“A DIALOGUE OF THE DEAF”

Dreamer that I may be, the uplift in my soul kept saying that the LCWR and College of Cardinals could come to a reasonable, faith-filled discussion about the Church. Brickbat hurlers, who hone the edges of combat knives for religion-tinged disputations, are prone to repeat with gusto, “No!”

Men in ecclesial power tremble at the slightest sound of women’s feet on their glass ceiling. They have seen their brothers in the worlds of national government, international diplomacy, world-wide and local business, yield a little, groan a lot, as one woman after another demonstrates that women are the equals of men; quite often their superiors in leadership.

More devastating to those men of power, long gone rigid over two millennia of unbridled authority,  is the growing realization among ordinary people that in many regards, particularly leadership, women are superior to men.

Women are by nature kinder, more respectful of those with whom they may disagree, and always ready, willing and able to listen before speaking. We never hear them curse. Only on the rarest of provocations do they return demeaning insults with choice ones of their own.

An example from current news on reaction to the LCWR’s decision to continue dialogue helps make the point. Cardinal William Levada, former Dean of the CDF Dicastery, is known well for his heavy-voiced growlings in rhetorical put-downs of those unprivileged persons outside his College of Cardinals, -- a miniscule bunch of 181 men who appear to act as if they founded, then owned and thus rule the world.

Cardinal Levada denounced the current disputation-via-headlines between the CDF and the LCWR, as “a dialogue of the deaf.”

Sad. Not outrageous, but sad.

An hierarchical contrast makes the point. On August 5, the front page of The Seattle Times ran an article: “Low-Key archbishop in the spotlight” concerning Archbishop J. Peter Sartrain, one of Levada’s choices for the Triumvirate set up to reign in the LCWR. 

Fr. John Whitney, S.J. former provincial of the Oregon Province, spoke candidly there of Archbishop Sartrain “as accesible, & a good listener. He went on to say that the archbishop did not demean those who disagreed with him but that he was steadfast in his orthodoxy. Whitney conceded however, that Sartain was a lot nicer than others of his position."

Levada demeans.

Rather than continue his tone of talk, may I suggest we pray for Cardinal Levada and his cohorts to be gentlemen, as well as hierarchs. There is, so far, no sign of any need to ask the LCWR to be anything other than what they already are: servants of the people of God, equal with, if not superior to, the male hierarchy, another group within the Church also described as “servants of the people of God.”