to the church, but who are not afforded the chance to use them...
...The coup de grace was administered when the two discussed a merger and the men's institution rejected it at the last moment...
...That resonance, that almost instinctive conviction of wrong, must be established...
...In both cases the blithe assumption that the welfare of a neighboring men's institution took priority over the welfare of the women's institution was at the root of the closing...
...To see it as part and parcel of a flawed society is to invite the shrug, the smile of complicity, the acceptance of ''that's the way it is...
...In the course of it he experienced a slight lapse of memory...
...I would like to see an expression of contrition for past or present practices in practical terms which might be suggestive to the diocesan functionary, the assistant pastor, the Catholic policeman or lawyer in the future...
...The priest, the congressman, the lay leader, may not be aware that they practice the sin of sexism...
...Recent research has reaffirmed that finding...
...They are also instances difficult to express contrition for, hard to acknowledge, and unfortunately rather easy to describe as beside the point...
...And not much of an effort has been made to enlighten them...
...What is best for women is hardly the issue, it seems...
...Less than twenty years ago when I attended a World Council of Churches' conference on "Sexism in the '70s" it was reported in many European papers as a conference on "Sex after 70...
...This was not necessarily in response to the angry fundamentalists who charged that the bishops had invented a new sin...
...Well, it seems after that the currency was devalued...
...The critique of the Jesuit-founded Center of Concern stated flatly: "The draft document lacks a structural analysis of the sin of sexism...
...Sexism is certainly a social sin, and a sin of structures, but it is important that those guilty of it feel personally responsible...
...They are both still alien to many, if not most, Catholics today...
...Studies show that over the past thirty years there has been a growing acknowledgment of the sin of racism...
...He snapped his fingers and appealed to the front pews for help...
...Sympathetic and scholarly commentators had faulted the discussion of sexism as well...
...no drawing back...
...Aquino, that's it...
...What of the women who were allowed to use these gifts in one restricted area of service-the education of the parochial students the clerics did not care to teach and the secondary and higher education of women excluded from church academies and universities...
...OF SEVERAL HINDS Abigail McCarthy DEFINING SIN SEXISM: SIMPLE & CONCRETE It came as no surprise when the bishops at their Collegeville meeting sent the first draft of their letter on women's concerns back to the ad hoc committee with a request for further elucidation of the sin of sexism...
...Nor do I remember any expression of disapproval when a speaker, a lay leader, assured a meeting of the laity that his wife and daughters were not concerned with discrimination in the work place since they wanted no career "The committee on women's rights will now come to order.'' other than the time-honored traditional one-oh, a murmur, an exchange of glances, perhaps, but nothing positive...
...There was, of course, none of the faint hissing I heard when I shared a platform with a puzzled congressman who congratulated a woman's college faculty on the fine crop of "girls" they were graduating, "girls soon to become wives and mothers...
...I'm bad at names...
...In none of the cases of women's schools closing have church authorities adverted to that fact...
...Let us hope there is no drawing back...
...An eighty-one-year-old college of high academic standing was first undercut when its neighbor institution went coeducational without warning and began to recruit its traditional students...
...And commonplace...
...Yet sexism is rife in the bishops' world and ours...
...Both the word "sexism" and the concept were alien to the journalists, sophisticated as they were...
...Their situation and the reasons for it provide fine illustrations of sexism at work...
...Sexism is hydra-headed and indeed difficult to define...
...What of their anguish at seeing the fine institutions they developed sacrificed by diocesan planners and tuition-hungry male institutions belatedly recruiting women students...
...A great deal more specificity and concrete example defining and illustrating sexism is needed either in the letter itself or in an accompanying study guide to make its teaching comprehensible, effective, and conscience-forming...
...Ten years ago significant research proved that graduates of women's institutions had higher self-images and were higher achievers than women from coeducational schools...
...These and like cases are instances of the way in which sexism does far-reaching and permanent harm...
...But sexism is still essentially a new word in familiar use only in restricted circles...
...The thoughtful theological analysis must surely be made, but I am concerned that the sin as a gross form of injustice destructive of human dignity and person-hood be spelled out in such simple and concrete terms that no Catholic can escape it in examining his or her conscience in the old-fashioned way...
...In such an atmosphere what has been cited as a weakness in the letter-the defining of sexism in terms of personal sin-may well be primary to deeper analysis...
...But we are on the way...
...True, the bishops have mentioned some of the controversial aspects of sexism in the church which have been identified by women-ordination, preaching, teaching and studying in seminaries, decision making, the participation of women in discussions of reproduction, and so forth...
...There is a call to self-examination in identifying sexism as a moral and social evil expressed in attitudes, dispositions, or patterns of behavior that presuppose the superiority of the male and male dominance as the norm...
...After Marcos left, what's the name of the gal who took over...
...There are, I am sure, among the bishops, as there are among the laity, those to whom words like racism and sexism sound manufactured, words with no resonance in the morality with which their consciences were formed...
...I have on my desk clippings telling of the closing of two outstanding institutions founded by Catholic women...
...It was not clear that the "gal" was responsible for the parlous state of the currency but the patronizing attitude toward any "gal" taking over anything was palpable...
...This past Sunday I heard a young priest deliver a homily during which he asked for donations to a seminary in the Philippines...
...In the other case a fifty-two-year-old academy which had reached out to minority students found itself foundering when a neighboring men's high school was encouraged by the archdiocese to expand and become coeducational...
Vol. 115 • September 1988 • No. 15
