The Season of Creation, Women Deacons, and an interview with Emily Reimer-Barry
Heidi, Daniel, and David explore the history and possibilities of women in the diaconate, look at the current Season of Creation in light of increasing environmental destruction, and Heidi interviews author and ethicist Emily Reimer-Barry
INTRO
Conference on Sr. Madaleva Wolf - October 3rd -5th
School of Sacred Theology
SEGMENT 1 - Season of Creation
Information about the Season of Creation
Laudato Si’
Pope Francis’s trip to Asia and Oceania
Pope signed document with Grand Imam in Indonesia, which includes issues of climate change
Saint Francis and Pope Francis share a care for creation
“Birdbath Industrial Complex”
Pope John XXIII - Pacem Et Terris
“Climate change is a life issue”
Hannah Arednt and fragile facts
Pet blessings coming up in early October
The concern about indifference
Arednt’s idea of “the banality of evil” - connects to indifference
SEGMENT 2 - Women Deacons
Dan’s NCR column on women deacons
Instrumentum Laboris
The Synod on the Amazon
1968 commision on Humanae Vitae
Humanae Vitae has not been fully received by the faithful
Dr. Phyllis Zagano
Women’s Ordination Conference
Discerning Deacons
TRANSCRIPT
INTRO
David Dault
Hello and welcome to the Francis effect podcast. My name is David dault. I host a radio show called things not seen about culture and faith, and I'm an assistant professor of Christian spirituality at the Institute of pastoral studies at Loyola University Chicago. I'm here with my friends, Heidi Schlumpf and Dan Horan. Heidi is senior correspondent at National Catholic Reporter, a publication that connects Catholics to church faith and the common good with independent news analysis and spiritual reflection. Dan is professor of philosophy, religious studies and theology and Director of the Center for the Study of spirituality at St Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. He's also affiliated professor of spirituality at the oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas. Every couple of weeks, we get together to discuss news and events through a lens of our shared Catholic faith. Dan and Heidi, welcome to you both. Heidi, how have you been
Heidi Schlumpf
I'm great. It's exciting week here at the National Catholic Reporter. I know for those of you in academia, you have like back to school. Well, we're starting a new season two at NCR because we have a new executive editor. He was announced yesterday. His name is James Grimaldi. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist with an emphasis and lots of experience in investigative reporting, which, as you both know, I love to do as well. So we're really excited at NCR. He'll be starting next week, and I really look forward to working with him. So that's the big news at NCR, but otherwise, things are going well here. It's starting to feel a little fallish in Chicago. I did hear from a listener after the last episode, so I just wanted to give a shout out to Maddie McLean, and she, I think, was a first time listener, and said she really enjoyed the podcast. Thought it was fair and balanced, so thought I'd give you guys that feedback. How is back to school? I know you're like, deep into the third week. You said, already? Dan, how's it going?
Dan Horan
Yeah, it's going. Well, it's the third week, which is hard to believe on the one hand, and on the other hand, it feels like we've been in this semester for about a month plus already. So yeah, no major exciting news, like a new executive editor at NCR. We are here at the Center for the Study of spirituality, gearing up for a three day conference in the beginning of October on the life and legacy of sister Matt Oliva Wolf, for listeners who don't know about her, she was the longtime president of St Mary's College in the early, kind of middle 20th century. And one of the reasons why she's most significant, her memory is really significant for us in the theology world, is that she founded the first school of theology that granted doctoral degrees to women in the United States. So it was called the School of sacred theology. It was founded in the 40s and went until the late 60s. And there some luminaries who were alums of that program, who earned their PhDs in that program, including the very famous, and in some circles, infamous feminist theologian Mary Daly, a long time Boston College professor. So yeah, if you're in the South Bend area or Chicago land and want to come down october 3 through fifth. Information is on the center's events website and conference website. It's free and open to the public. People can drop in for different sessions as they want. The schedule is available there, but it will be really exciting. We have local and some national scholars who will be presenting. It should be a really good time and exciting time. David, what's going on over there in Loyola, Chicago?
David Dault
Well, things are underway. Like you said. We're also in our third week of classes, and I'm settling back into the rhythms after my sabbatical. The good news that I have is that as of last week, as we're recording this, I turned in the entire finished, revised, final manuscript for my book, The accessorized Bible, to my editors at Yale press, and so it is now in their hands, and hopefully in the next few months, we'll get a pub date and be able to talk about when the book is coming out. But it's nice to have that project done, and I'm already off on other writing projects. I'm also excited because looking ahead with Loyola, this summer, I'm going to be taking a class to Rome, a class on Old Testament spiritualities, and we're going to use the Roman context as a really wonderful classroom to be talking about these varieties of spiritual practices that come out of the books that are alternately called the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament, and then Something that's coming together that I'm also very excited about, given my personal interests with the Manhattan Project, Cardinal Cupich is putting together a delegation of archbishops and others who are going to go to Japan for the 80th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings and to commemorate those events. And I was in a planning meeting yesterday, and it looks like I may be able to go along on that trip as a theological advisor. So I'm really excited about that, and I don't have nothing is inked yet, but as soon as I know for sure, I'll be happy to share more details. But it was exciting to be in the room where the decisions were happening, and it was exciting to be not at. At and to say you might be of value in this conversation as well. So I'm looking forward to giving more details about that. So I also want to make sure that listeners know we're recording this episode on the day that the debate is happening, so we will not have any commentary this episode about the debate just because we're locked in time before the debate actually occurs, but I'm sure that we'll have commentary and things to say in our next episode about that. Speaking of the episode, I'm excited about what's coming up today. In our first segment, we're going to be talking about the season of Creation. In our second episode, we're going to be talking about women deacons. And in our third episode, Heidi has an interview with Emily reamer Berry, so all of that is coming up here on the Francis effect. Please stay with us.
SEGMENT 1
Dan Horan
Welcome back to the Francis effect. I'm Dan Horan and I'm here with Heidi Schlumpf and David dault. Every couple of weeks, we get together to discuss news and events through the lens of our shared Catholic faith. From September 1 to October 4 of this year, Christian communities around the globe are marking and celebrating the season of Creation. The event began in 1989 when the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, Demetrius, the first, proclaimed the first day of September as a day of prayer for creation for the Orthodox churches. Since then, the season of Creation has grown into an annual and ecumenical event, including Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic communities from around the world. The season of Creation is especially important for us in 2024 as climate change and growing environmental crises continue to affect millions of people around the world. In July and August of this year, we reach the highest temperatures ever recorded in California and Nevada, wildfires are once again raging out of control, and as we are recording this, Christian pilgrims are being evacuated from the grotto at Lourdes due to flooding from a nearby river caused by unseasonably heavy rainfall in France. David, it sounds like the season of Creation is a mix of joys and sorrows for us this year. Where should we be putting our attention? Well, given
David Dault
that we are a show that focuses on Franciscan ways of looking at the world and Franciscan spiritualities, the notion that the whole of creation is with us as we are making our decisions, I think, is an important place to put our emphasis. And we've talked about the season of Creation before on the show, but it's been a couple of years. One of the things that's especially poignant for me, I think of the Scripture, where it says all of creation is groaning, you know, with the coming of the Lord, yes, but also all of creation right now is groaning because of some of the human choices that we're making. We're raising temperatures. We're creating uninhabitable conditions, especially for the most vulnerable. We are not being good stewards of this blessed Earth that we have been gifted with by our Creator. And so at the same time that we want to celebrate the beauty of creation, the extraordinary variety of creation, I think that we also need to take a pause and say we cannot sustain this. I've said a couple times before on the program that I've been recently doing a very deep rereading of Laudato Si and one of the things that I have come away from that rereading feeling more and more and this is going to sound weird when I first say it, Laudato Si is a document that has no future. And what I mean by that is, if you come away from reading Laudato Si, and you're not immediately changing your behavior, if you say to yourself, Oh, I'll start doing that tomorrow. I'll start doing that next week. I'll set some benchmarks for three months from now. You're missing the point. The immediacy of the crisis is something that we have to be really aware of. And I'm saying this in Chicago, where, when I first moved here a decade ago, we had a very wonderful, seasonable summer, where several weeks out of the summer I wore a sweater, and that is not possible anymore. Here in Chicago, things are changing so drastically. And so these are just some of the highlights that I want to start the conversation with. But I'm very interested in what you two think.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, not only are we Franciscan, but we care about Pope Francis. So I thought I'd bring up the other sort of newsy thing going on right now that does intersect a little bit with the season of Creation, and that is that Pope Francis is in the middle of a historic and lengthy trip. Much of the coverage of the trip, or the run up to the trip, focused on, why is this elderly, frail Pope taking the longest trip of his papacy to parts of Asia and Oceania, and the reporting that our Vatican correspondent, Christopher white, who's traveling with the Pope, has been doing has focused on some really interesting things. But one thing that caught my attention in part, because I knew we were going to be talking about this today was that when the Pope was in Indonesia last week, he signed a document with the grand Imam there, and so it was this great show of inter religious solidarity. But the topic of the document was about defending human dignity more broadly, but also about climate change, and it set the declaration says human exploitation of creation is a contributor to climate change, and it laments that the ongoing environmental crisis has become an obstacle to the harmonious coexistence of peoples. And so I'm always grateful when Pope Francis is a leader on this issue. If you want to read the coverage of that and other aspects of the trip, you can go to earthbeat and to NCR online. But what, what I think sometimes gets lost in our thinking about, what can we do personally? What can our government do? How are we experiencing this? In our clothing choices in different seasons, which I definitely notice also is how much this really is affecting first and foremost, and most seriously, people in other parts of the world, like where the Pope is visiting right now. So that's something that we're I'm glad to see the pope being a leader on this, but there's so much more to do. But again, grateful that our Pope is at least speaking about this very important issue, and not just during the season of Creation. Yeah,
Dan Horan
that's a really good point. And David, I like the tie in that that you made to the Francis effect, that this is Franciscan kind of writ large, Francis the Saint Francis the Pope. And one thing they share in common, that Pope, Francis, like you were saying, Heidi, shares with his namesake is this concern for creation. And I would be remiss as the token Franciscan in the trio here, if I didn't acknowledge that too often Francis of Assisi and his eco spirituality, his theology of creation, gets reduced to a caricature. It's the birdbath kind of image that we are all familiar with, the statue of Francis of Assisi in a garden, which is fine and nice, but when we do that, we run the risk of missing the radical. And I mean that in both senses, both kind of intense, but also as in the root, the core, the foundation of his thinking, this radical eco spirituality, which acknowledges based on scripture, based on tradition, based on what we now know at the natural sciences, that we, human beings, are creation too, right, that the rest of the world, the rest of creation, is not just the backdrop for human affairs, that we could do whatever we want with it, but in fact, we are an interrelated, interconnected, interdependent community, a community of creation, a family of creation. So Pope Francis, famously in Laudato Si addresses all who share our common home, which I like. It's an expansion of what John the 23rd did in pacem in terrace, when he addressed all people of goodwill. Pope Francis says, basically, if you're on this planet, I'm talking to you, we're in this together. The other thing that comes to mind is something that I've I had to look it up because it's been five years, but I wrote a column in 2019 about the season of Creation, the headline of which emphasized a point that I want to make here again, that care for creation, global climate change, is a life issue. Here we are in the season not of creation alone, but the season of a national presidential election in which life issues, especially for Catholic Christians, typically gets reduced to one particular theme, that of abortion, not that abortion isn't important, not that it isn't something that should be discussed, but in the spirit of the late Cardinal Bernadine, if we think about a seamless garment approach, a an idea that all of these life issues, ethical issues, are intertwined and connected, that we can't just pick and choose the ones we want, then maybe actually creation is the thing that holds together all these disparate ethical issues. And the argument that I make in that column, and that I want to just repeat here, is that if we don't have a habitable planet on which in which with which all life can thrive, then questions about human focused life concerns like abortion or euthanasia or migration or you pick capital punishment, you pick your particular area, those are moot points. There's no need to advocate for the unborn if there's no planet for them to be born into, right and to live on. So I think that's something that I have not seen get enough traction, and I think it's something, at least from the Catholic perspective, during this political season of the election cycle, is something we should be talking a lot more about. Well just I'll put in
Heidi Schlumpf
a quick plug for our segment that's going to come later with Emily Riemer Barry, who's talking about the politics of abortion and about reproductive justice that is a broader category that includes things like the environment. You know, I've been doing a lot of political coverage these last couple months, and what's interesting to note is the strategy of the issue of climate change not being a priority for either party right now, and I I get why on the DEM side that's a strategy, because they already have those voters, but it's a little disappointing to see that it's not something that voters seem to put at the top of their list of things they care about.
David Dault
As part of my research for the various books and other articles I've been working on, I've been doing a lot of deep diving into the thinking of Hannah Arendt, who was a political philosopher who was very active in the middle of the 20th century, wrote some just definitive books, including a book called The Origins of Totalitarianism, but also wrote a lot about political life, particularly American political life. And one of the concepts that Arendt talks about a lot is the idea of fragile facts, and that having a common set of evidence and data that we can turn to in our navigation to try and think about building a world together that's a really amazing accomplishment, and it is very easy to tear it down, and once it's torn down, it's very hard to recapture. And one of. Things that's really dangerous right now, especially around things like climate change, is that there has been now 1015, years of consolidated effort to remove the facts from the public sphere to where everything now is an equal battle of, well, that's just your opinion, or I have an alternative truth to that it's very hard in conversations like this to communicate the urgency as the waters rise at lords and as yet more wildfires stretch across California and Nevada and as the temperatures continue to rise, it's very hard to have A conversation about the urgency of these matters when there are entire large numbers, millions of people in populations, not just in America but in Europe, who completely don't see these facts as facts. And I think unfortunately, we have to place part of the blame there on the church, because there are definitely bishops who are involved in what we might call misinformation campaigns, who are going to very posh resorts and are mingling with people who have a vested interest in making sure that the shared evidence, the shared facts that we use to make decisions together are as obscure as possible. And I don't want to sound conspiratorial here. I just want to say if we are going to be Catholics who are looking at this through a Franciscan lens, just as you said, Dan, it's not just a matter of battling the birdbath industrial complex. It's also a matter of naming those principalities and powers that are profiting from the the manufactured ignorance of a great number of our fellow brothers and sisters and non binary persons in the population. I'm
Heidi Schlumpf
going to take a controversial position here, because we disagree so infrequently here, I do agree like about the problems with the bird back industrial complex. On the other hand, creation spirituality is like one of the gifts and positive aspects of our faith that's kind of out there in the popular culture, and I'm grateful for it when it seems like too much of pop culture about the church these days is like to be Maga or to be like a Christian nationalist. So I think of like how the pet blessing that's coming up for the feast day of Saint Francis at the beginning of October every year, it's it is kind of it's trite, right? It's not that in depth. It doesn't address systemic issues of our environment and our world and care for all, but it does at least hit people in their lives where things are important to them, like their pets, and say to them that your faith can be connected to something that's positive in terms of a more positive relationship with the environment. So I'm going to guess you're not necessarily going to disagree with that either.
David Dault
I very much like your framing Heidi of the pet blessing as a gateway drug to deeper eco spirituality. If I can think of it that way, I'm right on board with you,
Heidi Schlumpf
gateway. And Pope
Dan Horan
Francis makes this point early in Laudato Si too, where, yeah, the bird bath industrial complex is a phrase that I've used a lot over the years, and I'm happy to hear David cite it. But the way that Pope Francis talks about this too, is like making this point that Francis of Assisi, again, his pontifical namesake, was not a naive kind of romantic poet, caricature, cartoony kind of guy. And I think I agree with you, Heidi and David, your point about a kind of a gateway into a more serious reflection on what it is that we are and who it is that we are as individuals and members of the community of creation. My concern, though, like Pope Francis's, is that actually people don't make that leap. They bring their dogs and cats to the church on October 4, they get a blessing, they go to brunch, and then that's it. They don't think of anything else. And one of the things Pope Francis says often in Laudato Si and he has said subsequently in other texts and speeches, is the concern he has around indifference, that most of the ecological harm that's done in our world is not because of overtly bad faith actors. It's not people who have, as I like to say, like a trunk full of barrels of crude oil that they're going to dump in the local river like that's just not how this works. It's actually more often than not people who just don't care. They don't bother. They don't want to think about something that is discomforting. They do want to have just that caricature of Francis and the birdbath and the pets at the church on the feast of Francis. And I want to circle back to Hannah. Arendt that you mentioned David dault, and I'm thinking about her other work, particularly around the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem, and her phrasing of her coming up with a phrase the banality of evil, and that actually that aligns, I think, quite well, with Pope Francis's admonition and concern around indifference, that the harm that we are seeing. Play out in the world in terms of climate and the human causes of climate change and devastation is a kind of banal evil. It's people who just don't care, who opt out and say, as long as I'm not inconvenienced, then who cares? Right? That's somebody else's problem. And I think that leads to this, again, global indifference within the human family that, Heidi, you were talking about these parts of the world, particularly in the Pacific, where literal nations, island nations, are disappearing off the face of the earth because of rising ocean level. So there's so much to do here. There's so much to say, sadly, like thinking about having written that column for the season of Creation five years ago, that this is still something we keep talking about. We'll continue to keep talking about it. Pope Francis had that kind of appendix to Ludwig Feuerbach earlier in the year, and so maybe we will have ecological conversion, as the Pope says. But until that point, we're probably going to keep circling back and talking about this. Hopefully all of you listeners can join us in finding some ways big and small, to celebrate the season of Creation, and that includes prayer and includes action and includes advocacy. If you Google season of Creation or check out our show notes, we can take you directly to the website that talks about this history that I mentioned at the top of this segment. But for now, we might just leave it there. You're listening to the Francis effect. We'll be back in a moment.
SEGMENT 2
David Dault
Welcome back to the Francis effect. I'm David dault and I'm here with Heidi Schlumpf and Dan Horan. Every couple of weeks, we get together to discuss a variety of topics from a perspective informed by our Catholic faith. In 2016 Pope Francis created a commission to study the possibility of allowing women to serve as deacons in the Catholic Church, fulfilling a promise he made the previous year at the triennial meeting of the International Union of superiors general, or uisg, which is the organization of leaders of women's religious congregations around the world. After that commission completed its study and produced a report which has not been made public, Pope Francis convened a second commission to study the question of women Deacons in 2020 this second Commission also submitted its results to the Pope, who said that he did not find their study conclusive. And that quote, they found agreement up to a certain point, but each one of them has their own vision which doesn't accord with that of the others. Unquote, the subject of admitting or readmitting women to the diaconate has been a topic that has surfaced at each stage of the global synodal process, appearing as a topic of great interest in each consultative phase, and again, at the Synod gathering last October, however, in a move that surprised many observers, the question of women deacons and other specific issues that surfaced in the Synod process, such as those related to LGBTQ plus persons in the church were moved from the instrumentum laboris, the formal agenda of the Synod meeting, to working groups that would study the issues independently. Subsequently, Pope Francis has made several remarks that suggest he is personally not in favor of admitting women to the ordained diaconate. Most notably, in an interview with CBS News last May, Francis appeared to unequivocally deny the possibility of women being admitted to the diaconate, when asked by journalist Nora O'Donnell, quote, for a little girl growing up Catholic today, Will she ever have the opportunity to be a deacon and participate as a clergy member in the church? UNQUOTE Francis simply said, No. Dan, with the second meeting of the Synod on synodality just a month away, you recently wrote a column for NCR titled enough, already it's time to ordain women to the diaconate. You joined several other commentators in shining a light on this issue. How are you thinking about this going into the Synod next month?
Dan Horan
How am I thinking about this? I'm thinking rather animatedly about it. I have been struggling to be honest with you when the instrumentum labors came out and there was some context given around its structure with the second session of the Synod. What was presented was a kind of shift in emphasis, right? We had spent all these years in the consultative phase at the local level, a true experience of subsidiarity, moving up through the national and then regional and then kind of global levels, producing these reports in which this question, this subject, came up regularly. Now it came up initially in recent synodal history with the Synod on the Amazon right and looking at the need for the potential for married male clergy as well as women deacons. So this has been something that people have thought about for a while. In addition to those commissions that you mentioned David that Pope Francis established, I am very disappointed. I don't know how else to put it. I'm frustrated. I might even be angry, is the word. And I think Pope Francis's interview with CBS, I think the kind of equivocation and the not releasing the full studies or reports of the two commissions, it smells a little bit like 1968 and the Commission around Humanae Vitae, and my guess is that Pope Francis is doing something somewhat similar to his predecessor, Paul the sixth, that if actually we saw what he's presenting or suggesting is kind of inconclusive, or differences of opinion and whatnot, which is not uncommon as a scholar, these are scholars who are Getting together, historians who may not agree entirely, but there's, I'm certain of it, because other good scholars have made this point, there's enough evidence, historically and theologically to justify the admission of women to the diaconate, and that it is true ordination insofar as there's true male diaconal ordination, and I think it would just cause so much unrest, like With Humanae Vitae. And Humanae Vitae has not been received by the faithful. It just has not. We have all of this polling data to suggest that there's that's another conversation worth having, but it probably, I don't know. I think something similar might unfold. And so that's skirting the issue. I think Pope Francis's unequivocal no in response to that question I found to be deeply insulting, insulting to women, insulting to to to everybody, but mostly to the people that both the sisters that had in that gathering that you mentioned in 2016 had asked the pope for this, and for those who had spent years on that commission, I think of Dr Phyllis agano, among others, who's been on this podcast before. So. To talk about women deacons and even some of her experience on that commission. The other thing I'll just say is you mentioned. I'm one of several other people who've been talking about this of late. Phyllis is one of them. The other is Tom Reese, a Jesuit columnist who wrote an interesting column about a few days before mine came out, where, at first I was like, Okay, what is this click bait? But the more I thought about his argument, which was like, if women can't be ordained deacons, then men shouldn't be ordained deacons too. And actually, what I think he's doing there, rhetorically is following the kind of current papal logic to its natural conclusion, which is all these arguments that are being used that Pope Francis is suggesting actually should apply then to men as well. And there's more to say about like the inadequacy of the theology of the permanent diaconate, its problematic connection as well to the cursus honorum, that is this tradition that is synthetic and too suppressed, but actually continues to exist in the fact that you can't be ordained a presbyter or a bishop in the Catholic church without first being ordained a deacon, which is a weird thing. So there's a lot of work that needs to be done theologically and again, historically. But at the end of the day, you asked, How am I thinking about this going in the Synod? I think the only answer is this. Is misogyny, sexism and patriarchy at work. There's no other explanation, and I'm tired of people trying to explain this away.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, amen to that, Dan. I guess I'm laughing that you brought up Father Tom Reese's column, because I was going to mention it too. And that headline definitely was provocative. It basically said, if you're not going to ordain women deacons, stop ordaining men. I liked your headline a lot better, which took some more positive route, let's ordain both of them. But I think what I'm observing, and I haven't done a whole lot of reporting recently about the Synod, but it does seem like there's a lack of enthusiasm this fall for this what should be the culmination of this years long process of the Synod on synodality, in part, because of the way that these important issues that are that the people themselves have brought up and said are very important to them, have been kind of trying to be moved off the table. Now there is a part of me that wonders if they might still show up, even though they've been quietly moved to the committee, or whatever the working group, or whatever they're calling it, sense that the Holy Spirit might still move people to bring them up in the conversations. So I'm not predicting what's going to happen, but I think I am observing just less enthusiasm, less optimism, even just less interest overall in the Senate this October. And that's concerning to me, because I think it is a very it's Francis's legacy, allegedly, it's this sort of new way, new old way of being church that's supposed to be moving us forward. So yeah, that is, that is of concern to me, and I think I'm sensing that I know. So, for example, the Catholic theological Union had an event on synodality this weekend that I was planning to attend parts of at least, and it was cut back from lack of participation. Now it might be that there's just a lot of events going on this fall, which is also true, but I wonder if it's a little bit less less enthusiasm about the Synod. I
David Dault
just want to make sure that listeners have a sense of the history of this. So as Dan began to point out, the diaconate, historically, is distinct from the priesthood. And so when we're talking about ordination of women to the diaconate, we are not talking about ordination of women to the priesthood. That's a separate question and the RE vitalization of the diaconate really happened in the wake of Vatican two where what had been a largely kind of transitional and silent branch of Holy Orders was given a kind of new lease on life. And so I work with the Paulist fathers, helping to produce a podcast which is focused on the diaconate. And one of the things that comes up again and again in that podcast is how little the laity actually understands the role of the diaconate. Even now, more than 50 years after Vatican two, there still is not a well defined role for male Deacons in the church. And so I would suggest that fuzziness gives us a chance to continue to insert this question, because, as you've mentioned, Dr Phyllis zagano, her work has, I think, conclusively, to my eyes, shown that there is a historical precedent for ordination of women to the diaconate, and there is no theological barrier. If we are all image bearers of Christ, there is no reason why women should not participate in this particular sacramental order. And so I just, I want to put those kind of caveats in there, because people might hear us saying ordination, and think we're talking about ordination of the priesthood that. An important question. It's a different question. And the historical aspect of this, I think, is, at least to my eyes, well established. I think
Dan Horan
on that front, that distinction you're making, David, is something I know zagano has been very vocal about, which is exactly as you said, the question of ordination to the presbyterate, or to the priesthood, as we popularly call it, is an important but and related, but different question. And just circling back to like, what the theology of the diaconate is in its current state. Again, it's only been around in the permanent the permanent order for the last 60 plus years. It's very fairly recent. And I think one of the things Tom Reese mentions this in passing, one of the things that is interesting about the role, the kind of the functioning, the ministerial functioning of deacons, is that they can't do anything beyond what a non ordained layperson can do under special circumstances. So preaching, right? They're the ordinary minister of the cup. But lay people can preach in certain circumstances. Lay people can be extraordinary ministers of the Eucharist. Lay people can even, according to Canon Law, serve as the ministers if they're rightly delegated in special circumstances of the church in witnessing marriage, because weddings, actually the ministers of the sacrament are the couple themselves. They can't, at present, anoint the sick. They can't absolve and hear confessions. They can't celebrate the Eucharist. They can't ordain anybody lay. People can baptize. Any Christian could baptize. So this is a question of ordinary ministry, as opposed to these like extraordinary circumstances. But I think it raises a question that for me as a theologian, I find myself kind of scratching my head when Even Pope Francis himself and others are trying to make a distinction between the quote, ordained Deacons of the first centuries, or even in the scriptural era, and the that women were not ordained deacons, but they served as kind of Deacon like characters. All of this is ahistorical and actually deeply anachronistic, because if you look at the early sources, deacons had a particular lane. Their ministry was a ministry of service, service like we might think of Catholic Charities today, or we might think of the St Vincent de Paul Society. They had a particular role that was actually full time in the first centuries of the church, the only full time ministers were the local Episcopal the bishops and the deacons and the presbyters, which is where that means Elder, the priests, the ministerial priests, were assistants to the bishop. It wasn't until the fourth, fifth, sixth century, when Christianity exploded that presbyters, that priests, ministerial priests, became more full time as kind of extensions of the bishop's ministry of the local church, because the community of Christians was too large to gather around one kind of literal local church, right? So the ordinary was no longer the exclusive or primary minister of the sacraments in that locale. So that's just a very quick kind of point, but this is, again, very well documented, theologically and historically. So that's where I think Tom Reese's point about like, let's be honest. He didn't say this exactly, but I would say like, let's be honest about what we're talking about here, with all due respect to permanent deacons, and I say so called because there's only one diaconate, whether you're going to be ordained a priest afterwards or not, but the ones who are ordained to that ministry indefinitely, they're being given a kind of disservice here, too, in this kind of double speak that's going on. And so there's a lot to unpack, and that's what again, brings me back to this point. The only answer there is is misogyny. This only answer is sexism. There's nothing else to justify this exclusion. Well, I appreciate all
Heidi Schlumpf
that history, and I think too many people are probably ignorant about the some of the distinctions and the theology and the history behind or both kinds of ordination. And too often, I'm afraid that this issue gets caught up in just the left right culture war in the church and but what I think we're seeing is women all over the world, conservative, liberal, politically about other issues, feeling called to the diaconate, feeling the need for women to have more leadership in the church. There's a reason this surfaced in every single report in the Synod and was a main topic of conversation at the Senate on synodality last October. So I'm grateful to groups like the women's ordination conference and discerning deacons that that kind of bring women together around this issue, so that they can see that they're not alone and to advocate. And I think we're going to continue to see both of those groups having a presence at the Senate. And like I said, I think the Holy Spirit is still going to be nudging the church, so it'll be interesting to see where it goes from here. I know we will be talking about this again as part of our Synod coverage, and other ways that we talk about issues of women in the church, but for now, we'll end this segment. This is the Francis effect.
SEGMENT 3
Heidi Schlumpf
Welcome back to the Francis effect. I'm Heidi Schlumpf with today's guest, Emily Riemer Berry, Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of San Diego, where she teaches courses in theological ethics with a feminist and anti racism lens. Much of Dr Riemer Berry's research explores themes in moral theology, including the relationship between social justice and sexuality. Dr remerberry has a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame go Domer me too, a master's from Weston Jesuit School of Theology and a Doctorate from Loyola University Chicago. She's the author of two books, Catholic theology of marriage in an era of HIV and AIDS, and her recently published reproductive justice and the Catholic Church advancing pragmatic solidarity with pregnant women in 2019 she gave a powerful address to the Catholic Theological Society of America titled another pro life movement is possible. And in that address, she argued for the need to untangle patriarchy from the pro life movement. Her quote and to resist oversimplification and single issue politics, her book expands on this saying bluntly. Quote, it's time for a new conversation in the Catholic Church about pregnancy and pregnancy loss that centers women's experiences and offers a more dignified and a more just framework for reconsidering reproduction and social justice. End, quote, issues of reproductive rights and justice are front and center during this election season, so we're so glad to have Dr remerberry Here to help us understand this sensitive and important topic. So welcome to the Francis effect. Emily,
Emily Reimer-Barry
thank you so much. Heidi, I've been listening to the Francis effect for years, so it's an honor to have this opportunity to talk with you.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, as I, as we mentioned before we started recording, you happen to have written a book about a very newsy topic, so we're very glad to have you here to help us discuss this topic. And I know that you've been writing about reproductive justice since before Roe versus Wade was overturned, but since the Dobbs decision in 2022 it seems that the conversation has shifted and broadened, maybe to focus not just on abortion, but related reproductive health care issues such as miscarriage, ectopic pregnancy, IVF and other fertility and infertility treatments. So what do you think? Do you agree that this conversation has shifted, and what do you think, if anything, that might signify?
Emily Reimer-Barry
Yeah, what a great question. I do think that the conversation has shifted, and part of what it signifies for me is just how complicated pregnancy is. No Pregnancy is a complicated medical event, but it's also a complicated life event. It can change the trajectory of one's of one's life and really significant ways, and so is pregnancy loss. So I think that one of the things that we're wrestling with now is the effect of the successes of the 50 year pro life campaign, and we're seeing some of the flawed strategies and the focus on the overturning of Roe v Wade, which didn't necessarily lead the reproductive freedom for women, support for pregnant women. So women in the US have found out the hard way, really, that when an abortion ban is in place in their state, it doesn't only impact women who arrive in a clinic seeking an abortion, it also has an impact on women who end up in the ER because of an ectopic pregnancy, or women who end up in the ER, because of an incomplete miscarriage, and in some cases, some of the procedures or medicines that women need are the same, whether it's an intentional abortion procedure or whether it's care for someone who's experiencing an incomplete miscarriage. And so I think that it's pushed us as a country to recognize the complexity of this issue. And really it pushes against any of those kinds of easy sound bites or moral absolute about abortion, because we see like, what a complex issue pregnancy is in and of itself. So just to offer an example, like after the Dobbs decision within a state of Texas, one of those states that had a trigger law in place. So after the trigger law went into effect, and that significantly, you know, limited the abortion access for women, and it meant that the. A physician could be held liable for performing an abortion that was described as a criminal offense. A physician who is in violation of that would have their license revoked. They could face a six figure civil penalty. So that's a pretty steep financial penalty, and there were physicians who thought that their patients experienced, you know, legitimate exceptions, and we see this especially in the case of miscarriage management and ectopic pregnancy, but the way that the law was written, the patient would have to have a life threatening condition, be at risk of death or be at risk of a substantial impairment of a major bodily function. So a law like that is not really written with sort of complex pregnancy complications in mind. It forced the hospital staff and healthcare workers, but also lawyers or healthcare teams to then interpret like, what cases count as like, substantial impairment of a major bodily function. And one of the really sad things is that there were women whose suffering was exacerbated because of this law, and so the impact of the overturning of Roe v Wade is still having this trickle effect in terms of the disruption of care for women's health, but more specifically, women's reproductive health. And I do think that it points also to the reality of not just the complexity of pregnancy, but also the latent misogyny that we see within the law, but also within medicine and we are just. We haven't been focusing on some of these systemic issues in terms of undermining gender justice, or in thinking about maternal mortality and kind of the ways that women who are already experiencing vulnerability on the basis of race and class, have already had challenged outcomes in terms of maternal mortality and ethnic mortality, and so there's just so much work that we still have to do.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, you talked about the complexity and not oversimplifying. I think throughout that 50 years, as you mentioned, of that pro life movement, you could kind of many people in that movement thought of it fairly simply. The Republican Party was the pro life or the anti abortion party, and the Democratic Party was not. But this year, things have gotten very complex or a little bit different. I was at the Republican convention where they voted on their platform and they removed a call for a national ban, national abortion ban, from the platform this year. And of course, both former President Donald Trump and his vice presidential nominee JD Vance have had public statements supporting IVF and even supporting the abortion pill in the aftermath of that Supreme Court decision about that. And then, on the other hand, you have the Democratic Party, which has continued its commitment to legalized abortion and maybe even with more enthusiasm than in the past. So I know your book calls for a woman centered justice. But do you think either party is representing what you're calling for, or what have you noticed about some of the changes in the politics with
Emily Reimer-Barry
the two parties? Yeah, I do think that one party is closer to the other, closer than the other to a woman centered justice. And it's also the case that neither political party is perfect. Neither political party aligns neatly with Catholic moral teachings, and even from Augustine to Aquinas through the encyclical tradition, politics has never been about achieving perfection. I think we we recognize that politics is always a struggle, and it's a struggle that should be directed to the common good, but it's still not the space where we're going to achieve perfection. But still, I have watched what has unfolded with curiosity, as you describe this sort of theming web and web Republican Party. So the Republican candidate, former president, Donald Trump, I was trying to think of the best word to describe him, I would say like he's a very undisciplined speaker, and you know, he, during the primaries, was very vocal about taking credit for the Dobbs decision. He said in May of 2023 that he was able to kill Roe v Wade, who said that, said the sort of celebratory expression. He even said that without him, the pro life movement would have. Kept losing, you know, and we all know that Donald Trump doesn't like losers, so this framework of thinking that he was the savior of the pro life movement was something that he was really focusing on a year ago. But then, as you note like that, that has changed at the same time. I think that it is the case that the project 2025 report have been seen as legitimating but continuous focus on abortion through this emphasis of coercion and control. So the project 2025 report uses the word abortion 198 times. So abortion not going away if you think of the project 2025 report as a blueprint for what another Trump term might mean. So it's in that kind of framework where they're critical of the woke agenda, and they also say they're going to continue to prevent federal funding of abortion. They celebrate the Dobbs decision and say that these decisions really belong at the state. So I think there is a language of continuity in the GOP. You know, it didn't surface in the platform, in the way you mentioned, but in terms of folks who are still energized enough to vote for Trump, I think abortion is still part of the picture there, and his appeals to his base often center pro life talking points, but in the general election, he needs more than his base to win, and so I think that signifies the reason why we see him describing himself as someone who would be good for women and good for women's reproductive freedoms, because he needs to appeal to voters who are not just part of his base. He needs to try to appeal to suburban women. He needs to appeal to swing voters. He needs to appeal to people who might share some aspects of a Republican agenda. So I think it's interesting too, when we look at the character of who Trump is, and ask questions about Is he the kind of person who is saying what he really believes, or is he saying what he wants, or what he thinks people want to hear? And as his audience changes, maybe position changes as this part of the election goes on, and then I just think there might be other women who hear him and still think of the acts of Hollywood pay of his performance through the court cases, the fact that a jury found Trump liable for sexual assault, there are certainly some ways in which he would be a difficult candidate to support if reproductive freedom was a part of what you really wanted to vote for.
Heidi Schlumpf
Now, did you want to talk about the Democrats? Or no,
Emily Reimer-Barry
I do say, like on the other side, the Democratic Party has had a pretty compelling method. Jim that phrase, we won't go back. For some that means we won't go back to a Trump president. For other, it means we won't go back to, you know, Jim Crow era, you know, racist legislation, event around voter disenfranchisement in the context of reproductive right, we won't go back. Signals that the precarity of women's health pre 1973 and saying like, we won't go back to a situation where these medical procedures for women's health are illegal and make women more vulnerable. So that phrase, we won't go back, signals the desire to like move on and move on to something more positive. I also think the the Democratic Party is using pro choice messaging, but they are mixing it with a social justice agenda, and I think that that combination of the pro choice rhetoric mixed with that social justice agenda that moved them closer to a reproductive justice framework than what we see in The GOP platform. So reproductive justice is a social movement. It was founded by Coalition of Black scholars and activists in the 1990s women of color activists like Loretta Roth and Tony bond were really instrumental in the beginning of the movement, and they advocate for related rights. So the right of bodily autonomy, right to have the child, the right to not have a child, and the right to parent in safe and healthy conditions. And so the reproductive justice framework is actually critical of a pro choice framework. What they saw within the choice movement was coalitions of women who already had social power and were trying to secure rights for themselves, whereas what they'd see as more important as a more collective struggle among all women for reproductive freedom for all. And so they pivoted from a rights framework. To a justice framework. And in that justice framework, there's a focus on the social conditions that contribute to women's flourishing, like, how do we talk about the role of, you know, economic justice and environmental justice and reproductive justice altogether? So really, this justice based framework, and I think that it got attention to social justice that moves the Democratic ticket or position closer to this RJ framework. So you asked like, which of these political parties aligns better? Neither is perfect, but I do think that that social justice sort of policy level positions at the Democratic candidate is closer right now.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, with that definition in mind, I think it's interesting to maybe turn to kind of how the church has looked at the abortion issue. And many church leaders have a size the importance of the political issue of legalized abortion. In fact, our US, Conference of Catholic Bishops has more than once voted to term that issue preeminent meaning more important than all the other issues. So many Catholics have taken that to mean that they must vote for the candidate who opposes legalized abortion. And so what has that meant for Catholics in the voting booth, and is this reproductive justice framework another framework that they could take into the voting booth?
Emily Reimer-Barry
Well, I love that question. So you know, what's interesting to me is that description of a single issue as preeminent is actually out of step with the encyclical tradition. So whether we're talking about Catholic Social teachings from rare navaram all the way through to Fratelli tutti and the work of Francis, or whether we're looking at concealed, authoritative teaching, have focused on many issues and have recognized the layered nature of these complex social problems, and every Pope since then has emphasized that politics was supposed to be in service of the common good. So John Paul the Second, no Benedict the 15th, and then, more recently, Francis. These leaders have focused on the importance of politics towards the common good, and in terms of Fratelli tutti France, is discussed again, like broad range of social issues that voters should care about. So when he talks about like a new politics, he's talking about concern for folks who face hunger, homelessness. You know, he talks about care for the migrant in particular, and border policies. He talks about economic policies, reform of criminal justice systems, the death penalty. Get particular treatments, nuclear disarmament, so when they are advocating for reproductive rights, scholars of reproductive justice do not focus on abortion. It's one part of a bigger action plan. And one of the ways that they describe this is by thinking about, if you can envision a woman who just found out that she's pregnant, what are all the kinds of questions that she might have as she's trying to make that discernment about whether to continue the pregnancy or not. And these are practical questions, and they are moral questions, but in terms of the practical political questions she's going to ask herself, do I have enough money if I'm already struggling to put food on the table, then continuing this pregnancy might not sound like it's something I can do. What are the support systems for daycare or childcare? JD Vance has reportedly said that grandmothers should really chip in more here, but that's not always feasible in every family situation. So thinking about not just intergenerational family networks that support, but also like, how much does daycare costs, and how would I be able to get my kid on that list? Can I afford all of the supplies that babies need, whether it's Vipers or strollers? Can I envision myself breastfeeding, or would I need formula? And then also thinking about the quality of their intimate relationship. So am I in a relationship with someone that I could be a co parent with? How do I envision that working out? And given the statistics of sexual violence and relationship violence, that is a major obstacle for a lot of women who find themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy. So I think that the way to sum it up would be like, how do we vote for the common good? How do we see our vote helping those who are most vulnerable? And I see that as something that is deeply part of the Catholic intellect. Cultural tradition, especially within the encyclicals, know that we've had these authoritative teachings that they that the goal of political participation is, how are you using your power to make the lives of the vulnerable better? How are you using your collective power to demonstrate that you can make society more just.
Heidi Schlumpf
So I know, Emily, that you've argued that both the pro life and the pro choice movements have important and valuable claims to make, but yet you also see some flaws in their approaches. So can you talk a little bit about some of those pros and cons from both movements?
Emily Reimer-Barry
Yeah, of course. So the pro life movement sees themselves promoting life. We often see the language of respecting the sacredness of life from the moment of conception the natural death. So this kind of womb to tomb argument and abortion bans, like we've said already have been a priority for the pro life movement, and it's because they see that unborn life in the womb as having a right to life. But I think the biggest con is that the pro life movement has been too comfortable with the coercion of women, and so it's that contrast between coercion on the one side and conscience on the other side, that's still in tension. I think it's also worth noting that the pro life movement has been kind of associated with other social movements, or has partnered with other social movements that really undermine women's flourishing in other ways. So whether that's talking about like conservative Christian movements that were anti gay or that were anti feminist, kind of the conversation around family values and the culture war has been another challenging or, from my perspective, con the pro life movement, and then another is just the confusion about that description of what counts as being pro life, because it often is reduced to anti abortion in terms of political participation, but that not the heart of the pro life within Catholicism. And that's not all there is within Catholicism. And so there still remains some confusion about the consistent ethic, or whole life ethic, in terms of the pro choice movement. The pro choice movement sees abortion as a legitimate health care decision for women. They problematize coerced pregnancy, so they are much more on that framework of trust women, trusting women's decisions, the moral agent they and decision making, and yet at the same time, like that, movement is not perfect either. And so thinking about historical ties to the eugenics movement, one of the scholars who I think writes about this so well as Dorothy Roberts, and she explains that the right to control one's fertility was sometimes distorted into a duty to control one's fertility, and so she was especially critical of like white women in the pro choice movement who sought the right to sterilization or the right to birth control without recognizing the patterns that emerged across racial lines, such that then Latina, indigenous and black women were forced into coerced sterilization or were encouraged to use contraception In ways that it was no longer about the their free choices. And so while that was a part of the complicated social history of the pro choice movement, we also see organizations today leaving behind that choice rhetoric and focusing on reproductive freedoms. So I think reproductive justice, or reproductive freedom is now a kind of third way, where, certainly it's a way a lot of folks who used to identify as pro choice are now wrapping in some of those social justice claims, as they're trying to kind of recognize and learn from the harms of the past.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, it seems like a good way forward. And I'll just note to our readers too, a couple times you've said RJ, and I had to stop and think, What are you talking about? That's reproductive justice, yes. So in in your in your realm, I'm sure we all have our acronyms. So
Emily Reimer-Barry
RJ, and by teaching, so I have to, like, get my students into my lingo. Yeah.
Heidi Schlumpf
Well, thank you so much again. Dr, Emily Riemer Berry, who's been with us today and talking through these very complex issues, and again, she has her new book out reproductive justice and the Catholic Church advancing pragmatic solidarity with pregnant women. Thanks again for being with us on the Francis effect.
Emily Reimer-Barry
Thanks, Heidi.