BALTIMORE (MD)
Baltimore Sun
March 3, 2019
By Patricia M. Dwyer
Last month, Pope Francis met with bishops and cardinals from around the world to address the child abuse scandal that has devastated countless victims, rocked the faith of practicing Catholics and drawn outrage and disbelief from the global community. Several weeks earlier, we learned that for years clergy had been sexually abusing nuns. And recently, headlines revealed that gay priests, faithful to their vows, are being stigmatized as child abusers and that secret housing exists for infants and children from clergy’s illicit or consensual sexual relationships.
Something has got to change.
In addressing the nun’s abuse scandal, Pope Francis dismissed the notion that the abuse represented “temptations of the flesh,” but instead pointed to “clericalization,” clergy’s abuse of power due to their privileged status. I would wager we could expand that analysis and see power’s influence in all the sordid details shaking the church at its core.
As a Catholic nun from 1969 to 1991, I knew firsthand the ecclesial pecking order, with nuns playing back-up to the featured act: clergy forgave sins, developed and imposed doctrine, changed bread into the body of Christ. At one point of my career, I served as leader of a community of 13 sisters. Post Vatican Council, a sister who formerly had been deemed a “mother superior” was now called a “local coordinator,” a term meant to emphasize the collaborative nature of governance. We had monthly “house meetings” to make decisions together about the mundane (upkeep of the house, cooking and other responsibilities) and the visionary (our local community goals, our outreach in the parish or justice issues we would commit to). As the local coordinator, I was one of many voices; my role was to tap the energy and talents of the sisters with whom I shared a home and community life. Together we came to important decisions. This took time and dialogue, but the outcome was always worth it, as we discovered common ground to build on. It wasn’t perfect. It sometimes got messy. But that approach reflected who we were as a community.
That model was mirrored at the macro level of decision making as well. When major congregational issues were discussed, groups of sisters across geographic regions where we served would gather to share insights and discern possible paths forward. Results of these meetings were collected and reviewed by our president and council, and decisions were based on input from us as well as the leadership team.
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