John J. Shea, OSA: Letter to Bishops of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales - Ephiphany 2023
/“ How can the church talk about the dignity and worth of women when it also sees women—much as in other traditional cultures—as inferior to men, as ‘‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’’?”
Epiphany, 2023
Dear Bishops of England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales,
I hope you are well. In this time of synodality, I write to each of you again as head of diocese concerning the status of women in the church. Please allow me to share three stories that will help introduce a current letter to Pope Francis and one to his Council of Cardinals.
(1) In 1991, I was invited to India to speak at a conference honoring the life and work of Father D. S. Amalorpavadass. After the conference, I offered a workshop on pastoral counselling. At one point, a priest from a neighboring country said: “Can I ask you a practical question?” I said: “Of course.” He told me that his most difficult pastoral problem was that mothers were killing their baby girls. Families were too poor to provide a dowry, and it was too difficult to keep them.
Later, as I reflected on the utter horror of mothers killing their own daughters, I kept asking myself: How can the church respond to this? Finally, it came to me: How can the church talk about the dignity and worth of women when it also sees women—much as in other traditional cultures—as inferior to men, as ‘‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’’?
(2) In the 1994 letter, Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, Pope John Paul II says: “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.” This declaration was exceptionally effective. For almost thirty years, the global church has lived in a dialogue vacuum on this issue—a vacuum that unfortunately has impacted accountability, authority, trust, transparency, teaching, loyalty, self-preservation, and timely research. In this vacuum, two of the concerns most neglected continue to be: (a) a credible, informed grasp of sexuality and gender; and (b) what it means for all of us to develop as full human beings.
Not only has this Vatican silencing occasioned seriously truncated, pre-synodal thinking and kept the human sciences at bay, but it has also brought intimidation, ignorance, denial, anger, fear, and division. Now, as a global church can we unite enough to courageously interface reality? Are there institutions—Catholic and otherwise—in Australia, Asia, Africa, the Americas, Europe, and elsewhere with scholarly programs in the human sciences that may be able to help us recover from our truncation? Can we finally move past a fear-siloed, security-spent, feckless, pre-Vatican II fundamentalism in theology? In the spirit of Pope John XXIII, can our church once again open its windows to the world without invoking gloom and doom, without pining for the “glory days” of patriarchy?
(3) In 1974, I was blessed to get an M.A. in Pastoral Counselling at St. Paul University in Ottawa. In 1980, I got a Ph.D. in Religious Studies (Psychology of Religion) at the University of Ottawa. My interest was in human and religious growth and development coming together in actual practice as well as in theory. In 1981, the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education of Fordham University hired me to teach six courses each year covering psychology and religion, pastoral counseling and care, and human and religious development. Each one of these areas was emerging in a way that informed pastoral practice; each was very helpful in bringing aspects of the Second Vatican Council to life.
Delighted and privileged as I was to teach in all of these areas, perhaps most challenging and rewarding was human and religious development. I thoroughly enjoyed preparing for Life Cycle I each fall and Life Cycle II each spring. In 2005, Finding God Again: Spirituality for Adults was published. In 2018, Adulthood, Morality, and the Fully Human: A Mosaic of Peace was published. I am presently working on: “The Missing Fully Human: Adult Jesus and Followers, Adult Reality and the Parables, Adult Ritual and the Eucharist.” It is important for me to see caring as furthering Christian growth in search of wisdom.
In many years of study, teaching, research, and therapeutic practice (with some excellent supervisors), I have never come across a single thinker on the requisites of human and religious development—including our Incarnate God advanced “in wisdom, age, and grace”—who thinks that women are “not fully in the likeness of Jesus.”
Sincerely,
John J. Shea, O.S.A., Ph.D., MSW (Fordham University, 1981-2002; Boston College, 2003-2012; former Fellow, American Association of Pastoral Counselors)
John J Shea, OSA
