I've been thinking since my last post praising (sort of) Frances Kissling for speaking out on the Society of St. Pius X readmission and the rehabilitation of Bishop Williamson. Actions like this, while understandable, still do less than nothing to assuage the feelings of liberal Catholics. Still, nothing makes me more uncomforatble than the lack of a role for women in Church leadership.
Last year, at the International Eucharistic Congress in Quebec, I sat in an old hockey areana temporarily converted into a church and watched the opening procession of a Mass. Dozens of bishops, archbishops, Eastern patriarchs and cardinals made their way down the aisle. And while there were a few female faces -- alter servers, lectors, mostly -- it was impossible not to be aware of the gender disparity. "We have to get more women up there," was the only thought that passed through my head.
But I have hope, for there is an elegent solution out there: women cardinals. Even if Church leadership persists in arguing that the apostolic succession bans women from the priesthood, the College of Cardinals is a later creation that exists outside of the priesthood. One does not have to be a priest to be a cardinal. I retain the hope that, someday, the Church will open up this body, which directly selects the Pope, to women.
A fool's hope? Perhaps. But the same Mass at Quebec featured, to celebrate India's contributions to the Church, a sitar solo. A hundred years ago, when the U.S. took the Phillipines from the Spanish, the Church replaced the Spanish bishops who served there up to then with American ones. Change does come.
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