Validation / vindication for Sr. Jeannine

Sister Jeannine Gramick of New Ways Ministry recently received a hand-written letter from Pope Francis.  Let us hope it is the last letter she receives from the Holy See.

By the 1990s, I was a denizen of cyberspace, and had started to find online communities, first via AOL, then the UseNet (does it even exist anymore?).  It didn't take me long to figure out that, of my various interests, the online Catholic communities were by far the most interesting.  Through circumstances I no longer remember, I ended up for a brief time belonging to an AOL community, or a UseNet community, or a listserv, or something, of liberal Catholics.    

I joined that particular community right around the time the Vatican was putting the hammer down on New Ways Ministry.  Its cofounders, Sister Jeannine Gramick, at the time a member of the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and Rev. Robert Nugent, SDS, had been ordered to stand down from ministering to LGBTQ Catholics (except, at the time, I don't think the term LGBTQ had been coined yet, or at least was not yet in wide circulation).  At the time I joined that particular online community, the CDF decree restricting ministry had recently gone out; Fr. Nugent apparently intended to abide by it, whereas Sister Jeannine was pretty upfront that she was going to ignore it. Many of the folks in the online community were very disappointed and upset, not only that the Holy See was trying to crush New Ways Ministry, but that Fr. Nugent apparently wasn't joining Sister Jeannine in her resistance. Some of the folks in this particular online community apparently knew the two principals personally, and there was a lot of back and forth about whether Nugent was somehow betraying Sister Jeannine or whether his decision should be respected.  Of course, this is the sort of emotion, uncertainty and conflict one must expect in the midst of persecution (something to bear in mind when reading the New Testament). 

I didn't stay long in that community - I don't remember why I left, but most likely it was because it was a listserv, and managing inbox volume was a constant struggle in those days, regardless of how good the content was for a particular cybergroup.  I didn't hear too much about New Ways Ministry in the ensuing years, but I was sort of aware they were still around.

They're in the news now, because Francis has written a personal, handwritten letter to Sister Jeannine, congratulating her on her ministry.  In an article in America, Jim McDermott reports the story, and also reprints the contents of Francis's brief note.  Separately, America has published a wonderful interview that McDermott did with Gramick.  The interview is well worth reading.  If you don't come away with the impression that Sr. Jeannine is a saint, then you and I have different conceptions of what sainthood entails. 

One of the things about Sr. Jeannine that I found a bit beguiling is that she is very upfront that, in the early 1970s, when she first started ministering to LGBTQ folks, she knew almost nothing about homosexuality.  She was kind of an innocent abroad in the world, and perhaps was the fool who rushed in where angels feared to tread.  Or rather, she no fool, but she listened when the Holy Spirit prompted her.  My takeaway after reading the interview is that the Holy Spirit has continued to prompt her, and she has continued to listen, and the Spirit hasn't failed her yet.  

I was in middle school and high school around that same time.  In both the public middle school and the Catholic high school I attended, homophobia ran rampant.  Guys would call one another "faggots" and "fairies" and "fems" and "girls" and any other derogatory thing we could think of to insult and diminish what we thought of as the other guy's manhood (a concept we thoroughly misunderstood, and of course we were  anything but men ourselves).  And some of the girls also would scoff at the guys who were the usual targets.  Now, later in life, looking back on those times, a few of those guys who were most picked on have come out - and in a couple of cases have become wildly successful as adults, much more so than the jocks and thugs and their wannabes and hangers-on.  To the extent society has become more accepting and tolerant, I'm grateful.

Naturally, McDermott asks Sr. Jeannine about the period of her own persecution.  Here is a portion of it:

It sounds like there might have been more openness in the church to conversations about homosexuality back then.

In the late ’60s, the ’70s and the early ’80s, people were really fired up about Vatican II and social justice. There was hesitation on the part of bishops, but the priests, nuns and lay people who were in charge of Catholic institutions were more ready, I would say, to embrace something controversial or new.

Once Pope John Paul II began to appoint a lot of the bishops in the early ’80s and ’90s, things really tightened up. At that time the “middle management” in the church—the Catholic leaders who run retreat centers, hospitals or other institutions—were much more L.G.B.T.-knowledgeable, friendly and open. But they were afraid of what their bishop might say.

It was in that era that the Vatican issued its notification to Father Nugent and me.

How did that process happen?

First bishops put pressure on our communities. They wanted the communities to do the work for them, so on three occasions, they asked our communities to investigate us and recommend sanctions, but no sanctions were recommended.

I went through a half-dozen provincials and superiors general in my days as a School Sister of Notre Dame, and they all supported the work.

At some point, these complaints were taken to the next level.

Yes. In 1985, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith appointed a Vatican commission to investigate us and give recommendations. It was headed by Cardinal Adam Maida in Detroit. He was a nice man, really a nice man. I don’t think he relished this task. He was appointed in 1985, but we really didn’t get off the ground until 1991, when he got a letter from the C.D.F. asking [about the investigation’s status].

We had several meetings with the commission, and they forwarded something to the C.D.F. Apparently that didn’t satisfy the C.D.F., as it then gave us a series of written questions that we were to answer, Bob and I. And we didn’t answer the way they wanted us to, so then they basically told us the answers they wanted.

They wanted us to say that homosexual activity is objectively immoral and that we personally believed that. And I could not say that. I told them I would not give my personal opinion on the subject. I’m an educator. I can present the teaching of the church, but I’m not going to give you my conscience’s opinion.

In 1999, they issued a notification that neither Bob nor me would be allowed to do any more work with lesbian or gay people. We were not to be involved with this issue.

It sounds like a very painful thing to have gone through.

In a sense I felt excommunicated. Because what does excommunication mean? It means being outside of the community. It’s being shunned. And after the 1999 rebuke, that’s how I felt. There were places that I wasn’t welcome where I would have been welcomed before.

There is more besides this.  Please do read the interview.

May God bless Sr. Jeannine, Pope Francis, and New Ways Ministry.