Dear God, creator of women in your own image,
born of a woman in the midst of a world half women,
carried by women to mission fields around the globe,
made known by women to all the children of the earth,
give to the women of our time
the strength to persevere,
the courage to speak out,
the faith to believe in you beyond
all systems and institutions
so that your face on earth may be seen in all its beauty,
so that men and women become whole,
so that the church may be converted to your will
in everything and in all ways.

We call on the holy women
who went before us,
channels of your Word
in testaments old and new,
to intercede for us
so that we might be given the grace
to become what they have been
for the honor and glory of God.

Saint Esther, who pleaded against power
for the liberation of the people, pray for us.
Saint Judith, who routed the plans of men
and saved the community, pray for us.
Saint Deborah, laywoman and judge, who led
the people of God, pray for us.
Saint Elizabeth of Judea, who recognized the value
of another woman, pray for us.
Saint Mary Magdalene, minister of Jesus,
first evangelist of the Christ, pray for us.
Saint Scholastica, who taught her brother Benedict
to honor the spirit above the system, pray for us.
Saint Hildegard, who suffered interdict
for the doing of right, pray for us.
Saint Joan of Arc, who put no law above the law of God, pray for us.
Saint Clare of Assisi, who confronted the pope
with the image of woman as equal, pray for us.
Saint Julian of Norwich, who proclaimed for all of us
the motherhood of God, pray for us.
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, who knew the call
to priesthood in herself, pray for us.
Saint Catherine of Siena, to whom the pope listened, pray for us.
Saint Teresa of Avila, who brought women’s gifts
to the reform of the church, pray for us.
Saint Edith Stein, who brought fearlessness to faith, pray for us.
Saint Elizabeth Seton, who broke down boundaries
between lay women and religious
by wedding motherhood and religious life, pray for us.
Saint Dorothy Day, who led the church
to a new sense of justice, pray for us.
* * *
Mary, mother of Jesus,
who heard the call of God and answered, pray for us.
Mary, mother of Jesus,
who drew strength from the woman Elizabeth, pray for us.
Mary, mother of Jesus,
who underwent hardship bearing Christ, pray for us.
Mary, mother of Jesus, who ministered at Cana, pray for us.
Mary, mother of Jesus, inspired at Pentecost, pray for us.
Mary, mother of Jesus, who turned the Spirit of God
into the body and blood of Christ, pray for us. Amen.

As a side note: the following year after this, Catherine delivered the Madeleva lecture, which became the book entitled *Speaking with Authority: Catherine of Siena and the Voices of Women Today* (Paulist 2001, revised with new introduction and foreword by Suzanne Noffke, 2008).

**********************************************************************************************************************

Preaching for feast of Catherine of Siena

on the occasion of the Madeleva Convergence 2000 sponsored by the Center for Spirituality at St. Mary’s College

April 29, 2000

Based on scripture readings: Acts 4:32-35;  1 John 5:1-6;  John 20: 19-31

It is evening, and even as we gather to celebrate these Easter mysteries,

many doors remain locked;

doors of our church

of our country and world,

and of our hearts and imaginations.

Some for fear of authorities; others for fear of women, or immigrants, or the poor, or whomever it is we see as different from us.

And some we have locked–for fear of what will be required of us if we believe that

wounds can be transformed,

that God’s Spirit can fashion a community of courage out of disheartened disciples,

that the Body of Christ is more than we have imagined.

After all, it is John’s gospel that pictures the first apostle as a woman weeping beside a tomb.

Tonight’s gospel gives us a glimpse of the early church as a company of fearful disciples and reminds us that not everyone in that community had the same experience.

One was missing from their Easter gathering.

The joy and conviction of the others was not the experience of this “first dissenter.”

Earlier in the gospel, Thomas was the one who was willing to follow Jesus to the point of death,

but also the one who admitted frankly: “We do not know the way.”

Is this honest man with his questions and doubt not our brother? Our twin?

With all of their humanity and brokenness, Jesus trusted this fragile community enough

to leave his mission in their hands.

He left the future of the church

to those who doubt,

to those who had betrayed,

to a woman lost in grief,

to those who locked doors in fear.

To them–and to us (an equally unlikely community)–

Jesus offers his farewell gift:

PEACE

RECEIVE THE HOLY SPIRIT

RECEIVE THE MISSION OF THE CHURCH,

and he issues his charge for the new millennium:

BECOME MY BODY IN THE WORLD.

Many of us–like Thomas–find it hard to believe that the likes of us

are born of God,

that the Spirit transforms us into ministers of peace,

empowers us to loose bonds, to heal, to forgive.

I taught one of Thomas’s contemporary twins here during my first year at Notre Dame in a class on Jesus and salvation. He wasn’t doing well in the course and came to see me.

“You probably think I don’t care…actually I think about this course a lot…it really bothers me. I hope you won’t take this personally, but I don’t think the Incarnation was a very good idea!

…No, I’m serious.

If God has all this power and we are in such a mess…

to send one guy and leave it to the rest of us?

Maybe it’s because I’m a business major,

I JUST DON’T SEE IT.”

The Gospel tonight calls us to believe what none of us can see.

On this feast of Catherine of Siena, we are reminded

that that has always been the way of discipleship.

This uneducated woman who wanted to embrace a contemplative life of union with God

in the solitude of her home-

was called to see her neighbors in need,

was sent to speak a word of PEACE to warring city states

to a political prisoner at his execution,

to misplaced popes and divided cardinals,

to her own mother.

Like Thomas, she discovered the risen One in the WOUNDS OF THE WORLD

the black plague victims,

the poor on the city streets,

those desperate for her counsel and advice,

even the wounded church of her day.

She would have preferred the locked doors of her cell,

but she was sent into a world of conflict.

Like Thomas, she freely expressed her doubts about this mission,

including her doubts about her own vocation as a woman.

But in her mystical visions she received a clear response:

“Was it not I who created the human race?

Male and female I created them.

Isn’t it up to me where I shall pour out my grace?

With me there is no longer male and female

lower class and upper class.

Everyone is equal in my sight and

everything equally in my power to do.

To humble their pride I will send mere women…

whom I will fill with the power and wisdom of God.”

She was sent with the only pledge any of us receive:

“I will always be with you…and you will give proof of the Spirit that is in you.”

Empowered by Christ’s Spirit, Catherine,

like Mary Magdalene and Martha, like Peter and Thomas

CAME to believe,

learned to see beyond wounds and death and broken communities

into the heart of a God “who is mad with love for your creatures.”

We remember this doctor of the Church for her mystical wisdom,

But we forget that she, too, never saw her vision realized.

This peacemaker died heartbroken–with the Church in schism and the

Italian city states at war.

She, too, is our twin as we gather this night and this weekend

as women of faith,

called to speak a word of hope for a new millennium;

as women and men of faith,

called to make wise judgments for the college and asked to support risky ventures initiated by women of faith.

All of us called to embrace the wounded of our world and church,

and in it all, and asked to trust the SPIRIT OF GOD who MOVES IN OUR MIDST.

BLESSED ARE THEY WHO HAVE NOT SEEN–AND HAVE BELIEVED.

Mary Catherine Hilkert, O.P.

The response was overwhelming.  Thousands of people tweeted messages chronicling the various ways in which Catholic Sisters have made their lives better–people spoke of Catholic Sisters being the reason they first fell in love with or remain committed to Catholicism; people spoke of Catholic Sisters being their teachers, mentors, and inspiration; people spoke of Catholic Sisters saving their lives and giving up their own.  This campaign even made it to the pages of the Huffington Post.

We at WIT participated in this campaign via our own twitter account but we also wanted to do something a bit more formal for our blog.  We encourage all of you to join in this celebration of Catholic Sisters in whatever way you are able: on twitter under the hashtag “WhatSistersMeanToMe,” on facebook via your status message, in a letter to a Catholic Sister who has played an important role in your life, or in good old fashion conversation with your circle of friends.

What Catholic Sisters Mean to Me (WIT Edition)

My preschool teacher, Sister Anita, was a Catholic Sister and she taught me about God’s love and the beauty of creation.  She also taught me kindness and compassion; after my parents and grandparents, she was my first teacher.

Sister Madeleva Wolff established the first institution to grant graduate degrees in theology to Catholic women. Without her pioneering action, most of us could not be “in” theology.

Augustin Cardinal Bea consulted Sister Rose Thering’s research into anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in Catholic teaching for the drafting of Nostra Aetate.

The first time I attended an intimate conference in my area of academic specialization, it was sisters who reached out to me, invited me to sit with them, and ensured that I felt welcome as a junior scholar.

Catholic Sisters made sure I knew that I was always welcome at their retreat center, regardless of whether I was participating in a formal retreat, because we all need places of peace and solace. Even thinking about their retreat center makes me feel more grounded.

The sisters in my life have modelled how to respond to setbacks with grace, poise, calm, and more charity than I can fathom, yet they’ve still never given up on too-often-angry me, or left me feeling that my anger was unreasonable or immoral.

Catholic Sisters like Dorothy Stang teach us how to be disciples even in the face of death.

Catholic Sisters like Helen Prejean inspire me to love even those who seem the most unworthy of it.  Her book “Dead Man Walking” continues to challenge me, reminding me of the radical nature of Christian discipleship like few other works can.

A Catholic Sister once stood up for me when a male colleague started saying some very sexist things to my face. She literally stood up.

When I first heard Sister Jeannine Grammick speak and saw her pray with a man who had launched into a homophobic diatribe, I got chills down my spine because I knew I was in the presence of a holy person.

My great aunt is a Catholic Sister.  We would go on long walks through my neighborhood when I was a child.  She spent most of her time on those walks answering my questions about God.  She never made me feel like my questions were stupid or unimportant.  Looking back, I realize that she was one of the first people who taught me how to think theologically.

Although my grandmother was not raised Catholic, she attended a Catholic college.  The Sisters she met there inspired her to become Catholic.

A Catholic Sister provided spiritual support and moral guidance to my family during the last days of my grandfather’s life.

Professor Janet Ruffing, a Mercy Sister, is one of the reasons I am still Catholic.

Seeing what Catholic Sisters like Elizabeth Johnson have made it through gives me the resolve to stay in the church.

Though she has never met me, sister Mary Margaret McBride is the person who taught me that misogyny is real. I did not identify myself as a feminist or think much about the status of women until she was declared excommunicated for authorizing the termination of a pregnancy to save a woman’s life in a Phoenix hospital. I realized that woman could have been me.

Sisters Lynn Osiek, Sandra Schneiders, and Barbara Green were among the first Catholic women to become biblical scholars.

One morning I was sitting at mass crying because I was very depressed, and a nun came up to me and gave me a Miraculous Medal and said she and her sisters pray for everyone who wears it. I still wear it, many years later.

Every time they are in the news, Catholic Sisters teach me what the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love actually look like.

People like Sister Terry Dodge remind me of what our real responsibilities are: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6ApW7Tjs2A

My family has a history of being taught theology by Catholic Sisters in a way that inflames our hearts for good theological inquiry.

If it weren’t for the good work of Sisters throughout the United States and around the world, living the gospel and modeling a way to stay in the Church that is incomparably better than blind obedience or apathy, I’m not sure I could stay. As it is, they give me hope.

Sister Anita Baird is the founding director for the Office for Racial Justice in the Archdiocese of Chicago.

Sisters were the backbone of my high school education, providing me an environment to grow as a thinker and the courage to break through shyness and engage in classroom discussion.

In high school I had a close relationship with my theology teacher, Sister Joan, who inspired me to love theology as a discipline.  One time when I came to her asking for dating advice, she said I shouldn’t really worry about dating too much because, as she put it, “you are one of us!”  Although I didn’t become a sister, I think that her inclusive attitude helped to see myself as a theological agent and, in some way, model my life after hers (as a teacher of theology).

Sisters have taught me, mostly through example in my theology programs, what it means to love the Tradition, holding oneself accountable to the entire Tradition, despite the often painful life in the Church.

One of the most vibrant, prayerful, and welcoming liturgical communities I have been a part of is comprised largely of Sisters. The presence of these Sisters in various phases of their lives and ministries contributed a tangible sense of wisdom and joy to our common worship.

My burgeoning ecological consciousness was vastly enriched and expanded by a short stay at a farm run by Dominican Sisters of Peace in Ohio. They creatively practice sustainable agriculture in their suburban territory and help educate children from nearby urban areas about food production and environmental responsibility. Ketchup is made from tomatoes! Carrots grow in the ground! Hooray for composting toilets!

But somehow, despite our belief that both sexes can serve the church, it seems there’s still something unnerving about a priest who is a woman. It has to do with having a woman’s body.

A parishioner told me that he thought I was a great priest, but that if I became pregnant, it would be too weird for him to see me at the altar. Merely holding hands with my husband, even when I am not in clerical clothes, has elicited the comment “Can you do that? I mean, in public?” Another parishioner told me I was too petite to be a priest. I’m 5-10. I have never been called “petite.” I think he meant “female.”

What about when a priest wears a bikini? What if she complicates the picture by having sizable biceps or well-defined lats? Can “buff” and “holy” go together? “Ripped” and “reverend”? If the “reverend” is a woman?

You could contrast this with, say, the many photos of Roman Catholic Bishop Tom Wenski on his motorcycle.

He probably doesn’t strike people as particularly sexual in these photos. Rather, he just looks “cool” or “fun” or “funny.” It’s a scene that’s likely to make you smirk, not squirm.

Anyway, check it out. Food for thought.

I have lots of thoughts about this document but for now I just want to call attention to a significant omission.

The bishops cite the following as “concrete examples” of the fact that “our most cherished liberty,” religious freedom, is under attack:

– “The HHS mandate for contraception”

– “State immigration laws” which would  punish Catholics and other religious people for giving aid to undocumented immigrants.

– “Altering Church structure and governance”

– The denial of student organization status to a Christian group at the University of California Hastings College of Law. (Of course Christian colleges treat LGBT students at least as bad and probably worse than public universities treat Christian students– LGBT organizations are similarly denied official student organization status at many Catholic and Protestant Universities and, at many Christian colleges, one can be expelled simply for being gay.  See Bridget’s excellent post for more on this.)

– Catholic foster care and adoption services having to place children with gay parents.

– The fact that New York City refuses to let various churches rent NYC public schools on weekends to hold religious services even though it lets non-religious groups do so.

– The fact that the government wants Catholic humanitarian organizations “to provide or refer for contraceptive or abortion services.”

It is not my intent here to assess whether or not the bishops are right that each of the preceding constitute grave violations of religious liberty.  I wish only to point out that in light of the preceding the bishops’ lack of concern for the religious freedom of Catholic soldiers seems strange.

In this document, the bishops articulate a rather expansive notion of religious liberty (which I am not necessarily objecting to).   For the bishops, religious liberty is more than the right to do whatever one wants within the walls of one’s church, synagogue, or mosque.  It also includes the right to be able to live in accordance with the moral teachings of one’s faith without penalty (i.e., to be able to harbor undocumented immigrants without going to jail).

Interestingly, the bishops also seem to think that the government should actively support and facilitate the Catholic church’s ability to live in accordance with its moral teachings.  In other words, the government should not simply let religious people be religious, they should help them be religious.  In the case of  Catholic humanitarian services, for example, the government is not saying, “provide contraceptive services or we will throw you all in jail;” it is saying, “provide contraceptive services or we will stop giving you federal funding.”

As far as I know (and if I am wrong on this, somebody please correct me), the federal government is not trying to keep Catholic humanitarian organizations from doing humanitarian work, they are simply saying, “if you are unwilling to provide contraceptive services then we are not willing to pay you do such work partially in our name.”

In light of this more expansive definition of religious freedom, the bishops’ lack of concern about the religious freedom of Catholic soldiers seems even more egregious than it did before they issued this call to arms. (To read more about why I think this way about the military and religious freedom, click here.) What about the religious freedom of Catholic soldiers who, because the U.S. military does not recognize the rights of selective conscientious objectors, can be forced to either fight in an unjust war or face punishment and/or be denied advancement?

How can this be tolerable when all these other things are not?

Admittedly, the label has some degree of fluidity, as every person has his or her own variation on the theme (and all of these notions might fall under the category of something like: “particularly striking and also pleasing to behold, possibly to the point of sexual excitement”). But in its most reified, crusty, superficial, and horrifyingly influential form in mainstream US culture when applied to women, it means something like: straight white teeth, typically long and lustrous hair, symmetrical face absent wrinkles, strong-but-not-mannish features, thin but somehow curvy and perky body (according to nebulous, punishing, troglodytic male standards…), generally nubile, and perhaps blonde (and typically Caucasian, then) is also kind of best if we really have to pick, etc. It’s all about the shared assumptions that inform our understanding of the American “classic beauty.” You get the point.

It should be added that if you happen to have any of these traits and receive positive attention for them, that’s all well and good (it’s certainly not bad, and you won’t catch me saying otherwise), but these are also privileged parts of the trope of the feminine beautiful, and that’s what interests me for the time being. It should also be added that, in my observations, many women who possess many of these traits are just as liable as any other women not to feel adequately beautiful to others and to herself, so that’s another part of this particular construction of beauty: it seems tethered to specific physiognomic traits but is actually ever-elusive: you can never fully encapsulate the ideal aesthetic standard because there is always something you deem to be wrong with your body that, if you could just tweak, would make all the difference. Too bad you just have man shoulders, or weird eyebrows, or, a crooked smile, or bulging eyes, or a weak chin, or an inconvenient nose. (Can I even count the number of times I have cursed the particular roundness of my nose, among other things about my body?) The horizon of beauty is ever-present, ever-punishing, ever-receding. And then what are we even to say about those women who don’t even come close to fitting the billed standards of beauty? You know, those cases where a lot of people would rudely volunteer the “objective truth” that these women are ugly? –Cruelty is integral to the project of beauty.

It’s potentially a cliche for a feminist blog to have a post on misogynistic standards of beauty, but this issue keeps rearing its *ugly* head over and over. Just recently, blonde, British woman Samantha Brick wrote an article for the Daily Mail on how, because she is blonde and thin, she receives special attention from men, and jealous women hate her for it. Her life has been ruined by frumpy women everywhere! Thickly-proportioned female bosses have prevented her promotions at work and have gunned for her ritual execution! Friends have never asked her to be a bridesmaid, and have in fact petitioned for her exile to a distant island somewhere in the Mediterranean! (Just kidding about some of that; I think she was asked to be a bridesmaid once.)

…Now, this kind of article obviously wasn’t going to go well, and the amount of vitriol she received from both men and women for her “I’m such a beautiful woman and all you haters make me sad” spiel was predictably intense.

Just a couple things about that. First, Brick’s assumption of her own socioaesthetic superiority over other women, combined with her acute feelings of persecution and self-exculpation, truly grated on me. Obviously. That’s not even the interesting part really. Because second, at the same time, she’s not wrong that women do scrutinize each other’s appearance mercilessly and often behind each other’s backs. (But, you know, men scrutinize women’s bodies all the time, and just because one woman happens to be on the winning end of that spectrum doesn’t actually make it okay under any circumstances for other women, and also it’s not actually somehow more acceptable for men to judge women’s bodies than it is for women to. These are just points predictably lost on Samantha Brick, but that’s fine I guess–just oversights that are bad in merely the most banal way.)

Anyway, as Jezebel recently pointed out, it seems as though the Daily Mail is sneakily trying to fan the flames of this kind of toxic aesthetic criticism of Samantha Brick, precisely through including multiple pictures of her smiling for the camera. I admit that it is very difficult not to examine the pictures of her and say something like, “Wow, she’s actually really not that good-looking.”  But then as soon as you do that, you’re toast; you’ve already bought into the disgusting game of judging women’s appearances. It’s quite seductive. Because the placement of these pictures baits the readers into comparing Samantha Brick’s written self-perception with what is there in the pictures, and the idea implicit in all this is that, if she actually is “super hot” or whatever, then her words are less of a problem. But if she is anything less, whatever that means, then she’s an ugly bitch. As if the validity of her thought depends upon the assumed beauty of her countenance. As if we’re willing to take this kind of physical beauty hierarchy shit from women who actually “merit” such distinction.

I think the main problem with Samantha Brick’s article, and all the reactive criticism she’s received, is that nobody really bothers to evaluate our standards of beauty, and to ask the crucial questions: who sets the terms? Is beauty always exclusive? Do certain people always have to lose? Is the standard of beauty so deeply ingrained in us, and spontaneously clear, that we should just give up? Or is there any hope of carving out a more expansive understanding of beauty, one that doesn’t feel as lifeless and suffocating and nasty and brutish and state-of-war-ish?

I suppose I’m looking for a way to opt out of this framework, even just a little bit, that isn’t just ignoring it and focusing on other pursuits. I’d at least like a break. I want a way for us to talk about the beauty that we all have, but not through resorting to the saccharine (“We’re just all special and unique, whatever that means…”).

And I don’t know how to answer all these questions, but I do know that I am tired. I’m yearning for a different way to inhabit my own body, my own face, that isn’t so needlessly scrupulous according to a misogynistic, heteronomous code of measurements and demands. We women who have some critical distance from the standard codifications of beauty act as if it’s so easy to let ourselves out of the maze, to stop ourselves from drinking the Kool aid. Certainly we are all affected in different ways by aesthetic pressures, and perhaps some feel it less viscerally than others. But I think we’re all still swimming against the current, against a system of aesthetic hierarchizing of women’s bodies which places some women at the top, some in the middle, and some at the bottom.

In terms of alternative conceptions of beauty, I confess I often recall a short but powerful article that was in the Yale Divinity School’s issue of Reflections entitled “Women’s Journeys: Progress and Peril” from Spring 2011. The article, called “Skin Deep,” was written by recent Yale MDiv grad Kat Banakis, and she explores the exact kind of aesthetic pressures I have discussed here. Feeling unattractive as a young woman, Banakis candidly confesses, “Once I decided that I wasn’t attractive, any compliment about my looks obviously had to have a different explanation. My parents regularly told me that I was beautiful. I thanked them but thought, You have to say that. I’m your daughter. After taking a college psych class my internal monologue matured: The cognitive dissonance would be too great if the self didn’t think I was wonderful when it was investing all available resources in me.”

Banakis decided that, as a Christian woman, she would hunker down, be decidedly countercultural, and not worry about the aesthetic standards of the world. But these kinds of questions, about her own countenance, her own embodied place and value in the world and before God, still drove her: “How could it be that I was created in the image of an indescribably incredible God and yet perceived myself as really rather dumpy?”

She eventually decided to spend some time intentionally observing people all around her, to decipher what exactly it was that made them all attractive across their differences, in her own opinion: “Some were big, others were small. Some had obvious confidence, others held back. But what beautiful people have in common is, as it turns out, what they have in common with the rest of us: they, we, live. We have breath. We are the quick, not the dead. We are alive.”

Banakis also realized that a corpse, even one made up perfectly, can never really be considered beautiful, because there’s something about beauty, about true beauty, that’s intrinsically bound up with our life force, our vitality, which is available to all of us in complicated ways. I don’t think this is saccharine; I think she might be onto something true but difficult to express:

I cannot grasp what it would be like to feel pretty all the time. But I do know what it’s like to feel so very alive that I forget to think about how I look at all–neither good nor bad, just alive. I am alive when I’m problem-solving with colleagues in a strategy session and we’re all on deadline. I can get lost in a piece of music and in friends’ woes and joys…I used to think that moments of forgetting my insecurities were mere escape, but I’m beginning to think that these moments are actually true and accurate in the face of the absolute beauty of being made in the image of God…All we must do is live. And I remembered good old Karl Barth’s contention that the essence of God is live action and St. Irenaeus of Lyon’s statement that the glory of God is the human person fully alive. That I can do. If that’s imitatio Dei, that I can be. I can live. Life–the gift, the pulse–is the root and image and engine of beauty, everyone’s beauty, and that’s what marks the image of God upon us.

There are many more questions to ask about this alternative theological take on beauty, and perhaps some might think that this kind of appeal to our life force is too distinct from considerations of beauty proper to really give us much leverage. But I think there’s at least the start of something very interesting and relevant here. And all I’ll say for now is that it’s an alternative that I like very much, that allows me to breathe and to inhabit my own body in a way that approximates something like feeling beautiful, I think.

Trauma is conventionally understood by theorists as the state of being overwhelmed by an external threat of annihilation.  This is brought on by a seriously violent event which one either directly experiences or witnesses.  This feeling lasts long after the immediate threat has passed.   Post-traumatic survival desperately needs Christian theological reflection.  Traumatic violence is pervasive.  Those who have suffered from sexual abuse are estimated to be no less than 1 in 6 American women (not to mention male survivors of sexual abuse).  Now add in those war veterans who suffer from PTSD, something between 11-20% of veterans from wars in Iraq and Afganistan and around 30% of Vietnam vets.  Plus, add those who are victims or witnesses of violence in our neighborhoods.  Because of the nature of trauma tends to keep those who continue to suffer from its effects silent, it is difficult to calculate exactly how many people are affected.  But, we probably can surmise that it is a sizable portion of our population.  If this isn’t reason alone for theologians to begin to talk about trauma as a topic worthy of Christian reflection, consider that Christianity has its origins in trauma.  The followers of Jesus who experienced the violent torture and death of their teacher at the hands of the occupying political leaders were traumatized persons trying hard to see the presence of God in the midst of apparent failure and crushed hope.

Shelly Rambo is one theologian who intentionally takes up the task of reflecting on trauma and, I think, does so with success.  Her recent book, titled Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining, really challenged the way that I think about the Christian story.  Reading the book was difficult, not just because she presents some complicated points but because the content is emotionally difficult to bear, but in the end it reawakened in me a passion for the theological project.  It is a stellar example of how to be creative, intellectually rigorous, and immensely practical all in one breath.

So, since (a) it is Holy Saturday today, (b) I am so moved by this book, and (c) I am looking for conversation partners, I thought it would be an appropriate blog topic.

Rambo argues that theological language has the potential to bring about a measure of traumatic healing.  When Christian theology focuses solely on the resurrection, however, it misses the opportunity to speak healing words to trauma victims.  The problem with a typical narration of salvation is that we tend to have a linear understanding of redemption.  We read the story of Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection in terms of a strong start, an awful middle, and an amazing, better than before ending (which turns out to really be a beginning).  This kind of narrative can communicate to those who are in the midst of struggle to “get over it already,” but this is not the way that extreme suffering works.  One cannot “get over” traumatic suffering.  Trauma is an extreme form of suffering which cannot be integrated into one’s life narrative; the suffering remains, even if some measure of healing is experienced.  Traumatic suffering always remains.

Rambo frames Jesus’s death as a traumatic experience for the disciples which is not erased by the resurrection.   In other words, the resurrection experience does not make the disciples feel as if the crucifixion was now ‘worth it’.  The resurrection is not the victory of love and life over death, but rather it represents the survival of love through death, alongside of death.  The resurrection comes from a place of desperation, not conquest.  Rambo aims to upset a linear model of redemption and replace it with a more complex and subtle recasting of redemption in terms of survival and holding on.  This perspective is important if theology is to be neither delusional about the reality of trauma nor fuel for imperialist conquest narratives.

In liturgical language, Rambo wants to slow down the movement from Good Friday to Easter Sunday.  We fail to take time to dwell in Holy Saturday and, as a result, we fail to recognize that death remains with us even after the resurrection of Sunday has arrived.  We fail to realize that the effects of death remain after the immediate threat has passed.  Holy Saturday is the day on which Jesus’s death is completed (meaning, he no longer is in the process of dying and therefore no longer managing the extreme physical suffering of the crucifixion in an immediate way), yet there is still no hope of life renewed.  Holy Saturday is an abyss of darkness; it is the day of Jesus’s descent into hell.  Death has not been replaced with life, but rather the suffering of the day before has worsened.  The parallels with experiences of trauma are fairly transparent: because the effects of trauma remain long after the immediate threat has passed, victims have no reason to think that things will get better with time.  Healing is not a logical or natural progression from the current situation.  One cannot imagine a way forward.

For Rambo, Easter Sunday is not about the erasure of death, but rather the miracle that life survives death and stands alongside of it.  Love is not a victorious force that pushes its way through to overcome death.  Perhaps if love can be thought of as strong at all, it is due only to its tenacity.  Though it has no reason to exist, it does, however wearily.   Theologians try to rescue the Christian story from being more than a story of survival, but Rambo asks, “what if theologians did not perform this rescue?  Perhaps the divine story is neither a tragic one nor a triumphant one but, in fact, a story of divine remaining, the story of love that survives.  It is a cry arising from the abyss.  The question is: can we witness it?”[1]  A focus on Holy Saturday, this middle space between death and life, is not threatening to a resurrection theology, for this middle space is the condition upon which the redemption of the resurrection can come about.  This is not because the middle logically or theoretically precedes fullness of life, but more so because this is descriptive of what reality is.  Rambo wants to describe the redemptive work of the Spirit in this middle space.

This is just a taste of what Rambo is trying to do.  For more you’ll have to read the book, and then please get in touch with me and let’s talk!  For now, however, let’s take up her challenge to pause in the midst of Holy Saturday and feel the depths of its darkness without moving too quickly to tomorrow’s resurrection.

P.S. Check out this video lecture by Rambo if you’d like.  http://www.bu.edu/sth/academics/faculty/interviews-lectures/theologytrauma/

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As Cardinal George argues:

What will happen if the HHS regulations are not rescinded? A Catholic institution, so far as I can see right now, will have one of four choices: 1) secularize itself, breaking its connection to the church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop. This is a form of theft. It means the church will not be permitted to have an institutional voice in public life. 2) Pay exorbitant annual fines to avoid paying for insurance policies that cover abortifacient drugs, artificial contraception and sterilization. This is not economically sustainable. 3) Sell the institution to a non-Catholic group or to a local government. 4) Close down.

In other words, the Catholic church would rather get out of the healthcare business altogether, even though it would mean sacrificing all the good that Catholic hospitals do, than be made to do something that it considers to be immoral.  The moral philosophy guiding this conclusion would seem to be the following: it would be better to not do good in order to avoid doing evil than to do evil in order to keep doing good.

If this is true, then should we not also get out of the U.S. military business?

This statement probably seems like a huge non sequitur so let me explain.

As the bishops remind us in their 1983 document The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response, when it comes to matters of war and peace, a Catholic has only two options: either pacifism or adherence to just war theory.

The meaning of pacifism is straightforward enough: it is the belief that all wars, of any kind and for any reason, are always wrong. But just war theory, precisely because it is not a form of moral absolutism, is much more easily misrepresented.  It is not, as some seem to think, an excuse for war.  Just war theory begins from the presumption that war is almost always wrong.  This is why, in the Summa, Thomas Aquinas conducts his treatment of war by asking “whether it is always sinful to wage war?” For Thomas, war is the exception; not the rule.  The benefit of the doubt is always given to peace.

In sum, a Catholic must either think that all wars are wrong or that most wars are wrong.

But the United States military does not allow for this.  Currently, the military recognizes the rights only of conscientious objectors, those who think that all wars are immoral; it does not recognize the rights of selective conscientious objectors, those who think that one war in particular is immoral.   If you are a Catholic in the U.S. military and you wish to follow Catholic teaching on war, you are not allowed to do so.  While the military can be said to respect the religious freedom and freedom of conscience of pacifist Catholics, it cannot be said to respect the religious freedom and freedom of conscience of those Catholics who wish to adhere to just war theory.

With its refusal to recognize the rights of selective conscientious objectors, does not the U.S. military exhibit a hostility to the religious freedom of Catholics that is at least as egregious as that allegedly displayed in the HHS mandate?

It is not therefore true, as Cardinal George insists, that, prior to the HHS ruling, “the government has respected the freedom of individual conscience and institutional integrity of the many religious groups that shape society.”  If Catholics in the military have long been deprived of the right to refuse to fight in wars that their conscience and church tells them are wrong, then what Cardinal George says here is clearly not true.  Rather than being an unprecedented attack on religious freedom, the HHS mandate would seem to be business as usual.

And this is not merely a theoretical debate about hypothetical scenarios. Unlike the claim that birth control causes abortions, which is based on unverifiable speculation, we know for a fact that the U.S. military has waged unjust wars.  Some, if not most, of the wars the U.S. military has waged have failed to fulfill the criteria set forth by Catholic just war theory.  Very recently, Pope John Paul II categorized the Iraq War as an unjust war.  How many Catholic soldiers were made to fight in this war?  How many Catholic members of the military were made to violate their own church’s teaching and contribute, however indirectly, to the prosecution of this war?

And this is not just about Catholic individuals.  The Catholic church’s involvement in the military is just as institutional as its involvement in the healthcare industry.  The Catholic church has a military chaplaincy and it even has an archdiocese devoted exclusively to the U.S. military.

If being made to pay, even indirectly, for birth control is reason enough for the Catholic church to get out of the healthcare business, shouldn’t being made to participate, even indirectly, in the execution of unjust wars be reason enough for the the Catholic church to get out of the military business?  When it comes to church teaching on women’s sexuality, there is no good good enough to justify even the slightest deviation from church teaching.  With respect to church teaching on war, one must ask, is there any evil evil enough to compel the church to take its own teachings seriously and reconsider its institutional affiliation with the U.S. military?

The bishops do not seem to have (much) of a problem with Catholics conforming their consciences to President Obama’s when it comes to matters of war and peace, why should it be any different with matters of health and disease?

Monseñor focuses on the tumultuous three years between Romero’s appointment as the local ordinary of San Salvador in 1977 and his death in 1980. The documentary is a treasure of archival video footage and audio materials, including Romero’s cassette-recorded diary, homilies, visits to local parishes, and reception of Salvadorans into the archdiocesan center. Ms. Weber remarked that for her the sound of Romero’s voice carries the story; it was striking also for me to hear its weariness some nights as he recounted numbers of disappeared, tortured, and murdered, and then its powerful conviction in denouncing injustice and proclaiming the Gospel at the altar on Sunday mornings. In addition, the project emphasizes Romero’s role as pastor and his deep commitment to – and learning from – the people of El Salvador. To that end the film includes extensive and equally moving recent interviews with campesinos – some local church leaders, some former FMLN guerrillas, some both – as well as legal advisors, fellow priests, and several military and government officials who reflect on Romero and their own context.

Just a day prior I had occasion to view part of another documentary about El Salvador, this one focusing on the life and struggle of the revolutionary groups tucked away in the mountains. It is called In the Name of the People: El Salvador’s Civil War and was shot in 1985. I’ve yet to watch the rest of it, but plan to do so soon since it turns out the entire film is available online.

By way of background: this semester I’m taking a course on liberation theology with particular attention on El Salvador. I’ve tried to be intentional and present to reading that is often graphic in its depiction of the human toll of oppression, on a massive scale yet irreducibly particular. The experiential register of film may often exceed the impact of the printed page, at least it did for me. As I think about returning to sounds and images that are, unsurprisingly, horrifically violent and highly disturbing even as they envisage moments of hope, I’m acutely aware that the rule for commentary ought to be the fewer words the better. The force of these documentaries as an overwhelming communication of the wrong and right we do to and with one another can surely stand on its own.

Still I’d like to share one phrase that has lodged itself in my mind over the past few days: “the asceticism of truth.” I’m recalling a short reflection found in America magazine at the start of Lent, where John F. Kavanaugh commended this spiritual discipline as a practice we might “take up” during the liturgical season of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Kavanagh suggests that we situate ourselves in places of discomfort in order to encounter deep truths about ourselves as fragile, sinful creatures that we tend to avoid. He focuses on solitude, interpersonal relationships, and facing marginal others. I think his comments on the “world of wounded persons” could certainly be expanded into a more explicitly socio-political horizon, such as that which framed the life of Oscar Romero and the Salvadoran revolution, including of course the involvement of the United States government. Kavanagh’s phrase is, to be honest, one about which I have some reservations, especially given the disposition of some in Catholic circles to weaponize “Truth” against ambiguity, ambivalence, and dissent. Nevertheless, in considering the experience of watching these documentaries I’ve found it to be a meaningful expression of the ineradicable demand suffering imposes on those who see themselves as, perhaps haltingly and hopefully critically, seeking after truth.

Understanding such a confrontation with reality (via the medium of film) as the site of spiritual discipline implies, first, a patient and probably pained attentiveness to images that would be easier to let go. In the midst of schooling in constant nuance (whose value I do not at all deny) it also suggests a check on equivocation. Such an asceticism ought not to eschew the complexity of responding to injustice, but it faces the simple fact of suffering that should not be; as in Edward Schillebeeckx’s notion of the “negative experience of contrast” a protest arises: “this cannot go on!” and in this resistance lies the revelation of God’s desire for human flourishing. Romero and so many Salvadorans lived this resistance and this revelation with total commitment. For a viewer, especially one in the privileged position of encountering these documentaries in an institution of higher education, one struggle may be to forestall a romanticized solidarity, a wave of sentiment whose resolve dries up as quickly as tears. Surely the goal must be a lasting re-orientation of prayer and effective action; guest blogger Sofia Barbato’s post on Dean Brackley, SJ after his passing several months ago is instructive here. I don’t know fully what it means to “try the asceticism of truth” but I wonder if watching these documentaries in such a spirit could be one illuminative though certainly partial example. If not as a Lenten practice or if not in these terms, then in any case I would highly recommend In the Name of the People and Monseñor.