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By Valerie Schultz
Monday, May 21 2012 11:38 AM
There are things we Catholics are not supposed to consider. Sometimes those things may take up residence in our souls, however, and we feel nudged by the Spirit to ponder them. Such is the issue of the ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood.
A patriarchal wind has long blown from Rome, engulfing both women and men. In spite of a shortage of vocations to the priesthood, any discussion of ordaining Catholic women has been labeled a "grave scandal" by the Vatican, a description that perhaps applies more aptly to the decades-long crisis of sexual abuse of children by ordained men, for which the church hierarchy is still trying to atone. On Holy Thursday of this year, Pope Benedict XVI used his global pulpit to reprimand priests, especially those in Ireland and Austria, who have spoken up in support of the ordination of women, and to denounce any discussion of the topic as "disobedience."
Thus it is that when the documentary "Pink Smoke Over the Vatican" is shown in Bakersfield, there will not be a local priest or sister participating in the panel discussion following the screening. Produced and directed by Jules Hart, this 2011 award-winning documentary explores the controversial ordination of women to the Catholic priesthood. The women priests, in answering their calling, have been excommunicated from the church, a penalty that, as loyal Catholics obedient to the Holy Spirit, they reject.
Cal State Bakersfield's Institute for Religion, Education, and Public Policy is sponsoring the Bakersfield screening of "Pink Smoke Over the Vatican." (Full disclosure: Author is a board member of IREPP, and part of the panel.) The event, at 7 p.m. Monday in the CSUB Student Union Multi-Purpose Room, is free to the public and open to all. IREPP is fortunate to welcome Dr. Juanita Cordero, who is an ordained Roman Catholic woman priest, here to present the film and lead the panel discussion. Dr. Cordero was ordained in 2007 and pastors a house church called the Magdala Catholic Community in Los Gatos. She will also preach at Grace Episcopal Church, located at Stockdale Highway and Real Road, at the 10 a.m. service on Sunday.
Many Catholics wrestle with imposed silence when they feel compelled by conscience to speak of the forbidden. This is especially wrenching if one has taken a formal vow of obedience. It is not, however, an unfamiliar scenario in church history. Many a saint was first condemned as a sinner for his or her disobedience to authority. Father Roy Bourgeois, a Maryknoll priest for many decades, has written that "when we betray our consciences, we separate ourselves from God ... Sexism, like racism, is a sin. And no matter how hard we try to justify discrimination, in the end, it is not the way of God." Father Bourgeois, who is interviewed in "Pink Smoke Over the Vatican," has recently been dismissed from his order for his refusal to recant his public support of women priests.
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We're reading the Sunday paper together, my husband and I, a weekend luxury because the newspaper still has separate sections that we can trade back and forth, when I turn to a page with a photo that distresses me.
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Because a face-to-face conversation with one's hero is surely a cause for joy, it was my honor to interview Sister Helen Prejean during her recent visit to Bakersfield. Sister Helen, a writer and lecturer, is well-known as the "Dead Man Walking" nun, the face of the global movement to end the death penalty. I met with her at the home of her local hosts, who were gracious and welcoming. "REJOICE," said the flag outside the door, a most appropriate greeting for this lovely spring morning.
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We are a people of acronyms.
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My husband finally got me to watch the movie "Hugo." I'd had no desire to see it when it was first out in the theaters, because it had been advertised as a 3-D film. I'd also somehow had the impression that it was about animation, which it is not, but the killer was the part about it being in 3-D. In my biased mind, 3-D means all show, no substance. Plus I don't want to have to wear cheesy glasses for two hours. And the things rushing at me in 3-D productions make me feel a little nauseous.
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On a recent Saturday, my two younger daughters and I had some time to kill in Bakersfield while my husband was attending a church function. We had driven down from Tehachapi together, and after dropping him off, we considered our options. We had already eaten an early dinner, and we didn't have quite enough time to see a movie. Besides, we're all on a budget. It was approaching evening, warm and pleasant. The sun was considering lowering itself in the west. My youngest daughter, who is a CSUB student and lives in Bakersfield, suggested we go to the Park at Riverwalk, which is just past the university. So we did.
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April is National Parkinson's Awareness Month, which is hardly necessary for someone who lives with Parkinson's disease. To one who has been diagnosed with Parkinson's, the awareness is only too real. One million Americans, and up to 10 million people worldwide, live with Parkinson's. Another 60,000 Americans are diagnosed each year, usually in middle age, and more often men than women. Awareness-raising is for the rest of us, to support the scientific research aimed at finding both a cure and the future prevention of the disease, and to listen with compassion to the human stories of those whose lives are affected and will eventually be taken by Parkinson's.
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When I was a grade-school student in the last century, my classroom was graced one spring with the presence of an incubator. Unlike the high-tech incubators in the neonatal nursery, this incubator was a rectangular glass-walled box with a straw-covered floor. It was a little stinky, but magical. The lid was wired with naked light bulbs that provided the heat that the three chicken eggs nestled together atop a clump of straw required to mature.
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Thursday is Holy Thursday, which, in the Christian faith, precedes Good Friday. All of this week leading to Easter Sunday is referred to as Holy Week, or for you secularists, spring break. The focus of Holy Thursday is on the Last Supper, a traditional Seder meal that Jesus shared with his companions before he was arrested, tried, tortured and executed. Many Christians believe that the first Holy Thursday saw the institution of the sacrament of Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ given for us.
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We have a problem. Kern County's teen birthrate is the highest in the state of California. A recent editorial in The Californian notes that 63.8 babies are born for every 1,000 teenagers between the ages of 15 and 19. Our teens obviously need a stronger sex education program, but whose job is it to teach them: parents, church or school? Controversy swirls around possible solutions. The state's condoms-by-mail program has been pilloried, and funding for Planned Parenthood seems to face a new threat daily. Some adults think that if we talk about sex to teenagers, we are condoning, and perhaps encouraging, their sexual activity, even though studies show that educated teens are less likely to end up a statistic of teen pregnancy. An abstinence-only curriculum is not helpful to those teens who are already making risky decisions.
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"Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards."
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As we mark the one-year anniversary of the terrible earthquake and tsunami that the people of Japan endured last March 11, it is fair to note that, in spite of the ensuing disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, no baby has yet been born without limbs. No three-eyed fish have been spotted. The world has not ended in a radioactive kaboom. Yet heretofore undisclosed information regarding that near-cataclysm is still making people nervous as time passes.
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I forgot my daughter's half-birthday.
Young's Marketplace on Brundage to close this week
