Welcome to Thursday. NCR's editorial says public displays of disagreement within the U.S. bishops' conference points to a need for a Vatican investigation. New Orleans is the latest city to host billboards supporting the ordination of women priests to the Catholic Church, a campaign of laicized priest Roy Bourgeois. And NCR executive editor Heidi Schlumpf reminds us that even though polls say liberal Catholics have been "suppressed," President Joe Biden is a public example of one.
On Jan. 6, when an armed riot incited by then-President Donald Trump broke into the U.S. Capitol, threatened the safety of the country's legislators and caused the deaths of at least five people, Los Angeles Archbishop José Gomez, the president of the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference, issued a 124-word statement that did not name Trump nor condemn white supremacy.
On Jan. 20, when the nation inaugurated Joseph Biden as the 46th president, the same Gomez issued a 1,250-word statement, promising there will be areas of "strong opposition" from the bishops toward the Biden administration. It then identified at least six issues of disagreement, expounding on them at length.
"If the intention was to somehow shame the country's second Catholic president for his political positions, it is perhaps a consolation that the shaming didn't quite hit the intended target," NCR writes in our editorial. "Instead, thanks to an unprecedented public rebuke by Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich, Gomez was outed as bypassing normal conference procedures and not having given other prelates time to review his message to Biden."
Cupich called Gomez's statement "ill-considered," a fitting summary for the entire misbegotten operation of the U.S. bishops' conference, we write.
"It's time for Pope Francis to order an apostolic visitation to investigate what has gone wrong with an organization that began during World War I as a model of cooperation and national audacity and is now a symbol of division and national embarrassment."
You can read more of the editorial here.
While raising her three children in the Catholic Church, New Orleans high school teacher Jennifer Molina was disturbed by the absence of women's ordained leadership. Since 2012, she has worked to publicly advocate with a group of Catholics in her region who like her, feel that ordaining women to the priesthood would improve the church.
Since the pandemic began, Molina's advocacy for women's ordination has shifted from in-person actions to supporting a new billboard campaign that laicized priest Roy Bourgeois kicked off last fall. In January, New Orleans began hosting the second of three billboards in the city that read: "Stop Male Supremacy in the Catholic Church! Ordain Women Priests!"
South Bend, Indiana (near the University of Notre Dame), Lafayette, Louisiana, and Philadelphia were the first cities to host the billboards.
"We have a huge debate going on right now about white supremacy, racism. I just thought wow, it really captures the grave injustice in the Catholic Church," Bourgeois told NCR. "[It's] a good way to capture the issue of sexism, the all-male priesthood and addiction to power — male supremacy."
You can read more of the story here.
More headlines
- When you see opinion polls, you can't say that U.S. Catholics who are progressive have been "suppressed," writes NCR executive editor Heidi Schlumpf. But now one of the most public faces of Catholicism in this country, President Joe Biden, will match those majorities.
- A two-page letter to President Joe Biden from three U.S. bishops calls for restoring asylum at the border, pursuing policies that promote the protection of those on the move rather than deterrence measures, and a new comprehensive immigration policy.
- At Global Sisters Report, the documentary "Rebel Hearts" tells the story of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary whose commitment to Vatican II renewal in the 1960s would lead them to defy a cardinal and form a new community.
Final thoughts
In the third essay of her series at Global Sisters Report, Phyllis Zagano writes about how the diaconal ordination of a woman religious would make her institute or order mixed — comprising both clerical and lay members. The question arises: Would their major superior have to be a deacon? You can catch up with the rest of the Women Religious, Women Deacons: Questions and Answers series here. Sign up for email alerts to get the latest news and columns from Global Sisters Report.
Until Friday,
Stephanie Yeagle
NCR Managing Editor
[email protected]
Twitter: @ncrSLY
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