IRISH WOMEN AND A CHURCH IN CRISIS

·

My essay about the critical role of Irish women to the future of the Catholic church is to appear (alongside an essay by Mary McAleese, former President of Ireland) in the book below which is to be launched in Rome next month. 189 Irish women responded to a questionnaire about their feelings and experiences with Catholicism. Their thoughtful responses informed this essay and should be heard by the Catholic hierarchy if they have any interest in structural change to prevent future abuses of women and children at the hands of Catholic clerics.  Chances are they won’t listen so I urge you to buy a copy and deliver to the parish priest and bishops in your area.

Book can be pre-ordered here for its September 30th release.

Visions, Vocations and the Voices of Women, Edited by Catholic Women Speak

(Mahwah NJ: Paulist Press, 2018)

******

I recently attended a packed funeral mass in Boston to celebrate the life of a cousin who had died at 62 from cancer. She was raised in an Irish-American Catholic family, attended Catholic school and, like most women in my extended family, she had turned away from the institution of Catholicism decades earlier.  When the cancer became untreatable she reached out to a hospital chaplain and found a renewed faith that gave her a sense of peace while dying.  She was always a Catholic but in the end, she had to find a way to live with her faith, despite her alienation from the Catholic clergy, institutions and hierarchy. That is a critical issue for Catholicism.

The parish priest celebrating the Mass spoke of my cousin’s faith, but something was missing. Her husband’s eulogy soared with love. He saw her Catholic faith in her love for her family, in her work as a special education teacher in Boston for almost 30 years, in her love for her neighbors and for the women whose friendships she had nurtured through marriages, children, sickness, and grief.

Irish-American parishes in the United States are struggling with a decline in membership. The parishes in which these family’s ancestors worshiped in Ireland are in trouble too. The pews, parish councils and altars are filled with people over 60.  57 percent of priests in the Dublin archdiocese are over 60 years old. St. Patrick’s Seminary in Maynooth, once the largest seminary in the world, enrolled only six first year seminarians in 2017.

I am a Catholic-American who lived in Ireland for ten years. I was confirmed, married and had my children in Ireland. I was amazed at how Catholicism remains intertwined with the Irish state, education, healthcare and community, in such a way that the Church has been able to control people’s lives for generations.  Most Irish people remain Catholic in name and culture, but the latest census results from 2016 show a continued decline in the population who identify as Catholic,[i] and a corresponding increase in the number with no religion which grew by 73.6 percent since 2011. Just as telling is the growing movement for the separation of healthcare,[ii] law,[iii] and education[iv] from control by the Catholic institutions that have betrayed their communities.

Irish women were betrayed in the worst way. Catholic priests, bishops, nuns and cardinals abused and neglected their children and babies. They shamed women for sexual and reproductive behaviour over which the women themselves had little control. They stole the joy of motherhood and betrayed women’s loyalty by failing to protect their families.

Women today, myself included, struggle to reconcile their Catholicism with their identity as women, mothers, professionals and activists. My expertise is in community development and social inclusion. I decided to conduct a survey by way of an online questionnaire as to why the Church is failing to engage with Irish women and retain their loyalty. I received 189 responses from women. While this result cannot claim to be a representative sample, it does offer an insight into the how some Irish women define their relationship with Catholicism.

I asked twenty questions about their relationship with the Catholic Church and its role in Irish society. The questions were a combination of closed and open-ended questions. While 98.2 percent of the respondents were baptised Catholics, less than half had baptised their own children or intended to baptise future children. Only 27 percent affirmatively identified as Catholic now, while the rest either did not identify as Catholic or were unsure about their Catholic identity.

When the women were asked to explain their attitudes towards baptism and the other sacraments, responses were age dependant. Younger women (aged 15 to 44) expressed little interest in the sacraments for themselves or for their children, while the vast majority of older women said they supported baptism and participated in the sacraments in order to ensure access to schools and avoid exclusion in the community.

Nearly all the respondents thought that gender equality is an important issue professionally and personally. Only 6 percent thought that the Catholic Church as an institution values women today, and a further 15 percent said that it sometimes values women. Perhaps more importantly, only 2 percent replied that they do believe that Catholicism values women in its teaching and principles. I believe this is the crux of the membership crisis in Ireland.

Most respondents believed it was impossible to be a Catholic and a feminist, and all reported that news about the Church made them angry on a regular basis (daily and weekly). Their advice to young women was focused on the importance of personal conscience, and many warned that participating in the rituals of the Catholic Church would damage young women’s self-esteem.

On respondent wrote: “For many years, I was asked to be a reader in the church. I was also asked on a number of occasions for a reference for male deacons. I find both requests insulting and demeaning considering that women have no role whatsoever in the institution, and there appears to be no vision for this. The fact that it does not matter to the institution is the biggest insult. My daughters’ generations will not accept this.”

The Association of Catholic Priests (ACP) in Ireland has recently taken a halting first step to address the crisis precipitated by the alienation and exodus of women from the Church. It has asked every diocese to refrain from creating a permanent male diaconate until the Vatican commission on women in the diaconate, set up by Pope Francis, shares its findings. In a statement issued on 11 August, 2017, the ACP explained:

We believe that proceeding with the introduction of a male permanent diaconate at this time, and thereby adding another male clerical layer to ministry, is insensitive, disrespectful of women, and counter-productive at this present critical time.[v]

 

The ACP statement shows sensitivity to the current level of disrespect felt by Irish Catholic women. However, the need to integrate women more fully into Catholic institutions also relates to another looming crisis, which is the growing shortage of parish priests in Ireland.[vi] I believe this could be an opportunity rather than a threat for the Church today.  The parish priest should ensure that all the faithful in his parish are nourished through the celebration of sacraments, and therefore he has a responsibility to ensure that women feel welcomed and respected as equals in his parish. Irish priests do not need to wait for the Vatican commission findings to do this.  They could start now by engaging with women and seeking to understand and respond to their concerns.

Catholic institutions and clergy need to develop parishes as places that strengthen individual faith through communal beliefs and practice. They need to approach this through community development principles of increasing the participation and inclusion of the most marginalized of their members. The tools are simple but the trust between women and clergy will only be built through humility and respect. The process of asking about, listening to, and acknowledging women’s experiences and understanding of parish politics could be as important as any resulting change in policy.

[i] Central Statistics Office, 2016 Census, Chapter 8, “Religion,” http://www.cso.ie/en/media/csoie/releasespublications/documents/population/2017/Chapter_8_Religion.pdf

[ii] Cf Sarah MacDonald, “Confusion arises over using sisters’ land for Irish national maternity hospital,’ Global Sisters Report, May 22, 2017, at http://globalsistersreport.org/news/trends/confusion-arises-over-using-sisters-land-irish-national-maternity-hospital-46811.

[iii] For example, there is widespread support for the liberalisation of Ireland’s abortion laws, despite strong opposition from the Catholic hierarchy. Cf. Sarah Bardon, “Eighth Amendment committee agrees to recommend abortion law changes,” The Irish Times, Wednesday, December 13, 2017, at https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/eighth-amendment-committee-agrees-to-recommend-abortion-law-changes-1.3326063.

[iv] In a 2017 survey, 72% of parents surveyed agreed that law should be changed so baptism cannot be an admission requirement for state-funded schools. See https://www.equateireland.ie/educationandresearch.

[v] Association of Catholic Priests Statement on the Permanent Diaconate, 11 August, 2017 at https://www.associationofcatholicpriests.ie/2017/08/association-of-catholic-priests-statement-on-the-permanent-diaconate/.

[vi] Cf. “Lack of priests in Irish Catholic Church: The problem is becoming more acute,” The Irish Times, Tuesday, August 25, 2015, at https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/editorial/lack-of-priests-in-irish-catholic-church-the-problem-is-becoming-more-acute-1.2327089.

Beyond Representation: Exploring the Credibility Gap in Public Service

·
FB_IMG_1499630512640
More women voting on our legislation is critical—but what about the power of us women already working in politics?

This article appeared in MsMagazine.com on August 8, 2017.

She Should Run, a non-partisan organization working to funnel more women into politics, has launched a campaign for political parity—with a goal of women comprising 50 percent of U.S. elected offices by 2030. Donald Trump’s presidential election has prompted a surge of feminist resistance and a commitment to gender equality in politics—and a 1,000 percent increase in women interested in running for office.

More women voting on our legislation is critical—but what about the power of us women already working in politics?

We civil servants, we pencil pushers working in the municipal, state and federal government—we are the ones who write, finance and implement every single one of your local, state and federal policies and budgets. We can make progress and change very difficult for our elected leaders, as Trump has found out from James Comey and Sally Yates. 

And when we are women, we face a unique challenge: a credibility barrier.

Women are already 43 percent of public servants, yet 68 percent of us are the lowest levels of the civil service. While the media is interested in Ivanka Trump for political reasons, most women in unelected government jobs are rarely heard in policy debates despite our expertise. We don’t have the platform and unearned credibility with government officials and politicians that Ivanka enjoys—or the $74 million and glossy hair. We have mom hair and wrinkles. We wear sneakers to work and carry our lunches in cloth shopping bags. We are exhausted from years of repeating our knowledge over and over again to the men we work with and for, hoping to be heard before we turn shrill or apathetic or decide to simply stay home.

Interruption is one way men in the public service damage women’s credibility in politics. Elected officials like Kamala Harris know this all too well. And just this year, a study by Northwestern Law School found that male Supreme Court justices interrupt female justices three times more than each other. “Yet even though Supreme Court justices are some of the most powerful individuals in the country,” the authors wrote in the Harvard Business Review, “justices find themselves consistently interrupted not only by their male colleagues but also by their subordinates: the male advocates who are attempting to persuade them.” If these top-ranking women in public service still fight to be heard by their male peers, then you can imagine the experience of us lower-ranked plebes.

But being interrupted is just one example of the extra work and energy women must exert to influence outcomes in the public service. I have spent too much time trying to communicate with male colleagues about basic elements of their jobs. Over the years, I frequently found myself playing PA to a number of male colleagues despite being equal partners on a committee or in a program. Public services and protections are critical for our most underrepresented citizens—often vulnerable women and children. I sent texts to a police inspector to remind him of meetings, made reminder phone calls to the town manager’s clerical staff, tracked down the housing director before work and prepped health officials in advance of meetings. I have never had to brief my female colleagues to ensure they are ready for a meeting, presentation or deadline.

Since public employees are banned from political activity and communication with the press, constituents or elected officials about internal operations, our experiences have a limited audience. One of the few books on the subject is Women and Public Service: Barriers, Challenges and Opportunities, published in 2014 and authored by Mohamad Alkadry and Leslie Tower. Their findings rather depressingly mirror my personal experience: They argue that the gender inequality in the public sector is a good research example of the cultural barriers facing women because female civil servants are there in equal numbers to start with. The sexism we face is not a pipelines issue, as in the legislature.

The segregation of women to clerical and administrative grades can’t be ignored when identifying causes of gender inequality. In looking at all federal government employees by level, Alkadry and Landry found women represented half the overall workforce but only 30 percent of the Senior Executive Service level. Women consistently outnumber men in positions below GS10, while men outnumber women consistently in positions above GS10. Women also face more barriers to career advancement—and when they do reach the same official level as men, they have less authority, smaller budgets and fewer staff.

Many factors influence our credibility—experience, knowledge and association among them—and often they should. Credibility is earned. Credibility is a survival tool. We all need it to be fairly represented in our legal, economic and political systems. But the notion of credibility isn’t immune from biases stemming from race, gender and class.

I am sick of imagining the impact women could make on our political system if they didn’t spend so much time and energy fighting to be heard. If privileged and educated women like me struggle to have a credible voice, how far are we from real gender equality? My experience in public service, here and abroad, makes me wonder whether whether equal representation will afford women equal credibility and authority in law-making.equal representation will afford women equal credibility and authority in law-making.

Thank you to @theOpEdProject for inspiration and editing advice!

 

The Gombeen Strikes Again

·


The Healy-Raes making news for espousing ill-informed and biased opinions is not news in itself. We seem to be living in the era of unqualified Gombeen politicians making up ‘facts’ everywhere. One could be forgiven for thinking it was 1950 rather than 2017 while reading the daily political news. 

In this article an Irish mother who’s son was killed by a drunk driver is expressing her outrage at the Kerry politician’s claims that a few glasses of Guinness have never led to a drink-related driving fatality. 

By the way he owns a pub. 

Let’s support people standing up to this insidious, yet harmless seeming, Gombeen style of politics in Ireland and America. Policy should be created based on impact measurements, analysis and stakeholder engagement; not loudly stated ignorance. 

Read the Irish Independent article here – Miseducation by Danny Healy-Rae

Subscribe for the Sca!

·

Check out our new weekly Newsletter and keep on all the Irish sca (scannal)! The newsletter will be in addition to the content here so WordPress readers will need to subscribe through email.

Stay on top of all the Irish news with the Sca Update!

* indicates required
Email Address *

First Name
Last Name

When will the Irish media stop reporting on rapists as ‘doting fathers’?

·

You would never have suspected

The Irish Independent article published on Saturday March 25th  titled “You would never have suspected anything about his past’” was difficult to read.  The nature and scale of the sexual attacks carried out by Michael Marville against seven siblings is distressing.  But I have to admit the articles insistent coverage that the man’s attacks were so out of place in the village where he lived and married also made for difficult reading.  I am baffled by the Irish media’s continued coverage of sexual criminals and abusers as ‘normal’ and quiet members of the community as if this is unusual.

When will the Irish media realize being ‘quiet’ is exactly how sexual abusers and rapists across communities survive and keep their victims living in secret shame?

RTE loves to interview the parish priest so he can express horror and assure viewers that there were no signs and the village is a ‘quiet place’. ‘They keep to themselves’ is apparently both documented method for proving innocence and for avoiding being a victim of sexual crime.

This article not only references the church attendance of the rapist’s family but brings out the GAA club, and his in-laws ‘respected’ standing in the community. These are all completely irrelevant facts and perpetuate the notion that sexual violence is obvious and attackers are skulking around the inner-city with guns and knives ready to pounce on women and children on a dark street.

“It’s a quiet area, you’d never expect something like this to happen here,” is the recurrent theme in these articles.  I completely understand the sentiment as a neighbor or friend but does this mean it is part of the news of crime reporting?

Where do we expect these crimes to happen? Where is it less shocking? Ballymun? If any community should understand the conditions that allow sexual abuse to go undetected for long periods of time, it should be rural Catholica Ireland. When will the Irish media stop perpetuating the dangerous myth that the priest and men of authority should be the mouthpieces of the community and your church attendance and GAA membership predicts your trustworthiness with children?

Is it Time for Feminists to Lean In or Get Out of the Catholic Church?

·

Blessed Virgin MaryI told my dad it was creepy that we had to kneel in front of an old guy in a robe at mass when I was 10 or 11. I weaseled out of my confirmation at 15 and thought I was skipping into a sacrament free future as a young modern feminist. Yet years later I found myself having ‘words’ with the avid church lady in Galway who was instructing a few unconfirmed foreigners how to be good Catholic wives. I exaggerate – she was leading a confirmation prep class that I had to attend in order to receive confirmation at St. John’s in Galway so I could marry my Irish fiance in the Church but I felt like I was prostrating myself again in a front of a man in a robe.

Fast forward through a Master’s degree, my wedding, funerals, jobs, two baptisms, a move back to the US and here I am again contemplating yet another Catholic ritual. The sick irony of the Irish government hosting a Citizen’s Assembly on the 8th amendment while making no moves to open a criminal investigation into the hundreds of human remains found at the site of the former Bon Secours Tuam ‘home’ for mothers and children makes me wonder why the hell I am considering signing my son up to make his First Communion next year. Why the hell, am I a feminist who does not believe in a literal reading of the bible, still a Catholic at all?

Many Irish feminists and journalists have the answer for me. I can’t be a feminist and a Catholic and I am choosing the easy path by continuing to participate in a corrupt organization’s rituals. According to Donald Clarke’s opinion piece reprinted by The Irish Times in relation to the question of the church’s rituals, I shouldn’t participate in rituals, such as First Communion, if I don’t approve of the church.  This might be the simplest solution to my dilemma but who does it help and if it was that simple to me I would have already expunged the Roman Catholic from my identity. As I struggle to answer this question for my own sake (sorry, I don’t care about your opinion about my feminism or my Catholicism) three answers emerge.

Firstly, I like rituals because they connect me to the generations of my family before me and to communities all over the world in a way that creating my own brand of religious rituals wouldn’t do for me or my children.

Secondly, I have enough respect for the victims of the church’s abuse who are still Catholics and still participate in the rituals to consider their faith might not be misplaced.

Finally, feeling like I need to take individual responsibility for the wrongs of the Catholic church perpetuates the silent guilt created by the Catholic power structures in Ireland and Irish-America that allowed communities to stay behind their curtains while not so secret abuse, imprisonment and shaming went on in parishes everywhere.

Why are families urged to take their child out of communion prep or choose a rare non-denominational school rather than demand the crucifix and communion get out of their state-funded schools? The victims of abuse have overcome enormous physical and psychological obstacles to confront the power of bishops, cardinals, parish priests, nuns and the Vatican as a whole and what have we done about it collectively as Catholics to support them? Why in 2014 did Catherine Corless, an amateur historian, have to single-handedly research and publicize the death and secret burial of hundreds of babies in what were public institutions in communities all over Ireland?

The feminist and community development professional in me can’t quite just walk away.  I continue to vote even when I don’t ‘approve’ of the major political parties in Ireland or America. Feminists don’t approve of Donald Trump but they haven’t all left the political arena. Women have done the opposite and are flooding political institutions and decision-making structures in the attempt to collectively change politics. The silent treatment is a particularly Irish solution to conflict. I hate the silent treatment. The person you are ignoring doesn’t know why you are ignoring them and you don’t get the satisfaction of being angry. Staying home on Sunday morning is just like the silent treatment. This might prove to be the best option for me but I would rather be part of an Irish-led collective movement to remove the church and their sexist and controlling leaders from social policy in Ireland and the US.   I would rather see Catholics in Ireland and America throw off the guilt and silence created by the church and demand their rightful role as members in creating church policy. The public campaign to repeal the 8th amendment in Ireland is the first step to eradicating the smug and sanctimonious moral high ground from Irish social policy.