UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Ken Briggs | May. 18, 2014 NCR Today
Scoffers were out in force when Northwestern University’s football team petitioned to form a union. How dare these upstarts kick sand in the faces of their benefactors! And how ridiculous of them to presume they had a claim on the university’s corporate enterprise? But the players convinced the court that they did have a case for considering themselves “employees” of the university who raked in tons of money which they may be entitled to more than the subsistence living they were receiving. To those weighing their plea, it was right of them to seek a formal voice in their own destiny though the immense legal and political force of the university will likely crush it as anti-union forces did recently at Volkswagen in Tennessee.
Catholic sisters may shudder by the comparison, but their plight isn’t so different. They produced good will and bona fides far beyond their numbers and resources for Mother Church yet they have no final authority over their own status in the church. Only ordained males are vested with decisions over Catholic policies and teachings. For ages, sisters have existed by sufferance of male clerics and responsible for their own financial well being. Like the football players, they give everything and get little in return.
The majority of American sisters have gone in a more independent direction since Vatican II because of opportunities they saw authorized by the Council itself. They took more initiative in deciding how they would live and how they would follow their community’s special mission. To much of the clerical order, the reforms the sisters undertook spelled “uppity.” Clerics still held all the ruling power but the sisters were testing the scope of that authority under a “people of God” church that was increasing critical of that strict chain of command.
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