My favorite photograph of Catholic monk Thomas Merton, taken by photographer Ralph Meatyard in 1967, shows Merton standing around in his ballcap and monk suit, sleeves rolled up, not a whiff of false piety about him. A cheerful benevolence lurks behind his eyes, but the look on his face is serious: you can tell that this guy means business—stalwart, fearless, smart as a whip.
He’s the personification of the Catholic Church I love.
But the first word that this photo of Merton brings to mind is manliness. Merton looks manly. No braggadocio or machismo, which are merely forms of vanity, but real manliness—virtues that, of course, characterize serious women as well: courage, honesty, compassion. The word virtue itself, originally meaning power and efficacy, derives from the Latin word for man, vir, but this gender specificity is just an historical nightmare from which western civilization finally seems to be awakening. Courage, honesty, compassion: the values we all share—men and women alike—when we’re at our best. Manliness.
But manliness is not a word that often comes to mind when one thinks of the Church these days. Indeed, the Church in recent years has often behaved otherwise. Where it should be fearless and open, it has often cowered behind an inscrutable bureaucracy. Where it should be authoritative (which is not the same as being authoritarian), it has been insufferably petulant, whining that its institutional freedom in America is threatened by a law whose sole intent is to give all Americans access to adequate health care—a benefit that, if available for all mothers and children, might help a woman decide against abortion.
And the Church seems most unmanly in its continuing failure to embrace the full authority of women in all matters and in all positions, episcopal as well as pastoral, clerical rather than merely clerical.
This morning Pope Francis announced that he is convening a commission to study the possibility of allowing women to serve as deacons in the Catholic church—news that the National Catholic Reporter sees as “signaling an historic openness to the possibility of ending the global institution’s practice of an all-male clergy.”
Let’s hope so. It’s a little crazy to still insist on an all-male clergy, as if mere maleness endows a person with more authority, more sagacity, more efficacy in any field, but especially in questions of religion and faith. Indeed, the two people here in Juneau whose authority in spiritual matters I trust most, trust implicitly—and trust over a whole gaggle of bishops, priests, and deacons—are women. One is a Dominican sister, and the other is my wife, the reach of whose humanity sometimes takes my breath away.
Whatever scriptural sophistry might be advanced for closeting the priesthood from the full breadth of human experience and authority, prohibiting women from the clergy all comes down to a matter of fear: somewhere deep in the Church’s gut is a festering little gynophobia that needs to be exorcised. Love and fear are incompatible.
The Catholic Church needs to man up, as they say. It needs to get women into positions of authority. But that’s not going to happen until it gets some men in there first.
• Jim Hale lives in Juneau.
