[Sundaycommunity] Thoughts

Sat Aug 7 14:22:33 PDT 2021

Thank you all for your supportive and insightful responses.  I really hear
what you're saying and appreciate it so much.  The theologies of inclusion
are pretty much all written -, it's simply structural, systemic sin that is
once again getting in the Church's way.  If we don't fix the structure, I
expect we will hear more horrors.

My question is, if I stay and don't try to fix the structure, am I
complicit?  If someone is being oppressed or excluded in my house and I I
know it but say and do nothing to stop it, am I again complicit?  And if
the person who is being oppressed and excluded is me, am I enabling that by
staying?  How many other women globally might be harmed because they and
the men in their community have bought the message that men make decisions
and women don't speak unless they're given permission?  By legitimating
these hierarchies and these forced silences, how many other people might
suffer like our indigenous peoples or our abused children?  And most
importantly, how to we effect change?  I have been outspoken about the need
for change for years but how slow is too slow? These are some of the things
on my mind.

Thank you for listening to me again!
Peace,
Cathy

Peace,
Cathy

On Sat, Aug 7, 2021 at 3:49 PM H. Burns via Sundaycommunity <
sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:

> Thank you so much for this.
> For those of us who resonate with all of this, and for whom the RCC is
> ‘not’ our ‘mother tongue’, as applies to several of us from the early days
> of the community, additional challenges present themselves.
>
> Much to reflect upon.
>
> Helena
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 6, 2021, at 10:34 PM, Catherin Cavanagh via Sundaycommunity <
> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
> Thanks Brenda!  A very interesting read by someone who is always worth
> listening to.  It doesn’t quite answer all the concerns that have bothered
> me for decades though, let alone the ones the last few months have thrust
> to the fore.
>
> When he says there’s nowhere else to go, I can’t say I agree.  I mean
> there are in fact other churches where people like me (women)aren’t banned
> from positions or barred from preaching in the Sunday gatherings.  There
> are churches that paid the money that the TRC prescribed without complaint
> or prevarication.  There are churches where apologies were issued from
> their highest levels without any quibbling about who exactly should
> apologize.  The fact that no other church is perfect isn’t a sufficient
> reason to stay in a church that has failed to deal with its own sins and
> continuously teaches things we know are damaging to whole swathes of
> people.  It’s like telling someone to stay in an abusive relationship
> because, you know, nobody’s perfect.
>
> I’ve been lucky enough to find this community and that’s keeping me here
> (thank you!!) but I’m really not at peace with the RCC (more so than usual
> that is). Here’s where I am:  I think it’s okay to stay but I don’t think
> it’s okay to stay without loudly, persistently and unapologetically calling
> on the Church to change.  I mean really loudly.  Indigenous people had no
> say in the operation or existence of residential schools.  Women have had
> no say in the theologies and restrictions applied to them.  LGBTQ people
> same thing.  So why do we always only apply our fabulous social Justice
> principles to issues outside the church and not inside?  We have a church
> that is openly and unapologetically sexist.  As the largest religious
> institution in the world it legitimates sexism.  But ho hum right for most
> Catholics?  Pass the host and check off being Catholic for the week.
> Communities like this one we are in are so very rare on a global scale.
> The Church teaches that the Eucharist is fundamental but does not always
> remember that oppressed are the Eucharist.
>
> I imagine I’m not the only one for whom this latest round of horrors is
> perhaps maybe the last straw.  I’ve been inspired by people who follow
> Christ and live the spirit in the world.  I’ve been inspired by our
> church.  I’ve been inspired by many of you.  The Catholic Church is in fact
> my ‘mother tongue’ and I don’t want to leave. But if the church is our home
> then there’s something rotten in the walls. We Catholics have to stop
> thinking we can ignore it by pointing out that good thing we once did.
> Either we provoke change or we (or I, to speak just for myself) really do
> have to leave as a gesture to the Vatican and Church rulers that we do not
> consent to all the sin that has been a persistent part of RC church
> structure, teaching, and practice for generations. We teach the world
> through our actions after all.
>
> Rolheiser points out the great good the Church has also offered the world,
> but refusing restitution, reconciliation and reformation (around
> decision-making, power sharing, gender issues, etc) completely undermines
> the good.  I’m struggling to remain convinced that I still want to be part
> of that.  But this community, including our priests and so many of you who
> are an inspiration to me stand against that and keep me here for now.
>
> One last thing.  I don’t think any part of the Trinity cares what Church I
> belong to.  This is entirely a human problem.
>
> I’ve ranted here and I’m tempted to delete it all.  I think I’ll send it
> though and just thank you all for listening to my frustrations.  You are in
> fact the face of goodness in the church and I’m grateful.
>
> Peace,
> Cathy C
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 6, 2021, at 3:49 PM, Mr. Gillis via Sundaycommunity <
> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
> 
> Thank you Brenda, a fantastic reminder in this age of cynicism!  We too
> are all complicit in sin. All we have to do is look at the climate
> emergency.  Once again a deep call to humility and metanoia!
>
> Peace
>
>
> Greg
>
>
> On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 2:14 PM Dave Snelgrove via Sundaycommunity <
> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>
>> A terrific read!!  Worth re-reading.  Thank you, all responsible.
>> Rosemary Gray-Snelgrove
>>
>> On Fri, Aug 6, 2021 at 8:30 AM Brenda Holtkamp via Sundaycommunity <
>> sundaycommunity at lists.integralshift.ca> wrote:
>>
>>> An interesting read….
>>>
>>> W H Y  S T A Y  I N  T H E  C H U R C H ?
>>> J U L Y 1 2 , 2 0 2 1 - Author - R O N R O L H E I S E R , OMI
>>> Several weeks ago after giving a lecture at a religious conference, the
>>> first question from the audience was this one: How can you continue to stay
>>> in a church that played such a pivotal part in setting up and maintaining
>>> residential schools for the indigenous people of Canada? How can you
>>> stay in a church that did that?
>>> The question is legitimate and important. Both in its history and in its
>>> present, the church has enough sin to legitimize the question. The list of
>>> sins done in the name of the church is long: the Inquisition, its support
>>> for slavery, its role in colonialism, its link to racism, its role in
>>> thwarting women’s rights, and its endless historical and present
>>> compromises with white supremacy, big money, and political power. Its
>>> critics are sometimes excessive and unbalanced, but, for the most part, the
>>> church is guilty as charged.
>>> However, this guilt isn’t unique to the church. The same charges might
>>> be leveled against any of the countries in which we live. How can we stay
>>> in a country that has a history of racism, slavery, colonialism, genocide
>>> of some
>>> of its indigenous peoples, radical inequality between its rich and its
>>> poor, one that is callous to desperate refugees on its borders, and one
>>> within which millions of people hate each other? Isn’t it being rather
>>> selective
>>> morally to say that I am ashamed to be a Catholic (or a Christian) when
>>> the nations we live in share the same history and the same sins?
>>> Still, since the church is supposed to be leaven for a society and not
>>> just a mirror of it, the question is valid. Why stay in the church? There
>>> are good apologetic answers on this, but, at the end of the day, for each
>>> of us, the answer has to be a personal one. Why do I stay in the church?
>>> First, because the church is my mother tongue. It gave me the faith,
>>> taught me about God, gave me God’s word, taught me to pray, gave me the
>>> sacraments, showed me what virtue looks like, and put me in contact with
>>> some
>>> living saints. Moreover, despite all its shortcomings, it was for me
>>> authentic enough, altruistic enough, and pure enough to have the moral
>>> authority to ask me to entrust my soul to it, a trust I’ve not given any
>>> other communal
>>> entity. I’m very comfortable worshipping with other religions and
>>> sharing soul with non-believers, but in the church in which I was raised, I
>>> recognize home, my mother tongue.
>>> Second, the church’s history is not univocal. I recognize its sins and
>>> openly acknowledge them, but that’s far from its full reality. The church
>>> is also the church of martyrs, of saints, of infinite generosity, and of
>>> millions of
>>> women and men with big, noble hearts who are my moral exemplars.  I
>>> stand in the darkness of its sins; but I also stand in the light of its
>>> grace, of all the good things it has done in history.
>>> Finally, and most important, I stay in the church because the church is
>>> all we’ve got! There’s no other place to go. I identify with the ambivalent
>>> feeling that rushed through Peter when, just after hearing Jesus say
>>> something
>>> which had everyone else walk away from him, Peter was asked, “do you
>>> want to walk away too?” and he (speaking for all the disciples) replied:
>>> “We’d like to, but we have no place else to go. Besides we recognize that,
>>> despite everything, you still have the words of everlasting life.”
>>> In essence, Peter is saying, “Jesus, we don’t get you, and what we get
>>> we often don’t like. But we know we’re better off not getting it with you
>>> than going any place else. Dark moments notwithstanding, you’re all we’ve
>>> got!”
>>> The church is all we’ve got! Where else can we go?  Behind the
>>> expression, I am spiritual, but not religious (however sincerely uttered)
>>> lies either an invincible failure or a culpable reluctance to deal with the
>>> necessity of
>>> religious community, to deal with what Dorothy Day called “the
>>> asceticism of church life”. To say, I cannot or will not deal with an
>>> impure religious community is an escape, a self-serving exit, which at the
>>> end of the day is not very helpful, not least for the person saying it.
>>> Why? Because for compassion to be effective it needs to be collective,
>>> given the truth that what we dream alone remains a dream but what we dream
>>> with others can
>>> become a reality. I cannot see anything outside the church that can save
>>> this world.
>>> There is no pure church anywhere for us to join, just as there is no
>>> pure country anywhere for us in which to live. This church, for all its
>>> checkered history and compromised present, is all we have. We need to own
>>> its faults
>>> since they are our faults. Its history is our history; its sin, our sin;
>>> and its family, our family – the only lasting family we’ve got.
>>>
>>>
>>> D
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