October 9th: Meeting with Sr. Sara Butler
Today, Rita Houlihan, Fr. Gerry Bechard and I had lunch with Sr. Sara Butler, a Missionary of the Blessed Trinity and one of six women experts at the Synod on the Word. Sr. Sara told us she believes our “Women and the Word” project is one of the reasons she was invited to the synod, so she was happy to meet us and hear more about our work.
Sr. Sara has met the other women experts at the synod and many of the women auditors in attendance. Sadly, one of the women experts, Sister Germana Strola is very ill in the hospital and could not attend.
Each of the 41 experts have been assigned a specific aspect of the synod working document (Instrumentum Laboris) to pay attention to. Their task is to listen to the “interventions” (speeches) made by individual bishops, as well as the hour of interactive discussion each day and then synthesize the parts that relate to their particular area of the working document (see http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_
synod_doc_20080511_instrlabor-xii-assembly_en.html)
Synod experts do not give input in the form of speeches but they will advise and help formulate the summaries and final documents. The synod speeches have been shortened from five minutes to four to permit more exchange between the 253 bishops in attendance. The auditors do give input and other perspectives to the synod. They are from many countries representing various ministries related to bible study and reflection. Nineteen of the 37 auditors are women.
Sr. Sara related an interesting story about the Russian auditor Natalja Fedorova Borovskaja. When asked how she came to Christianity within the atheistic context of Communism, Borovskaja replied that in college, her Fine Arts teacher suggested she become familiar with the Bible since so much of Western art is rooted there. In the process, she read the Gospels and “fell in love with them.” Borovskaja, is currently a member of a lay community in Russia and professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities and at the Russian Academy for Fine Arts.
The conversation then turned to how it is that we three FutureChurch leaders ended up at the Synod on the Word. I (Chris) reviewed our eleven-year experience with the Mary of Magdala celebrations which provided compelling evidence that both women and men are hungry to learn about women in scripture. Yet only very few US Catholics do learn about them since their stories are rarely told on Sunday, and when they are told, women’s leadership is almost always cast in a negative light.
Rita told how inspired she was by the commentaries about the Samaritan woman by Fr. Ray Brown and Sr. Sandra Schneider. This text contains the longest theological discourse in any of the Gospels, so it is noteworthy that Jesus has an extended theological conversation with a woman, and a Samaritan woman at that. It is also one of the few texts about women’s leadership in the lectionary. Unfortunately preaching about the text nearly always focuses on the woman’s five divorces. It is assumed that she is to blame for the divorces even though Jewish and Samaritan women could not divorce their spouses but could only be divorced by them. The Samaritan woman was a victim, not a sinner. Her conversation with Jesus leading her to proclaim the Good News in her village provides spiritual nourishment to him: “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” We agreed that there are many more compelling reflections about this text than those generally used. We are really tired of hearing about the five times divorced Samaritan woman, and wonder when our priests and preachers will focus instead on the powerful missionary leadership exhibited by her.
Fr. Gerry noted that 85% of his active parishioners are women and how important it is for them to see themselves in scripture and prayer at Mass. He opened up the subject of the all male language in some sacramentary prayers and how difficult that can be for women and men both.
Sr. Sara sympathetically agreed that though some aspects of the discussion of women’s leadership in the church are necessarily limited, we must nevertheless do everything we can in all the areas open to us to raise up women’s biblical and historical leadership and full dignity as Christians.
We shared printed information about FutureChurch resources, women in the ministry of Paul, and our Mary of Magdala celebrations with Sr. Sara, who kindly agreed to be in touch with us off and on during the synod.
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