Advent 2019 Appeal to Cardinals from John J. Shea, O.S.A.

/

Advent 2019

Dear Cardinal Bertello,

This Advent, I write yet again to you as a member of the Council of Cardinals, asking you to address at your coming meeting the church’s tragic decision that women lack the body-and-soul integrity necessary for ordination to the priesthood. This decision so clearly needing reform—ecclesia semper reformanda est—continues to radically disfigures the church’s identity and to thoroughly compromise its mission in the world.

Of all the things that Pope Francis has said and done, his opening of the Synod on the Family in 2014 was quite extraordinary: he told the gathered bishops to speak “freely,” “boldly,” and “without fear.” He actually had to ask his fellow bishops—grown men and the church’s teachers—to speak honestly with each other. Not just a necessary request, of course, this intervention offered the hope that perhaps real dialogue—after years and years of its absence—might finally be possible.

If women in priesthood is critical—if hierarchy hopping about on one foot is not just hopelessly unbalanced but also, as we know too well, aids and abets devastatingly destructive betrayal of trust and shamefully criminal activity—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If any given woman can provide pastoral care as well as any given man, if nothing in Scripture or tradition keeps women from ordination, and if it is not ad rem to ordination to see women as complementary or as wonderfully extra-human, or in the light of precious patriarchal symbolism I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you find the 1994 letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis:

  1. is the fruit of doctrinal fiat and not dialogue;

  2. is written directly in the face of—and arguably to cut off—serious scriptural-theological dialogue actually taking place; and

  3. is mandating that no dialogue at all—let alone anything fearless or gender-inclusive—is possible going forward, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.


If you find Ordinatio Sacerdotalis an historical-patriarchal gloss on ordination rather than a serious theological exploration and explanation, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you think the still-standing theological explanation of the Vatican in the 1970s and 1980s—that women cannot be ordained because they are “not fully in the likeness of Jesus”—simply would be silly if it were it not heretical, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If there is a reason why women fully created in the image and likeness of the Father are somehow not fully created in the image and likeness of the Son—if Jesus is made to image a Father who is biologically male—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If our church’s liturgy persists in distorting the Three-in-Oneness of our God—if a huge patriarchal log is stuck arrogantly in the church’s eye, worshipping the Father as male, the Son as male, and the Holy

Spirit as male—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If you are alarmed that adult faithful leave the church in droves be cause of women judged unworthy of priesthood—if a “patriarchal Jesus” severs the roots of inclusion, respect, trust, and hope for women and men alike—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If it concerns you that banning women from ordination is taken—in the church and throughout the world—as affirming women’s inferiority and justifying sex slavery, infanticide, domestic violence, and many other atrocities, I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

If bishops, theologians, and the faithful—animated by the Spirit— need to dialogue openly about women’s body-and-soul integrity—letting our obtuse, head-in-the-sand, hard-hearted, patriarchal church come to its senses—I ask you to speak freely, boldly, and without fear.

Cardinal Bertello, is the way our church continues to dehumanize women shameful? “No one,” says Paolo Freire, “can be authentically human while he prevents others from being so.” Are integrity and mutuality a two-way street? Are bishops whole if they deny the body-and-soul wholeness of the women they serve? If you personally fail to see women as fully in the likeness of Jesus, what is it exactly that they lack?

Is this Advent a fitting time for collegial voices to be heard? Like the reformation of inclusion so critical in the infant church, can you and your fellow bishops see, hear, and name what Pope Francis does not see, hear, and name? Will you speak freely, boldly, and without fear?

Sincerely,


John J. Shea, O.S.A.

Copy: Pope Francis