Many sisters feel depressed because their male colleagues have no respect for their work. The church will have to live with the consequences.--Lavinia Byrne
Last week the British nun and feminist theologian Lavinia Byrne resigned from her order, the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. She left the community, which she had joined in 1964 at the age of 17, after an alleged "campaign of bullying" by the Vatican. Byrne, a prominent writer and broadcaster in the United Kingdom, had come under pressure from the Vatican over a 1993 book arguing for the ordination of women in the Roman Catholic Church. NEWSWEEK's Carla Power spoke to the Cambridge-based Byrne last week. Excerpts:
POWER: You've said that in dealing with you, the Vatican "behaved like the Inquisition." How so?
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, otherwise known as the CDF, is the former Holy Inquisition. The word "holy" is a bit ironic, frankly. These are ordinary human beings who are struggling to do a good job, but in the modern world. I wrote a book in 1993 called "Women at the Altar" just when the debate on the ordination of women was a key topic of conversation, particularly in the United Kingdom. Just when we were going to press, the pope said there was no longer to be a debate about the ordination of women. He issued an encyclical called Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, which said that priestly ordination should be reserved for men only. At great inconvenience, we published the pope's document at the back of the book, so that, as it were, he had the "final word."
It was only when the book was being reprinted by the St. John's Press in Minnesota that the local bishop, John F. Kinney, intervening on behalf of the CDF, demanded that it be warehoused or burned. If that doesn't smack of the Inquisition, what does?
Did you get any support from within the church?
It was when I met with [Britain's] Cardinal Hume [after the banning incident] that I had my first suggestion of comfort. He said to me, "Lavinia, it's not about obedience, it's about justice." I think he recognized that it is profoundly unjust for a judgment to be applied after the event. Subsequently, in April 1998, the CDF demanded that I make a "public declaration of assent to the specific teaching of the magisterial documents" about birth control and priestly ordination--the famous, or infamous, Humanae Vitae. I think this was totally misjudged, because what does a public declaration mean? I broadcast regularly with the BBC. What kind of image of the church would be projected if its most famous media personality in the United Kingdom appeared to trivialize the full body of Catholic teaching and the wealth of the spiritual tradition of Western Christendom? [It would have seemed that I was] reducing them to a couple of documents about sex, and about the inconsequence of women in the church's life.
How does the CDF have to change?
Somehow the CDF has to learn how to dialogue with people. How to listen. The first word of the Rule of Saint Benedict--a text I hugely respect--is the word "listen." My question is, how can the CDF learn to listen?
You've spoken of women's current contributions to the church. How does this qualify them, in your view, to be priests?
I think women are conspicuous for their work of reconciliation. I've recently been to Peru, where I met with remarkable nuns, who work with people who are poor, violent, druggy, intelligent, questioning. These women go to places where no other priest would go. Women are good at networking, communicating and teaching. Women can represent Christ as adequately as men because they, too, are made in God's image and likeness. If women can perform the threefold ministry of Jesus--namely healing, teaching and proclaiming the Gospel by their very being--then the debate about ordination needs to be reopened. There are many sisters who feel depressed and undervalued because their male colleagues have no respect for their work. The church will have to live with the consequences.
Apart from the huge issue of women's ordination, how does this sexism play out on a day-to-day basis?
In many parishes, women are treated as a servant class, who are there to pray, to do good and to support Father. In the U.K., women in their 40s are leaving the church in droves. They have done their best to bring up their children to be good Catholics. They look to the church for a vibrant image of what it is to be a professional and educated woman in the year 2000, and often they find their aspirations mocked and their contributions denigrated. We desperately need positive teaching about family life, work, play, the place of men and the place of women in social and political life. This is the church's task.
Having left the order that you joined 35 years ago, what will you do next?