Joan Chittister - The Sexist Church I Love

 I receive Joan Chittister's emails, and own several of her books.  I have met her more than once at the Washington National Cathedral when she was invited to give talks, or a homily.  The Bishop of the Washington Diocese, Maryann Budde, is a big fan of Sister Joan.  At one talk, given after the liturgy in which she gave the homily, a woman stood up and said "I am a Catholc woman. Why do I have to go to an Episcopal church to hear Sister Joan speak or give a homily".  The reaction rippled through the congregation- it was clear that she was only one of many Catholic (or formerly Catholic) women in the congregation. There was applause.  This article is from Sister Joan's email today.  

The sexist church I love

When the church has little time for women’s presence, when the church takes little notice of women’s questions, when the church holds little respect for women’s insights, when the church devotes itself to preaching the gospel of equality for women but preserves a male theology and a male system, staying in the church demands a purpose far beyond ourselves.

I stay in the church a restless pilgrim not because I don’t believe what the church has taught me, but precisely because I do. I believed when they taught us that God made us equal and that Jesus came for us all. I believed in the Jesus they showed me: the Jesus who listened to women and taught theology to them, the Jesus who sent women to teach theology and raised women from the dead. So today I believe that the church–if it is ever to be true to that same gospel–must someday do the same: It must commission women as Jesus did the Samaritan woman, listen to women as Jesus did the Canaanite women, raise women to new life as Jesus did the daughter of Jairus.

I stay in the church because I have the support from other women, from feminist men, from a woman’s community that enables me to worship with human dignity and a sense of theological inclusion. Otherwise, I do not know how it would be possible to stay. At the same time–because I know my own need for the strength of a conscious and understanding community–I have come to understand and honor those who, lacking that kind of support, choose to leave the church. For many, church-going has become more an experience of systemic devaluation than spiritual growth. After years of waiting for change, then, they have chosen to try to find God by themselves rather than being excluded by the community from the common search. These are the women in whom beats a Catholic heart but, like many another abused or belittled woman, they get to the point where, for their mental health, they say with pain and still with love, “I will not divorce you but until this changes, I cannot live under the same roof.”

Finally, I stay in the church because the sexist church I love needs women for its own salvation. We are sanctifying one another, this church and the women who refuse to be silent, refuse to be suppressed. What each of us sets out to convert will, in the end, convert us as well. Women will call the church to truth. The church will call women to faith. Together, God willing, we will persist–women despite the madness of authoritarianism, and the church despite the irritation of unrelenting challenge. We will endure together. We will propel ourselves to the edges of our potentials for holiness.

“Why does a woman like you stay in the church?” a woman asked me from the depths of a dark audience years ago. “Because,” I answered, “every time I thought about leaving, I found myself thinking of oysters.” “Oysters?” she said. “What do oysters have to do with it?” “Well,” I answered her in the darkness of the huge auditorium, “I realized that an oyster is an organism that defends itself by excreting a substance to protect itself against the sand of its spawning bed. The more sand in the oyster, the more chemical the oyster produces until finally, after layer upon layer of gel, the sand turns into a pearl. And the oyster itself becomes more valuable in the process. At that moment,” I said, “I discovered the ministry of irritation.”

I stay in the church with all my challenge and despite its resistance, knowing that before this is over, both it and I will have become what we have the capacity to be: followers of the Christ who listened to women, taught them theology and raised them from the dead. 

—from “Why I Stay,” an essay by Joan Chittister included in from the Writings of Joan Chittister: On Women