John J. Shea, OSA: Letter to Pope Francis, Epiphany 2023
/Epiphany 2023
Dear Pope Francis,
I write to you yet one more time. I hope you are well. I keep praying for you. Your concern for injustice, migrants, the poor, the environment, reform of the Vatican, and synodality is quite exceptional. Enclosed are a letter to each member of your Council of Cardinals and a letter for background mailed to each of the U.S. ordinaries in 2014.
John J Shea, OSA
In the beginning of your papacy, you addressed the need for honest dialogue in the church. Back then it was quite encouraging. You used to say: ‘dialogue, dialogue, dialogue.’ You even said: ‘dialogue fearlessly.’
On the ordination of women, however, there was only silence. You urged no dialogue at all — let alone anything synodal or gender inclusive. You are our Supreme Bridgebuilder. When will you call for the reform most critical for the church’s oneness and its leavening in the world?
“How can our church be whole if every women in it is ‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’? Why the image Dei of women ignored, disparaged, and nullified by you and the Vatican? What is it that keeps women from fully imaging our Three-in-One God? Will your signature ‘integral human development’ ever include the integral development of women?”
How can our church be whole if every women in it is ‘not fully in the likeness of Jesus’? Why the image Dei of women ignored, disparaged, and nullified by you and the Vatican? What is it that keeps women from fully imaging our Three-in-One God? Will your signature ‘integral human development’ ever include the integral development of women?
Will an intelligent view of gender ever dawn on a tragically uninformed, indolent, sleep walking, sheep-droved magisterium? Will today’s Vatican misogyny — sinful, robust, centuries encrusted, puerile and deadly — thwart the Spirit’s animation of the Church now and for ages to come?
Pope Francis, if the clericalism you rail against is a symptom, will you decry the underlying disease? Will you liberate servant ministry from patriarchal conceit? Will you insist on being a Patriarchal Pontiff who honors male gonadal difference but fails to honor the obvious body-and-soul integrity of the millions and millions of women in your care?
How long this confounding injustice in our Church? How long this confounding disrespect? How long this confounding contradiction?
Sincerely,
John J. Shea, OSA
Copy: Each member of the Council of Cardinals
