WaPo Style Section, Papal Elections, Women's Ordination, and Beyond Sterotype

Oh, ye gad.

I mean...wow.  Excerpts:

About four hours after Pope Benedict XVI officially retired on Thursday — after he boarded the helicopter and soared over Rome and told the world he was now just a “pilgrim” beginning the final leg of his journey — after all that, a small group of faithful Catholics gathered in a cheerful, detached three-bedroom in Mount Rainier and set about competing to become the new pope.

So we're set up with this. And then eventually we're told this:

There are no men playing on this night, so the newly elected pope is going to be a woman. Specifically, it is going to be a 20- or 30-something woman from a super-progressive movement, such as Call to Action or the Women’s Ordination Conference — an organization working for gender equality in the Catholic Church — both of which are represented here. Specifically, a Jewish rabbi would have a better chance of becoming pope than anyone at Graham’s house, but no matter, the chili is excellent, and there’s wine.

Savor the spin. "an organization working for gender equality in the Catholic Church." Let us ask ourselves, first, whose side the Washington Post is on. Then let us note that, given the abundantly clear teaching of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, how it is that anyone working for women's ordination in the Catholic Church can be called a "faithful Catholic?"  The relevant section from the document:

Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.

But one might ask, "Can't I dissent from this teaching and be a Catholic in good standing?"  Fortunately for this discussion, that question has been answered.  Excerpts:

...This teaching requires definitive assent, since, founded on the written Word of God, and from the beginning constantly preserved and applied in the Tradition of the Church, it has been set forth infallibly by the ordinary and universal Magisterium (cf. Second Vatican Council, Dogmatic Constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium 25, 2). Thus, in the present circumstances, the Roman Pontiff, exercising his proper office of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32), has handed on this same teaching by a formal declaration, explicitly stating what is to be held always, everywhere, and by all, as belonging to the deposit of the faith...

Back to the Washington Post piece.

Hanna is the executive director of the Women’s Ordination Conference.

Ah. Ahem.

“I was driving to work when I first heard the pope had resigned, and I literally swerved my car.” Before the pope party, Graham — short hair, glasses, 28 — talks a little about her faith.

She loves being Catholic. She was raised Catholic. She went to Catholic University. She and her partner, Ariana, were married by an ex-nun, and their toddler, Asher, was baptized in a Catholic church.

Still, it’s a struggle and a cognitive disconnect to love something so deeply that sometimes seems not to love her back. She was devastated when the bishops of Maryland — her adopted home state — banded together last fall to oppose same-sex marriage.

Look, I understand that being told by your church that you are not permitted to fall in love, get married to your lover, or have sex is a heavy cross. I get it. At the same time, I don't understand what's going on here. What is it that you love about being Catholic? Jesus? The aesthetics? The rituals? What? Because I'm guessing from the rest of the piece and the above that she's not a big fan of teaching authority, doctrine, or structure, some fairly crucial elements of the whole. None of us really enjoy self-sacrifice for God until we're at that high pitch of love felt by Mother Teresa or Therese of Lisieux, and even then, there was a deep cost for them.  The cross is part of the faith.  The self-donation unto death is at the heart of being a disciple of Christ, a member of Christ.  Why is there a shock when the Church teaches as she has always taught on marriage and human sexuality?  And since when is speaking truth to someone considered an act which automatically must be devoid of love?

“We just have to keep doing the work of being the church that we want to be,” she says, on her activism.

What about trying to be the Church that Christ wants us to be? It's Jesus's Church. In fact, the Church is Jesus--the mystical body of Christ, made one by the Mass, by the sacraments. You break the rules intentionally, believing that if they are broken consistently, repeatedly, over a long period of time, that they will vanish and lose all force and effect? Do you have any idea what you sound like?

Fair is foul, and foul is fair

Or in another literary evocation of the same principle, check out C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength, especially the bit about the Objectivity Room.  Back to WaPo!

Shortly after Benedict announced his resignation, she polled several friends in the progressive Catholic movement on what qualities they’d hope to see in a new pope. She turned these thoughts into an article for the National Catholic Reporter: They wanted someone who was willing to open Vatican decision making to new voices. Someone who was transparent. Someone who was open to dialogue on controversial issues such as sexuality and gender. A non-white man would be nice, to force European and North American Catholics to look beyond their positions of privilege.

And here we become abundantly, absolutely clear as to what their undergirding philosophical premises are. Something like this, really. Which then leads you eventually to this conclusion.  The process laid out here.  And here, with a note on method here.  Back to WaPo!

Whoever the new pope is, he will have been selected by an electorate that is 100 percent male and 100 percent wrinkled. If it seems sacrilegious to reduce the selection of the new head of the Catholic Church to a game that appears to be entirely out of stock on Amazon.com — well, keep in mind that Graham’s living room is the only conclave to which the players have been invited. This night is about disenfranchisement, faith and board games.

Hey--I'm a male Catholic, and I can't vote in this election.  In fact, somewhere around 99% of the Church can't vote for the Pope.  So stop complaining about disenfranchisement.  University boards of trustees select presidents.  A number of other organizations have similar processes.  But anyway--to WaPo.

After two hours, representing a six-day conclave, a new pope is selected. The new pope will be Anice Chenault, 36, a program manager for the Department of Housing and Urban Development. She immediately declares that she will go by Pope Dorothy, after Dorothy Day, the social activist and anti-poverty champion who founded the Catholic Worker movement.

“I think I’ll be a pants-wearing pope,” she declares thoughtfully, as she’s not a big fan of dresses. Pro stem-cell research. Happy to welcome gay priests or female priests or any kind of priests who feel called to the priesthood. Her first order of business will be to deconstruct the Vatican. “And scatter the hierarchy,” she adds.

“Viva Pope Dorothy.” The women in the room lift their glasses and applaud. “Viva Pope Dorothy.”

Oh. No. No, no, no. Dorothy Day would be spitting nails right now. Look--she converted to Catholicism. She didn't say there shouldn't be a hierarchy, or that the goal of all right-thinking people should be to deconstruct the Vatican and disperse the hierarchy. Rather, she said:

"The Church is the Cross on which Christ was crucified, and who can separate Christ from His Cross," Guardini has written...--Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness, pg. 218.

And deconstructing the Vatican. Dispersing the hierarchy. What does that sound like?

Then Jesus said to them, “This night all of you will have your faith in me shaken, for it is written:  ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be dispersed’...--Matthew 26:31

Then Jesus said to them, “All of you will have your faith shaken, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be dispersed.’--Mark 14:27

Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the one who is my associate—oracle of the LORD of hosts.  Strike the shepherd that the sheep may be scattered; I will turn my hand against the little ones.--Zechariah 13:7

As for me and my blog, we will stand with Vatican II, which, you know, taught that the hierarchy was, is, and always will be an integral part of the Church.