These homemade feisty signs boost the impossible
election of Sister Simone Campbell to be head of the Catholic Church worldwide.
For those unfamiliar with Sister Simone, she created and led the “Nuns on the
Bus” tour last summer, where she and fellow nuns grabbed headlines and drew
huge crowds for defending faith-based charities that would’ve been devastated
by the harsh cuts proposed in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) House Republican budget.
Last September Sister Simone gave a primetime address at the Democratic National
Convention and received a standing ovation. For more than 40 years, she has
devoted her life to helping those who are poor and disenfranchised, aiming to
emulate the gospel message of lifting up “the least of these.”
This article was published by the Center for
American Progress.
But Sister Simone is a woman, which disqualifies
her—and tens of millions of other Catholic women—from any ordained leadership
positions in the church. This blocked path is both misguided and ironic, given
the fact that the labor and leadership of nuns, along with lay women, has been
crucial in building the church and its charitable arms over the centuries.
Dorothy Day, a social activist, journalist, and
devout Catholic convert, founded the Catholic Worker Movement in the 1930s, and
its social-justice mission continues today. As for nuns, the first one arrived
on our shores from France in 1727, decades before we were a nation. Since then
nuns have served as nurses, teachers, lawyers, social workers, administrators,
and pioneers. They have run hospitals, social service agencies, churches,
schools, universities, and old-age homes. An upcoming book, Called to Serve: A
History of Nuns in America by Margaret M. McGuinness, says that although
bishops usually get the credit for building Catholic institutions, “they simply
couldn’t have operated without nuns.”
Most other faith traditions no longer prohibit
women’s ordination. Even so, the number of women in their leadership ranks is
low. Only 10 percent of senior pastors in Protestant churches are women—and
that’s double what it was in the 1990s. One reason that the 2006 election of
Katharine Jefforts Schori to be presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in
America was such a big deal is because she was the first woman to lead the
church in the Anglican Communion worldwide.
Are women doing better in the business and corporate
world? Hardly. Only 20 of the Fortune 500 companies—a measly four percent—have
female CEOs, which means you can count these female corporate heads on your
fingers and toes. The picture isn’t much better in the political arena either,
as women comprise a mere 18 percent of Congress and 10 percent of governors.
In politics and business, only 1 in 10 leaders is
female, which makes them a rare breed. When you consider that women make up
50.8 percent of the U.S. population, their virtual invisibility in the top
ranks is seriously wrong.
First of all, having more women leaders strengthens
business and the economy. In a review of 100 U.S. companies, McKinsey and
Company found that those with at least three women in top positions ranked higher
than their counterparts on nine traits linked to “well-functioning
organizations.” What’s more, when the McKinsey Women Matter team asked global
executives to rate the most important leadership traits for success, the top
four qualities they listed—intellectual stimulation, inspiration, participatory
decision making, and setting expectations/rewards—were more likely to be found
in women leaders than men. To top it off, a study by Catalyst, a nonprofit that
focuses on women’s leadership in business, found that Fortune 500 companies
with women on their boards performed better financially than those without
female board members.
These statistics are certainly impressive. But they
shouldn’t lead us to conclude that only female superstars get to be leaders. A
woman shouldn’t have to be twice as good as a man to get the same job. Simple
fairness says that being equally qualified is good enough.
Back to Catholics and their search for a new leader.
Common sense says that the skills and talents needed for spiritual leadership
are possessed by Catholic women as well as men. And given the dire shortage of
priests in the United States and worldwide, it seems foolish to ignore such a
rich—and greatly needed—talent pool. American Catholics agree. In a recent New
York Times/CBS poll, 7 in 10 American Catholic voters said that women should be
ordained as priests and priests should be able to marry.
Soon after Pope Benedict XVI resigned, Sister Simone
Campbell got calls from reporters asking her views on the selection of a new
pope. She spoke of qualities she hoped he would have, including the capacity to
deal with the modern world and a devotion to justice. More than one reporter
asked if she were going to Rome to be part of the voting conclave. After all,
she was a national figure of importance in the church. “No,” she had to tell
them. “I’m a woman and none of us gets to vote.”
She’s right—at least for now. But a church can’t
hold off the modern world forever and keep its flock. Here’s hoping the next
pope grasps that eternal truth.
About the author: Sally Steenland is Director of the
Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress.
Steenland, a best-selling author, former newspaper columnist, and teacher,
explores the role of religion and values in the public sphere.
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