The feminist pope

...Or is Catholicism multifaceted, liberal and conservative being but two of many responses to living in this church in this culture at this time in history...

...But it was and is more than that...

...MARGARET O'BRIEN STEINFELS o sono il Papa feminista, "I am I the feminist pope," said John Paul 1I with a twinkle in his eye...

...Everyone at the conference was presented with a copy of John Paul II's "Letter to Women...

...With a specific approach to worship, to education, to spirituality, to social action...

...it is stabilized enough for him to keep going...

...Why does John Paul consider himself a feminist...

...Christ "entrusted only to men the task of being an 'icon' of his countenance as 'shepherd' and 'bridegroom' of the church through the exercise of the ministerial priesthood...

...he stopped to have his ring kissed, his picture taken, and tenderly blessed a retarded child...

...Other good words can be found in this document to warm feminist hearts...

...That is not simply an achievement of the past...

...In particular, through proposing a new understanding about the meaning of human freedom, liberalism has challenged Catholicism to reexamine certain of its hermetically contained ideas about the person, about conscience, about the relation of the person to the state, and about relations between church and state...

...Why blame Michelangelo, or Bernini and baroque company for their enthusiasms...

...Does he identify this Catholicism largely with the magisterium and with the teaching authority of pope and bishops...

...Why should I keep worrying my little Puritan head about the reactions of ascetic followers of Jesus Christ to all of this luxury...

...There they paused for a moment and then marched up again to Bernini's magnificent altar of Saint Peter's Chair, which but once a year is fully emblazoned with hundreds of candles...

...Pass it on...

...In such a rarefied, deferential atmosphere, it's surely harder to take account of church reformers' demands for due process and fair representation for the rights of the faithful vis-iT-vis authority...

...However, is the answer to this state of affairs singular-"simply Catholicism...

...This letter, like other of the pope's writings, vigorously champions women's equal dignity, and best of aI1, voices admiration for those women who courageously engaged in "fighting for their basic social, economic, and political rights...when this was considered extremely inappropriate, the sign of a lack of femininity, a manifestation of exhibitionism, and even a sin...

...is patiently and graciously receiving endless expressions of affection--cheers, clapping--and in the large public audiences, tributes of band music, chants, flowers, banner waving, singing, and effusive long-winded greetings in many languages...

...The Catholic faith shapes a church with a lot ~( room for differeuces in pastoral approach, for discussion and debate, for initiatives as various as the peoples whom God loves...

...they were wending their way from a Mass at the high altar to process down the steps into the crypt of Saint Peter's tomb...

...But in looking at the church in which we actually live, I cannot help but also think of De Lubac's likening the church to "a ship of unruly passengers who always seem to be on the brink of wrecking it...

...Well, someone in the Vatican had initiated and approved the idea of having a conference dedicated to women's health, and went to the expense of having American women and men come to Rome...

...Were they reinstating dissident theologians, like Tissa Balasuriya, or going after new cases of dissent...

...But then, alas, we come to the great stumbling block from my point of view...

...I saw the pope twice during our week's visit inside Vatican City and came away with questions...

...Another time...

...All roads lead to Rome...

...Another crucial struggle shapes up over the meaning of symbols, icons, and signs...

...Whether or not Cardinal George is inclined to continue the conversation, those three paragraphs warrant the attention of those who sense that the Catholic church in the United States is, indeed, at a turning point...

...it was a "necessary critique," as he says--offering an unusual if not unprecedented episcopal concession in saying so...

...The pope over and over asserts the importance of the difference and complementarity of men and women's natures...

...Up, up and away went the flickering lights, reaching toward the stained glass dove of the Holy Spirit, brooding over the scene "with ah...

...When one contemplates the full implications of the outrageousness of God's gifts of creation and redemption, these ritual responses seem fitting...

...in one afternoon I, stumbling upon a beautiful Benediction service in a side chapel, turned another corner and took advantage of an English-language confessional, and, upon emerging, found I was just in time for the regular five o'clock Mass at the main altar, tactfully cordoned off from the swarms of tourists who do not choose to pray...

...Although I hung back out of shyness, the rest of our group of participants in a Vatican-sponsored conference on women's health surged to get as close as possible to this stooped, frail figure in his dazzling white cassock...

...whatever his disease (Parkinson's...

...And turning to Cardinal George's last paragraph: One hears faint echoes of De Lubac's The Splendor of the Church...

...If one "type" of conservative Catholicism cannot be a sign of unity, is another type implied...

...So this is what being a Roman Catholic is all about, thought I. Excessive, extravagant, gorgeous--the whole sacramental shebang...

...he refers to the way Jesus transcended his culture and "treated women with openness, respect, acceptance, and tenderness...

...They are expressions integral to the experience and the practice of real members of the actual church living and working in the contexts of different cultures, here and now...

...How will "simply Catholicism" accommodate what the church has learned from liberalism...

...If not, what is exhausted and what remains vital...

...it is now part of the way Catholicism understands itself...

...Yes, yes...

...After this merry addendum to his prepared remarks, the pope began his slow progress back to his study, smiling his greetings, patting and being patted...

...I even saw Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger emerging from an international theological commission session...

...E Commonweal 8 April 10, 1998...

...A big part of the pope's Commonweal 7 April I0, 1998 job (incredibly boring and tedious...

...If so, how should it be defined...

...But today the dark statue was bedecked with a towering mitre, newly clothed in an embroidered robe, diamond necklaces, and finger rings of precious jewels...

...While the pope appears to be a prisoner of the Vatican routine, he is at least a prisoner of love...

...He emphasizes "the genius of women" (whatever that means), which ensures that in "the sacramental economy, that is, the economy of signs," women cannot be ordained...

...is there anything else...

...Is it congruent with the centralization of church authority in the Vatican curia...

...Another glimpse of high festival appeared on the Sunday at the end of our conference, the feast of Saint Peter's Chair...

...A dazzling grown-up Infant of Prague, by gum...

...Wandering into the glorious nave of Saint Peter's, lo, what to my wondering eyes should appear but the blossoming of the stark severe statue of Saint Peter, he of the bronze foot worn shiny from kisses...

...He looked and sounded so weak that I began to doubt whether he would make it through our audience, much less last long enough to take part in his projected millennium celebrations...

...Even the most cursory study points to equivalent phenomena from the earliest days of the church...

...In short, liberalism has taught Catholicism that belief cannot be compelled and that pluralism has its place, even in the church...

...I don't have space here to dive into these deep waters of division...

...Relax...

...What then does CardiI~al George mean by "simply Catholicism...

...And back...

...Agreed, all such expressions can only be partial, always needing to be tested by the whole church and corrected, if necessary, by tradition, by Scripture, by episcopal and papal scrutiny and judgment...

...Does he mean an eternal, a conceptual and reified Catholicism, sailing above the incarnational, the embeddedness of Catholicism in time and place...

...The pope apologizes to women for past wrongs done them within the church...

...No, said other observers, however much pain he appears to be in, he's too strong-willed to die...

...While in Rome, accompanied by many witnesses, I heard the pope say that he is "Papa feminista...

...Please note: these are not separate, plural entities, not Catholicisms...

...While taking all this in, I became aware of a large group of cardinals and attendants approaching with incense and with candles held high...

...bright wings...

...If that is the case, is "simply Catholicism" the trajectory toward which the church is turning...

...Saint Peter's is still operating as a place of constant devotion...

...they are expressions of the same faith...

...Insight: The pope is not so much like a severe Holy Father, or even a guru Grandfather, but more like a beaming baby receiving lots of joyful adoration at a family reunion...

...At this point I am just going to spread the good news...

...Perhaps those questions are a place to continue the conversation...

...Presumably Cardinal George would not disagree...

...No matter how serious the remarks he reads from the papers he's handed by aides, it's Christmas-carnival time...

...Here are some other adjectives often found before Catholicism: charismatic, devotional, intellectual, Hispanic, Irish, Chicago, Boston, lukewarm, intense, traditionalist, and so on...

...Reading this document again convinces me that the pope has a sincere and deeply felt concern for women...

...It is, in fact, hard to imagine a catholic church without some degree of diversity and pluriformity...

...Back, for me as an American feminist, had little to do with the wealth or ritual but with the pervasiveness of an entrenched male clericalism...

...But, ,tore profoundly, the faith shapes a church which knows her Lord and knows her own identity, a church able to distinguish between what fits into the tradition that unites her to Christ and what is a false start or a distorti~g thesis, a church malted hew and ~ww because she is always one with the church throughout the ages and with the saints in heaven...

...So there we have it, the icon argument again...

...What is the Petrine ministry all about...

...There exists, he says, a symbolic complementarity of men and women which gives the church a "Marian principle" and an "Apostolic-Petrine principle...

...Is liberal Catholicism an exhausted project in toto...

...When everyone in the audience room laughed, he repeated the statement...

...In our guesthouse of Saint Martha inside the Vatican walls, cheerful nuns cooked, served, and cleaned the rooms while high-ranking male clerics attended important meetings and consistories...

...In the midst of this masculine hierarchical bastion, what should we make of the pope's claim to be a feminist...

...i d o n ' t want to end without a comment on Cardinal George's brief characterization of "liberal Catholicism...