Chicago Catholic News
August 24 2010
http://www.chicagocatholicnews.com/2010/08/losservatore-chicago-oak-park-pastor.html
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| The former Quigley seminary in the North Loop, now the headquarters for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Photo by Trent Sherrell |
Caesar crossed the Rubicon and changed the course of Roman history. On a fall day in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the door of the handsome Castle church overlooking Wittenberg and changed the history of Europe. In both cases, the groundwork had been laid for the tsunami to come.
When I heard from my daughter that Father Larry McNally had stood at the altar at Ascension Church in Oak Park and apologized to the women in the congregation for the way the Church was treating them, I wondered if his sermon might be the catalyst for a flood of change in the Church. Certainly, the groundwork has been laid by hundreds of nuns like Sisters Teresa Kane, Joan Chittester and Chicago's Benet McKinney, and hundreds of laywomen like Anne Burke and Patricia Ewers.
I hoped that change might be the result of his brave stand.
It was local change that impelled the strong words from Father McNally's mouth. He told the congregation that Ascension had lost many hitherto devoted women lectors, communion distributors and a spiritual director.
In an Aug. 10 letter to the Chicago Sun-Times, Father McNally objected to the Vatican declaration that, like pedophilia, the ordination of women is a grave sin. He criticized use of Church money to investigate nuns who could better use the money for retired sisters, and the official request that religious help pay for their own investigation.
I wasn't raised to think of Martin Luther as courageous. But when my daughter told me about Father McNally's sermon, I saw his bravery as a "Martin Luther moment." Both men spoke truth to power. Martin Luther may have saved the Church (as well as divided it) when it responded to his theses by organizing the Council of Trent and changing its ways.
Can we all hope the Church will listen to Father McNally's message? Then maybe the Church will change, as it did after Trent and after Vatican II, and be saved from itself.
Margery Frisbie, a graduate of Mundelein College, has raised lots of kids and written lots of columns. She is the author of several local histories, two graphic histories published in Europe, and An Alley in Chicago, the Life and Legacy of Monsignor John Egan.
Contacts: margeryfrisbie@sbcglobal.net or info@chicagocatholicnews.com
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